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The Story of the Stone #1
The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days
"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, The Golden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy who prefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai, his parents' choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beauty Dai-yu. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich, magical work sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder - within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives.
542 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1791
About the author
Cao Xueqin
508 books218 followersXueqin Cao (Chinese: 曹雪芹; pinyin: Cáo Xuěqín; Wade–Giles: Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in, 1715 or 1724 — 1763 or 1764) was a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. His given name was Zhan Cao (曹霑) and his courtesy name is Mengruan (夢阮; 梦阮; literally "Dream about Ruan" or "Dream of Ruan")[...]
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September 12, 2016
Filled with favours bathed in blessings
If you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago what I think a time machine looks like, I would have described a greyish blue metallic construction with a little blinking light for every button and a button for every wire that sparks within the machine's smooth frame. Maybe little bleeps and sounds too, and definitely a smoke generator because no time travel is complete without that puff of smoke signifying take-off to another time. Teams of scientists would be peering over this equipment armed with notes and calculations, trying to make sense of the complicated affair.
If you ask me what a time machine looks like now, I'll give you a little smirk and tell you there's no need for wires, DeLoreans or electricity and definitely no use for a smoke generator. All you need is ink and paper and a well-written story of another time and place.
This particular contraption brought me to 18th century China. An enriching, illuminating and profoundly moving trip I'll never forget and look forward to continuing later on.
When faced with a work of an epic magnitude (this book of more than 500 pages is merely the first part of five and is left without any kind of conclusion), when confronted with a story that made a journey through time and space in order to find itself from the desk of a Chinese nobleman with a lot of spare time, a man bestowed with the affection of the Imperial Master himself, all the way to the hands of a policy adviser on international environmental affairs in Brussels a couple of centuries later, I can't help but feel that I'm in no position to grant this piece of magic something as mundane as a rating. I feel so small next to it. It's like reviewing the Great Wall of China on an architectural website. Of course I'm going to give it five stars, but that's not telling the whole story.
The five stars don't mean I've always thoroughly enjoyed this book, regardless of the awe I feel for it. People who have followed my updates on this book may remember a garden. There is an entire chapter devoted to its description of around thirty pages, but even later on in the book the author couldn't stop himself from occasionally losing himself again in the midst of its abundance of flowers, rivers and shrubs. I'm no horticulturist so maybe that's why most of it went over my head but I can't imagine there being a whole lot of horticulturists here so that's not really the point. It's just an example of what this book does: it's very description heavy when it comes to the surroundings people find themselves in. If a room has curtains, the embroidery that's on them will be explained in detail, cultural significance and all. And let me tell you the Rong-Guo Mansions have lots of rooms, kangs and curtains to describe. This makes this story a bit more heavy for the casual reader but immensely valuable for those who want to know as much as possible about the time and place these characters (and the author) lived in. This shouldn't be read as a criticism towards the book but as a heads-up to casual readers who prefer plot over setting. Like I said: this is a time machine and the descriptions are the wiring that make it all work. Don't worry though, lights will start blinking soon and there will be plenty of buttons for you to push.
There are a lot of characters in this book. A LOT. There are helpful family trees in the back for easy reference and a character index that's even more complete, covering all the family, extended family, maids and servants and servants' cousins and distant friends. In the beginning it takes a bit of getting used to, also because the names sound very similar in some instances, especially to a Western reader's ear. Jia Lan, Jia Lian, Yuan-chun, Ying-chun and Tan-chun, Aunt Zhao and Aunt Zhou, Mister Xeng and Cousin Zheng and Jia Zheng, all of that times twenty. Sometimes one character is referred to with two or three different names,so that when you're following the peregrinations of Wang Xi-feng you shouldn't be surprised at Ms. Lian suddenly popping up, because they're both the same person. This may seem daunting at first but believe me: you'll be quite alright. Some people get introduced into the story only to die a sentence later, others return enough or get a chapter devoted to them to give you ample time to familiarize yourself with them. Jia Lian becomes the sex addict and Jia Lan an adorable little child and soon you no longer see the names but the rich characters they refer to.
