Suggest me the best novels from East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, etc) literature, equivalent in importance to Western “classics”, but also easy/exciting to read?

I grew up in Europe and had some intermittent interest in East Asian cultures and history over the years incl. studied Mandarin and Japanese to basic/intermediate level. I have also been immersed in a number of different historic/period series from the region, so I have a good contextual understanding.

However, I've really struggled to find any good, page-turning novels. I started Romance of the Three Kingdoms but got bored after a just few pages.

I'm not the avid fiction reader I used to be as a teenager (my shelves today are 99% non-fiction about history and politics, and a few novels that were gifted but never opened…), mostly because I have extremely limited free time as an adult and therefore need something to really grab my attention during my commute – so I guess the criteria are: exciting, adventurous, maybe fast-paced.

But also somewhat important/relevant to the culture, a bit like Dickens, Austen and Orwell are important to British culture