page_title: Cao Cao
section_title: Cultural legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Cao Cao / Cultural legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Mask of Cao Cao, Qing Dynasty, produced at Anshun, Guizhou; photoed by Mountain, at Shanghai Museum Deutsch: Theatermaske zur Darstellung von Cao Cao als Opernfigur aus Anshun, Guizhou (aus der Qing-Dynastie)
context_page_description: Cao Cao, courtesy name Mengde, was a Chinese warlord, statesman and poet. He was the penultimate grand chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty who rose to great power in the final years of the dynasty. As one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period, he laid the foundations for what was to become the state of Cao Wei and ultimately the Jin dynasty, and was posthumously honoured as "Emperor Wu of Wei" although he never was an emperor during his life time. He remains a controversial historical figure, and is often portrayed as a cruel and merciless tyrant in subsequent literature; however, he has also been praised as a brilliant ruler and military genius with unrivalled charisma who treated his subordinates like his family.
  During the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty, Cao Cao was able to secure most of Northern China - the most populated and developed part of China. Cao Cao was also very successful in restoring public order and rebuilding the economy as the grand chancellor; however his manipulation of Emperor Xian as a puppet and figurehead was heavily criticised, with state affairs effectively being controlled by Cao Cao instead of the emperor himself.
context_section_description: While historical records indicate Cao Cao as a brilliant ruler, he was represented as a cunning and deceitful man in Chinese opera, where his character is given a white facial makeup to reflect his treacherous personality. When Luo Guanzhong wrote the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he took much of his inspiration from Chinese opera.
  As a result, depictions of Cao Cao as unscrupulous have become much more popular among the common people than his real image. There have been attempts to revise this depiction.
  As the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been adapted to modern forms of entertainment, so has its portrayal of Cao Cao. Given the source material upon which these adaptations are founded, Cao Cao continues to be characterised as a prominent villain.
  Through to modern times, the Chinese equivalent of the English idiom "speak of the Devil" is "speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives" (simplified Chinese: 说曹操，曹操到; traditional Chinese: 說曹操，曹操到; pinyin: shuō Cáo Cāo, Cáo Cāo dào).
  After the Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, some people in China thought there might be some similarities between Cao Cao and Mao Zedong. In 1959, Peng Dehuai wrote a letter to Mao, in which he compared himself to Zhang Fei: because Mao Zedong compares himself to Cao Cao, Peng's comparison implied that he had an intuitively confrontational relationship with Mao. Mao had the letter widely circulated in order to make Peng's attitude clear to other Party members, and proceeded to purge Peng, eventually ending Peng's career.
caption: A mask of Cao Cao in Chinese opera.
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