Chengdu

Chengdu is the western capital of Liu Bei’s Shu kingdom and the place where the novel’s struggle over the Han legacy takes on a new political form. It is both a seat of government and a place of remembrance: Liu Bei’s tomb and a shrine to Zhuge Liang stand there, linking the city to the ruler who claimed to preserve the Han and the strategist who helped make his rule possible.

Setting and Political Role

Chengdu lies in Sichuan, in western China, where Liu Bei’s kingdom was based. The novel situates the city within the collapse of the Han and the emergence of three rival powers: Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan each carve out a kingdom from the disintegrating empire. Chengdu is therefore more than a regional capital; it is the center of the western state that contests Cao Cao’s control of the Han court and, later, Cao Pi’s claim to the imperial throne.

The city’s importance grows as Liu Bei’s power expands. After Cao Cao retreats from the Hanzhong region, nearby territories fall to Liu Bei’s forces, and other places surrender in expectation that he will secure peace for ordinary people. The successes strengthen the case made by Liu Bei’s commanders that he should become emperor. Zhuge Liang urges him to accept the title as an act responsive to Heaven and popular support, while Liu Bei initially fears that taking it would make him appear a rebel.

The Han Claim from Chengdu

When word reaches Chengdu that Cao Pi has established the Wei dynasty, Liu Bei is distressed by reports and rumors, including the claim that the former emperor has been killed. He entrusts day-to-day government to Zhuge Liang. The strategist and other officials then propose that Liu Bei be crowned emperor of the Han, arguing that Cao Pi has usurped the throne and that Liu Bei, as a descendant of the House of Liu, has a duty to continue the imperial line.

Liu Bei recoils from the proposal as disloyal and rebellious, but Zhuge Liang reframes it as a response to the seizure of Han authority. The exchange makes Chengdu the setting for a contest in which dynastic legitimacy is argued through lineage, virtue, popular allegiance, and the language of Heaven’s mandate. The city’s court does not merely observe the change from Han to Wei: from Chengdu, its leaders formulate a rival claim to inherit the Han’s authority.

Memory and Remembrance

Chengdu’s significance extends beyond the events of Liu Bei’s rule. Liu Bei’s tomb in the city remains an important site of pilgrimage and veneration, and a shrine dedicated to Zhuge Liang stands beside it. Zhuge Liang’s own tomb near Hanzhong is also a place of pilgrimage, but the adjoining memorial sites in Chengdu make the ruler and adviser visible together in the landscape of remembrance.

That memorial association reaches back to literary responses to the fall of the Han. The eighth-century poet Du Fu wrote of visiting Zhuge Liang’s shrine in Chengdu and reflected on the breakup of an empire; his poem is included in the novel and marks a significant moment in its later chapters. Chengdu thus gathers political history and literary memory into one place: the former capital of Liu Bei’s western kingdom becomes a setting in which the ambitions of the Three Kingdoms are remembered through the tomb and shrine of its ruler and strategist.