Origin Bandit leader Traditional Chinese 鄒潤 | Simplified Chinese 邹润 First appearance Chapter 49 | |
Nickname "Single Horned Dragon"
獨角龍 Rank 91st, Horn Star (地角星) of the 72 Earthly Fiends Ancestral home / Place of origin Laizhou, Yantai, Shandong Similar Sun Li, Xie Zhen, Yang Lin, Jiao Ting | ||
Zou Run is a fictional character in Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. He ranks 91st of the 108 Liangshan heroes and 55th of the 72 Earthly Fiends. He is nicknamed "Single-horned Dragon".
Contents
Background
The novel describes Zou Run as a weird-looking man with a big stature. He is nicknamed "Single Horned Dragon" because he has a large tumour on his head. Once, during a heated argument, he rammed his head against a tree trunk in anger and caused the tree trunk to be bent. Everyone was stunned by his extraordinary ability.
Zou Run and his uncle, Zou Yuan (who is about the same age as him), lead a group of bandits based on Mount Dengyun (登雲山) near Laizhou, where they rob the rich and help the poor. The Zous are close friends of Sun Xin, Yang Lin, Deng Fei and Shi Yong.
Joining Liangshan
When the Xie brothers (Xie Zhen and Xie Bao) are wrongly imprisoned and sentenced to death in Dengzhou (登州; in present-day eastern Shandong), Sun Xin and his wife Gu Dasao approach the Zous and enlist their help in staging a prison raid in Dengzhou to rescue the Xie brothers. After saving the Xie brothers, they flee to Liangshan Marsh together and join the outlaw band there.
During the battle between the Liangshan outlaws and forces from the Zhu Family Village, the Zous join Sun Li's team in serving as spies for Liangshan inside the village by pretending to come to the Zhus' aid. The success of their espionage mission is instrumental to the outlaws' eventual victory over the Zhus.
Campaigns
Zou Run becomes one of the leaders of the Liangshan infantry after the Grand Assembly of the 108 Stars of Destiny. He follows the heroes on their campaigns against the Liao invaders and rebel forces after they have been granted amnesty by Emperor Huizong. He is one of the few lucky survivors after the campaigns but his uncle perished during the campaign against the rebel leader Fang La. The emperor offers him an official post, "Martial Gentleman of Grace" (武奕郎), to recognise him for his contributions during the campaigns, but he declines the offer and returns home to lead the rest of his life as a commoner.