As one of the four famous classics, Water Margin, many of the characters’ stories in the book are already well-known to every household, especially the protagonists such as Song Jiang, Wu Song, Lin Chong, Lu Zhishen, and Li Kui. Among these people, Wu Song's reputation is particularly famous. His reputation for fighting tigers has even replaced the names of other tiger fighting heroes in official history and novels.

Wu Song was the second eldest son in the family, so others often called him Erlang, and Wu Song himself said so. And his brother is naturally Wu Dalang.

According to Water Margin, Wu Dalang was actually very sad in his life.

Since both of his parents died, he and Wu Song lived together in his early years, selling cooking cakes to support the family. When Wu Song grew up, he liked to drink. When he was drunk, he often fought with others. Wu Dalang was implicated by Wu Song and often went to the county government to get beaten up. Later, Wu Song went to avoid the lawsuit, and Wu Dalang got lucky and married the beautiful Pan Jinlian. At that time, Wu Song also returned from hunting tigers and his family was reunited.

Not long after, Wu Song was on a business trip, and Wu Dalang was killed by Ximen Qing, Pan Jinlian and Wang Po. Wu Dalang was five feet tall, supported his family, and was a kind man, yet he was killed like this.

However, what is even worse is that when future generations read Water Margin, they still don’t know Wu Dalang’s name. Yes, Erlang's name is Wu Song, but what about Dalang? Everyone only knew that he was Wu Dalang, and they knew nothing about his name.

Some people say that the prototype character of Wu Dalang is Wu Zhi, so his name should also be Wu Zhi. Moreover, "Zhi" and "松" are both next to the characters for wood, which is in line with the ancient rules for naming children.

Is this really the case? The answer may not be that simple.

First of all, it is generally believed that the author of Water Margin, Shi Naian, was from the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Shi Naian died in the fourth year of Hongwu, 1371 AD (one theory is that Shi Naian died in 1370). At that time, the Ming Dynasty had just been established.

Judging from Wu Zhi’s epitaph and other information, Wu Zhi, who is on the list of middle-aged talents, was a Jinshi during the Yongle period, and Yongle was the reign name of Zhu Di, who was the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty. emperor. At that time, it had been thirty or forty years since Shi Naian's death.

If Wu Zhi is the prototype of Wu Dalang in Water Margin, then there will be a farce of "time travel". Because Shi Naian died early, it was impossible to write about events thirty or forty years after his death.

What is even stranger is that Wu Zhi’s epitaph mentions that he won the Jinshi.

Wu Gong's nickname was Tianling. When he was a child, he was called Dalang. In his later years, he was called Si Lao. The Duke's wife, Pan, was from a well-known family, Shuyuan. ... When he was young, he was smart, advocating literature and martial arts, especially poetry and calligraphy. In his middle age, he was promoted to Jinshi, and he was worshiped as a seventh-rank official.

From here, Wu Zhi passed the Jinshi examination in middle age. However, from the Hongwu period of Zhu Yuanzhang to Zhu Di's Yongle period in the Ming Dynasty, there was no one named Wu Zhi among all the Jinshi. At this point, the epitaph may be wrong, because most epitaphs praise a person's life.