Though there are many characters getting a lot of attention, it's safe to say that Bao-yu is the main one. It is believed he is based on Cao Xueqin, this book's author, making this a semi-autobioghraphical book. The Story of the Stone follows his movements within the compounds of two wealthy families and shows the everyday life of the elite and their servants. Bao-yu is a bit different from the others. He spends most of his time with the females, resulting in this story talking mostly about their lives, while the uncles and fathers are busy with their business, conducted outside of this story's area. Bao-yu is very intense in his friendly relations and often very sexual. Little Chinese school children lose all their innocence with the description of a fight in the classroom and its causes. On top of this sometimes raw realism, there is also a big touch of magic in this tale. This boy was born with a special jade in his mouth, a stone that contains mystical powers. The story starts with the backstory of this Stone, which is at once the narrator and the protagonist of this tale, because all signs point to Bao-yu being the human incarnation of this godly Stone. There is witchcraft and mystery, but it's introduced in a very subtle way and rarely the overpowering element. There is an early chapter describing one of Bao-yu's dreams, filled with riddles, poems and songs foreshadowing what is to come, meriting years of study and speculation and raising the appetite enough to make you want to devour this book, all five parts of it.
There are tales of early love, of death, of Imperial visits, of funerals and doctor's visits, of a boy's first wet dream and of a whole lot of etiquette. The importance of formalities is brought home really well here and sometimes in a most touching way. There is something moving about the deference shown to those higher and lower in the all-important hierarchy, wherein sincere warmth still has its place. But there is also viciousness in some characters who seemed angelic before and the result is a rich tapestry, not of caricatures, but of people that truly come alive.
This first volume is also referred to as "The Golden Days" and it shows these rich families at the peak of their success, but what is most powerful is the melancholy of a loss that is yet to come pervading the text. It makes you nostalgic about the present that is described and makes one appreciate it all the more. Or as the author himself puts it:
A final word goes out to the translator, David Hawkes, who did a truly astounding job here, making an ancient text in a foreign language perfectly readable to the modern English reader without losing any of its authenticity. There is a lot of poetry that can't have been easy to translate, but pretty much each and every poem (and there are many) carry a great force and beauty in them. Those who know me know I'm not big on poetry, but this book here opened my eyes in that regard. There are contests on how to poetically describe everyday objects (in the form of riddles) and the poems show a richness of thinking, a uniqueness of perspective in looking at the world that I want to cultivate within myself as a direct result of this book. Sometimes the air while reading this book gets very thick with all that poetry, making me feel like I was in a jungle with hot humid air that was never intended for breathing. The flowers sweetening the air with their scents were nonetheless beautiful, even though I'm the kind of guy who prefers a single flower over a whole bouquet.
This book comes with an introduction by this translator whose passion for this work shines through every word, an introduction that is a story about the story, on how "The Story of the Stone" came to be and how it found its way into David Hawkes' hands. It's just as interesting as the book itself and I highly advise reading it. As a person who tends to skip introductions or only reads them halfheartedly afterwards, I felt I had to add this advice.
I will definitely read further into this series, though I need a little break. It's very intense. This is said to be one of the most important novels in Chinese history and I don't want to miss out on the rest of it. You shouldn't, either. The dust covering up this little universe of days gone by will be blown away, and so will you.
If you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago what I think a time machine looks like, I would have described a greyish blue metallic construction with a little blinking light for every button and a button for every wire that sparks within the machine's smooth frame. Maybe little bleeps and sounds too, and definitely a smoke generator because no time travel is complete without that puff of smoke signifying take-off to another time. Teams of scientists would be peering over this equipment armed with notes and calculations, trying to make sense of the complicated affair.
If you ask me what a time machine looks like now, I'll give you a little smirk and tell you there's no need for wires, DeLoreans or electricity and definitely no use for a smoke generator. All you need is ink and paper and a well-written story of another time and place.
This particular contraption brought me to 18th century China. An enriching, illuminating and profoundly moving trip I'll never forget and look forward to continuing later on.
