We dive into the differences between the fictional and real-life Zhang Fei and ask, “Who really whipped that corrupt bribe-seeking government official?”

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Qing Dynasty depiction of Zhang Fei (Source: Wikipedia)

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Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is a supplemental episode.

In this episode, I’m going to delve into the life of the real Shu general Zhang Fei and compare and contrast him with his fictional counterpart, who exited our narrative in episode 102. This is going to be a short episode, because compared to his sworn brothers Liu Bei and Guan Yu, there is relatively little in the historical records about Zhang Fei, but we’ll do the best we can.

We don’t have a birth year for Zhang Fei, but we do know that he joined up with Liu Bei and Guan Yu in the year 184 as they raised a militia to help put down the Yellow Turban Rebellion. As we discussed in the supplemental episode on Guan Yu, the historical records say that the three of them were LIKE brothers, but there is nothing that says they were actually sworn brothers. But in any case, they were close, by all accounts.

For his role in quelling the rebellion, Liu Bei was given a position as the magistrate of the county of Pingyuan (2,2) in the year 191, and Zhang Fei served on his staff. Now, in episode 2 of the podcast, we covered the incident that led to Liu Bei giving up this position. A government inspector was coming around fishing for bribes, and when the incorruptible Liu Bei refused to cave, the inspector made some nasty threats. In the novel, that turned out to be a really bad idea as Zhang Fei got wind of it and proceeded to tie the inspector to a post and whip him until Liu Bei intervened.

And here’s where we run into a discrepancy between the real-life Zhang Fei and the fictional Zhang Fei. In real life, this whipping did occur, but it was not Zhang Fei who did it. So who actually did it? How about our pious and compassionate saint, Liu Bei? Yup, in real life, Liu Bei was the one who whipped the inspector, but we can’t have such an impulsive outburst staining the sterling reputation of the novel’s main protagonist and the pillar of virtue held up as the contrast to the wicked usurper Cao Cao, so let’s just attribute this beating to his sort-of sworn brother instead. It’s interesting that the novel portrays Zhang Fei as ill-tempered and quick-to-anger, because when you look at the historical records about him, there is actually relatively little there to support this depiction.

Fast forward five years to 196, and we find that Liu Bei had kind of lucked into being the unofficial imperial protector of Xu Province. But while he was away on campaign, he left Zhang Fei in charge, and one of Zhang Fei’s subordinates, an officer named Cao (2) Bao (4), conspired with the warlord Lü Bu to take over the province. Zhang Fei managed to kill Cao Bao, but could not fend off Lu Bu, so he had to flee. In the novel, the cause of this coup was Zhang Fei getting drunk at a party, then getting mad at Cao Bao (4) for not drinking enough, and whipping him for the … umm … offense of not getting poop-faced at a party. So Cao Bao held a grudge and conspired with Lü Bu to get some revenge. The historical records, however, give us no information at all on why Cao Bao was mad at Zhang Fei; they just said that the two did not get along.

Let’s skip forward again to the year 200. At this point,