The Three Kingdoms: the breakup of Han

In 220 the last Han emperor abdicates, and the empire that ruled four centuries breaks into three kingdoms—Wei in the north, Shu in the west and Wu in the south. For sixty years they fight one another; in 280 the north unites the country briefly, and then nomads from the north cut off the Yellow River and the court flees south beyond the Yangtze. There will be no single China until the Sui dynasty, nearly four centuries later. It is the age when Buddhism, come from India, flourishes, and the age of which, a thousand years on, the most read Chinese novel will be written—the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where the generals of these wars became folk heroes.