When faced with a work of an epic magnitude (this book of more than 500 pages is merely the first part of five and is left without any kind of conclusion), when confronted with a story that made a journey through time and space in order to find itself from the desk of a Chinese nobleman with a lot of spare time, a man bestowed with the affection of the Imperial Master himself, all the way to the hands of a policy adviser on international environmental affairs in Brussels a couple of centuries later, I can't help but feel that I'm in no position to grant this piece of magic something as mundane as a rating. I feel so small next to it. It's like reviewing the Great Wall of China on an architectural website. Of course I'm going to give it five stars, but that's not telling the whole story.
The five stars don't mean I've always thoroughly enjoyed this book, regardless of the awe I feel for it. People who have followed my updates on this book may remember a garden. There is an entire chapter devoted to its description of around thirty pages, but even later on in the book the author couldn't stop himself from occasionally losing himself again in the midst of its abundance of flowers, rivers and shrubs. I'm no horticulturist so maybe that's why most of it went over my head but I can't imagine there being a whole lot of horticulturists here so that's not really the point. It's just an example of what this book does: it's very description heavy when it comes to the surroundings people find themselves in. If a room has curtains, the embroidery that's on them will be explained in detail, cultural significance and all. And let me tell you the Rong-Guo Mansions have lots of rooms, kangs and curtains to describe. This makes this story a bit more heavy for the casual reader but immensely valuable for those who want to know as much as possible about the time and place these characters (and the author) lived in. This shouldn't be read as a criticism towards the book but as a heads-up to casual readers who prefer plot over setting. Like I said: this is a time machine and the descriptions are the wiring that make it all work. Don't worry though, lights will start blinking soon and there will be plenty of buttons for you to push.
There are a lot of characters in this book. A LOT. There are helpful family trees in the back for easy reference and a character index that's even more complete, covering all the family, extended family, maids and servants and servants' cousins and distant friends. In the beginning it takes a bit of getting used to, also because the names sound very similar in some instances, especially to a Western reader's ear. Jia Lan, Jia Lian, Yuan-chun, Ying-chun and Tan-chun, Aunt Zhao and Aunt Zhou, Mister Xeng and Cousin Zheng and Jia Zheng, all of that times twenty. Sometimes one character is referred to with two or three different names,so that when you're following the peregrinations of Wang Xi-feng you shouldn't be surprised at Ms. Lian suddenly popping up, because they're both the same person. This may seem daunting at first but believe me: you'll be quite alright. Some people get introduced into the story only to die a sentence later, others return enough or get a chapter devoted to them to give you ample time to familiarize yourself with them. Jia Lian becomes the sex addict and Jia Lan an adorable little child and soon you no longer see the names but the rich characters they refer to.
Though there are many characters getting a lot of attention, it's safe to say that Bao-yu is the main one. It is believed he is based on Cao Xueqin, this book's author, making this a semi-autobioghraphical book. The Story of the Stone follows his movements within the compounds of two wealthy families and shows the everyday life of the elite and their servants. Bao-yu is a bit different from the others. He spends most of his time with the females, resulting in this story talking mostly about their lives, while the uncles and fathers are busy with their business, conducted outside of this story's area. Bao-yu is very intense in his friendly relations and often very sexual. Little Chinese school children lose all their innocence with the description of a fight in the classroom and its causes. On top of this sometimes raw realism, there is also a big touch of magic in this tale. This boy was born with a special jade in his mouth, a stone that contains mystical powers. The story starts with the backstory of this Stone, which is at once the narrator and the protagonist of this tale, because all signs point to Bao-yu being the human incarnation of this godly Stone. There is witchcraft and mystery, but it's introduced in a very subtle way and rarely the overpowering element. There is an early chapter describing one of Bao-yu's dreams, filled with riddles, poems and songs foreshadowing what is to come, meriting years of study and speculation and raising the appetite enough to make you want to devour this book, all five parts of it.
