Three Kingdoms and Jin dynasty

史The dynasty

The collapse of the Han produced three rival kingdoms — Wei in the north, Shu in the southwest, and Wu in the southeast — each claiming the imperial succession. The military and political rivalries of Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan, Zhuge Liang, and Guan Yu were transformed by the Ming-dynasty novel *Sanguo Yanyi* (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) into perhaps the most influential narrative cycle in East Asian literature.

The Western Jin (266–316) briefly reunified the country before being shattered by the Wu Hu uprising of nomadic peoples from the steppe. The Eastern Jin court fled south, establishing a new capital at Jiankang (modern Nanjing) and beginning the long process of Chinese cultural settlement of the Yangtze and the south.

Buddhism spread rapidly during this period, with monasteries and grottoes funded by competing northern kingdoms — the early phases of the Yungang and Longmen cave-temple complexes date here. The arts of poetry, calligraphy, and landscape painting developed sophisticated literati traditions; Wang Xizhi, the most celebrated calligrapher in Chinese history, lived in this era.