But unlike “The Iliad,” “The Three Kingdoms” has wide appeal in modern times. Mao Zedong supposedly studied it for strategy lessons. John Woo, the Hong Kong filmmaker, recently directed an epic, “Red Cliff,” based on a famous battle from the novel. The film was the top earner at the Chinese box office in 2008.

Image Credit... The New York Times

Places associated with heroes and villains from “The Three Kingdoms” — Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu, Cao Cao and, of course, Sun Quan — are scattered across China.

“In China, there are simply too many places that have become famous because of the Three Kingdoms,” said Fang Beichen, a scholar of the Three Kingdoms at Sichuan University who has visited Longmen. “The number is over a hundred. It’s a very common phenomenon in China.”

Mr. Fang said Longmen’s ties to the Three Kingdoms were “at best mediocre.” South of the Yangtze River, where Sun Quan’s Kingdom of Wu once existed, there are places with more famous links to the ancient king. The area around Nanjing, where the kingdom’s capital once stood, has a mausoleum reputed to contain Mr. Sun’s remains and a stone citadel that Mr. Sun ordered built, Mr. Fang said.

That has not stopped residents of Longmen from claiming not just ties to the Three Kingdoms but to other famous figures — Sun Yat-sen, the 20th-century revolutionary intellectual from Guangdong Province, and Sun Tzu, the author of “The Art of War.”

Ordinary residents take obvious pride in the village’s ancient roots. Sun Yaxiao, the young woman showing visitors around, boasted that the village had 80 homes dating to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and 40 to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). She said villagers began preserving the homes in 2002, when they realized there was tourism potential. About 10 of the 120 or so buildings are open to the public. Directors of a half-dozen minor films have shot scenes in the village.

There is an ancestral hall with dark wooden pillars, red lanterns and a cobblestone courtyard. On one wall is a drawing of a complicated family tree showing the dozens of generations of Suns.