There are tales of early love, of death, of Imperial visits, of funerals and doctor's visits, of a boy's first wet dream and of a whole lot of etiquette. The importance of formalities is brought home really well here and sometimes in a most touching way. There is something moving about the deference shown to those higher and lower in the all-important hierarchy, wherein sincere warmth still has its place. But there is also viciousness in some characters who seemed angelic before and the result is a rich tapestry, not of caricatures, but of people that truly come alive.
This first volume is also referred to as "The Golden Days" and it shows these rich families at the peak of their success, but what is most powerful is the melancholy of a loss that is yet to come pervading the text. It makes you nostalgic about the present that is described and makes one appreciate it all the more. Or as the author himself puts it:
The flower's aroma breathes of hotter days.
A final word goes out to the translator, David Hawkes, who did a truly astounding job here, making an ancient text in a foreign language perfectly readable to the modern English reader without losing any of its authenticity. There is a lot of poetry that can't have been easy to translate, but pretty much each and every poem (and there are many) carry a great force and beauty in them. Those who know me know I'm not big on poetry, but this book here opened my eyes in that regard. There are contests on how to poetically describe everyday objects (in the form of riddles) and the poems show a richness of thinking, a uniqueness of perspective in looking at the world that I want to cultivate within myself as a direct result of this book. Sometimes the air while reading this book gets very thick with all that poetry, making me feel like I was in a jungle with hot humid air that was never intended for breathing. The flowers sweetening the air with their scents were nonetheless beautiful, even though I'm the kind of guy who prefers a single flower over a whole bouquet.
This book comes with an introduction by this translator whose passion for this work shines through every word, an introduction that is a story about the story, on how "The Story of the Stone" came to be and how it found its way into David Hawkes' hands. It's just as interesting as the book itself and I highly advise reading it. As a person who tends to skip introductions or only reads them halfheartedly afterwards, I felt I had to add this advice.
I will definitely read further into this series, though I need a little break. It's very intense. This is said to be one of the most important novels in Chinese history and I don't want to miss out on the rest of it. You shouldn't, either. The dust covering up this little universe of days gone by will be blown away, and so will you.
February 29, 2024
Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone, opens by addressing the reader’s inferred question about the purpose of the book, and moves on to a creation myth with a magical stone that takes on human form. Later, the central character, Bao-yu, is born with a piece of jade in his mouth, carved with a verse:
“Mislay me not, forget me not,
And hale old age will be your lot.”
On the back, it promises to dispel witchcraft, cure melancholy, and tell fortunes.
Volume I is set in a mansion in the mid 1700s, when Bao-yu is aged around 12. He is grandmother Jia’s favourite, and loves beauty: poetry, but also lavish clothes, jewellery, make-up, perfume, and all things feminine, though concern is about him becoming a libertine, rather than not being masculine enough.
Image: Bao-yu’s maid, Skybright, aka Qing-wen, painted by Xu Baozhuan (Source)
It’s a rich and curious mix of fable, fairytale, fate, religion, social commentary, family drama, duty, dreams, etiquette, aromas (and Aroma), lust and love, poetry, and garden design. There’s a long section featuring fairies, which turns out to be a dream. Some parts are like a Shakespeare comedy (not that I’m suggesting one inspired the other). Poems, couplets, and riddles pepper the text, along with more distracting lists of genealogies, gifts, and nearly 30 mourners. It spans grand events and domestic details.
There are fascinating and beautiful sections (the garden, and a long dream, in particular) but there are many domestic comings and goings, some of which are rather dull, though occasionally, Cao explicitly omits them:
“Nothing particularly worth recording took place.”
It can be hard to keep track of the vast cast of characters, and their ages and genders, because of their similar names and complex connections (Emperor, concubines, eunuchs, civil servants, aristocrats, merchants, kidnappers, slaves, staff), relationships (by blood, love, friendship, adoption, and marriage), and the things they get up to (drinking and sex).
At first, I massively underestimated both the scale of the Rong Mansion (over 300 inhabitants) and the garden (a replica in Beijing is 13 hectares, with more than 40 scenic spots).
