After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), in order to revitalize the cultural cause of new China and improve people's ideological consciousness, the State Council asked the publishing house to publish a certain number of outstanding traditional works of China. At that time, people's publishing house wanted to publish all six famous books, and I don't know if they would be popular after publication. The State Publishing Bureau asked the People's Publishing House to select four of the six masterpieces for publication, so the previous six masterpieces became four classic novels.
These six masterpieces are The Journey to the West's Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, A Dream of Red Mansions, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and The Scholars. Because the State Publishing Bureau only allowed four books to be published, People's Publishing House, after repeated screening, removed Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and The Scholars, and issued four books of The Journey to the West, The Water Margin, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and A Dream of Red Mansions, which were published by People's Publishing House.
People's Publishing House published 200,000 copies at that time, and these four classic novel series were well received as soon as they were published. In just two weeks, these 200,000 books were snapped up. The screened Scholars and Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio are also rare masterpieces in the history of China literature. Guo Moruo once commented on Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, saying that writing ghosts is better than writing demons, stabbing greed and stabbing abuse to the bone. So in my spare time, these two books are also worth reading.