Written by Sheng-mei Ma. This essay mobilises Cao Zhi’s seven-step poem as an allegorical lens on cross-Strait tensions, tracing how fraternal violence, de-personalised poetics, and classical Chinese cosmology illuminate Taiwan’s precarious geopolitics. Interweaving “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” and “Journey to the West”, it critiques power, survival, and moral contamination, arguing that domination ultimately inscribes both victim and victor within enduring cycles of violence.