Image: Painting of Grand Prospect garden, aka Daguanyuan, featuring lake, bridge, and boat, by Sun Wen (Source)
All-scents Garden
The beautifully-named garden could just as easily be the All-sense Garden. When Yuan-chun, who is Bao-yu’s sister and now one of the Emperor’s concubines, is allowed to visit for the first time in many years, the family have to build a “Separate Residence for the Visitation”, which takes 10 months and has to be approved for suitability and security by a team from the Palace, who also instruct the family on protocol.
It’s built next to the All-scents Garden and contains many residences amid hills, a large lake, rocks, animals, plants, and ornaments, all carefully positioned to gradually reveal new vistas as one walks through.
“The fallen blossoms seemed to be even more numerous and the waters on whose surface they floated even more limpid than they had been on the [other] side… The weeping willows which lined both banks were here and there diversified with peach and apricot trees whose interlacing branches made little worlds of stillness and serenity beneath them.”
Every element needs an auspicious name and poetic inscriptions, prompting much debate.
For the day of the visitation, the family purchase two dozen “little nuns”, as well as dancers, food, fireworks, lanterns, and incense.
“Together they combined to make a fairyland of jewelled light.”
Yuan-chun renames it the Prospect Garden, and changes some of the other names and inscriptions, before tasking the girls and Bao-yu with composing verses.
Afterwards, she suggests the girls and Bao-yu (all cousins) live in the garden, with their maids and pages. It’s like a cross between Eden and a college dorm! Bao-yu loves it at first, but grows discontented because the girls:
“were mostly still in that age of innocence when freedom from inhibition is the fruit of ignorance.”
His page, Tealeaf, supplies him with raunchy novels, which help.
Image: Painting of a wistful woman in Grand Prospect garden, aka Daguanyuan, by Sun Wen (Source)
A world away
I’ve travelled in China a few times, and read some Chinese fiction, but such a geographically and historically huge culture still holds surprises:
• Like Don Quixote, this has postmodern aspects of metafiction and stories within stories, as well as frequently addressing the reader directly: most chapters end on a cliff-hanger, telling the reader why they should read the next one.
• The attitudes to sex are remarkably relaxed: the cook’s wife is known as “the Mattress” because almost all the men (family and staff) have slept with her and she has “pneumatic charms and omnivorous promiscuity”. Youngsters have sex, or close to it, often after wine, with each other, across class boundaries. But the Emperor’s concubine can talk to her father only through a paper screen.
• I found it odd that many of the fairies, maids, and nuns had Latinate names (Disenchantment, Citronella, Sapientia). The translator’s choice, but names of rooms and places were more poetic and less Latin (blossom and flowers).
Authorship
This is epic in scope but doesn’t hang together as a single story, or even series of stories. It’s like a composite in different genres, by different authors, some with more of a narrative than others. This makes sense. The author died in 1763 and this was first published nearly 30 years later. It was incomplete, there is no definitive version, and the wordplay, hidden jokes, and 16th century symbolism (old-fashioned at the time Cao wrote it), make it tricky to translate.
Nevertheless, it’s a classic of Chinese literature. Cao is sometimes called “the Chinese Proust” (my Proust review HERE), though for me, Miguel Cervantes seems closer (my Don Quixote review HERE), given the humour and dreams.
Penguin published it in three volumes, each over 500 pages, plus introductions, appendices, character lists, and family trees. This is a review of the first.
Image: Painting of one of the grand receptions by Sun Wen (Source)
Quotes
• “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.”
• “Cheeks as white and firm as a fresh lychee and a nose as white and shiny as soap made from goose-fat.”
• “Initiate him in the pleasures of the flesh… to shock the silliness out of him.”
• “The leaves are picked in the Paradise of the Full-blown Flower on the Mountain of Spring Awakening… It is infused in water collected from the dew that lies on fairy flowers and leaves. The name is ‘Maiden’s Tears’.”
• “Two women came in bearing… bowls and dishes containing all kinds of meat and fish, only one or two of which appeared to have been touched.” [the uninvited guest is from a lower branch of the clan]
• “The plays… seemed to involve much rushing in and out of supernatural beings, and the sound of drums and cymbals and blood-curdling battle-cries, as they whirled into combat.”
