Zhuge Liang (181-234) was an outstanding statesman and strategist in the Three Kingdoms Period in the history of China. He was born in a family of an official in Langya, Shandong Province. Due to his father’s death, he was supported by nobody and then moved to the countryside in Nanyang. There, he made a living by cultivation and reading.

It was a time when various political forces were fighting with one another to rule the whole country in ancient China during Zhuge Liang’s life. Among all those political leaders, Liu Bei, who claimed himself to be the descendent of the loyal family of Han, advocating “Revitalize the Han Dynasty”, was enlisting capable men and fighting against Cao Cao, Sun Quan and other political forces to rule the country. He came in person to Zhuge Liang’s reclusive place several times to consult Zhu the strategy to win, which was the famous “Three visits to the thatched cottage”. Touched by Liu’s good faith and courtesy to the wise, he proposed his suggestions to Liu at Longzhong and accepted Liu’s invitation to assist him. After the Three-Kingdom Situation was formed, Zhuge Liang was appointed the prime minister of Shu and exercised the military and political power. He dedicated himself to the cause to conquer the country until he passed away on the way to fight against Wei.

Zhuge Liang is a brilliant genius with great strategy and wisdom. Taking Wu as his alliance, he won the War of Chibi over Cao Cao, thus damaging the latter’s ambition of beating Wu first and Shu secondly. The winning changed thoroughly the situation of power gap and formed the confronting situation of the three kingdoms. He repaid his master for understanding with undisputable loyalty all through his life. Besides loyalty, his wisdom, capacity and strategy to rule Shu accorded with the Confucius’s ideal way of being a subject. So Zhuge Liang became a famous subject with joint praise by officials and common people in the Chinese history.

His special charm in the Chinese people’s mind also originated from The Romance of Three Kingdoms, a wide-spread historical novel. In this novel which was written in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Zhuge Liang could do astronomical observation, predict the future as exactly as a deity and worked with loyalty for his master. Afterwards, many kinds of local drama took his image in the novel as a basis and described his wisdom more vividly. Thus, Zhuge’s godly wisdom has been spreading until today.