See also
• An equally lyrical, but easier, novel involving the philosophy of garden design and object placement (Japanese design, but much in common with Chinese), is Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists, which I reviewed HERE.
• A very different sort of red chamber is a traumatic feature of Jane Eyre’s childhood. See my review HERE.
“Mislay me not, forget me not,
And hale old age will be your lot.”
On the back, it promises to dispel witchcraft, cure melancholy, and tell fortunes.
Volume I is set in a mansion in the mid 1700s, when Bao-yu is aged around 12. He is grandmother Jia’s favourite, and loves beauty: poetry, but also lavish clothes, jewellery, make-up, perfume, and all things feminine, though concern is about him becoming a libertine, rather than not being masculine enough.
Image: Bao-yu’s maid, Skybright, aka Qing-wen, painted by Xu Baozhuan (Source)
It’s a rich and curious mix of fable, fairytale, fate, religion, social commentary, family drama, duty, dreams, etiquette, aromas (and Aroma), lust and love, poetry, and garden design. There’s a long section featuring fairies, which turns out to be a dream. Some parts are like a Shakespeare comedy (not that I’m suggesting one inspired the other). Poems, couplets, and riddles pepper the text, along with more distracting lists of genealogies, gifts, and nearly 30 mourners. It spans grand events and domestic details.
There are fascinating and beautiful sections (the garden, and a long dream, in particular) but there are many domestic comings and goings, some of which are rather dull, though occasionally, Cao explicitly omits them:
“Nothing particularly worth recording took place.”
It can be hard to keep track of the vast cast of characters, and their ages and genders, because of their similar names and complex connections (Emperor, concubines, eunuchs, civil servants, aristocrats, merchants, kidnappers, slaves, staff), relationships (by blood, love, friendship, adoption, and marriage), and the things they get up to (drinking and sex).
At first, I massively underestimated both the scale of the Rong Mansion (over 300 inhabitants) and the garden (a replica in Beijing is 13 hectares, with more than 40 scenic spots).
Image: Painting of Grand Prospect garden, aka Daguanyuan, featuring lake, bridge, and boat, by Sun Wen (Source)
All-scents Garden
The beautifully-named garden could just as easily be the All-sense Garden. When Yuan-chun, who is Bao-yu’s sister and now one of the Emperor’s concubines, is allowed to visit for the first time in many years, the family have to build a “Separate Residence for the Visitation”, which takes 10 months and has to be approved for suitability and security by a team from the Palace, who also instruct the family on protocol.
It’s built next to the All-scents Garden and contains many residences amid hills, a large lake, rocks, animals, plants, and ornaments, all carefully positioned to gradually reveal new vistas as one walks through.
“The fallen blossoms seemed to be even more numerous and the waters on whose surface they floated even more limpid than they had been on the [other] side… The weeping willows which lined both banks were here and there diversified with peach and apricot trees whose interlacing branches made little worlds of stillness and serenity beneath them.”
Every element needs an auspicious name and poetic inscriptions, prompting much debate.
For the day of the visitation, the family purchase two dozen “little nuns”, as well as dancers, food, fireworks, lanterns, and incense.
“Together they combined to make a fairyland of jewelled light.”
Yuan-chun renames it the Prospect Garden, and changes some of the other names and inscriptions, before tasking the girls and Bao-yu with composing verses.
Afterwards, she suggests the girls and Bao-yu (all cousins) live in the garden, with their maids and pages. It’s like a cross between Eden and a college dorm! Bao-yu loves it at first, but grows discontented because the girls:
“were mostly still in that age of innocence when freedom from inhibition is the fruit of ignorance.”
His page, Tealeaf, supplies him with raunchy novels, which help.
Image: Painting of a wistful woman in Grand Prospect garden, aka Daguanyuan, by Sun Wen (Source)
A world away
I’ve travelled in China a few times, and read some Chinese fiction, but such a geographically and historically huge culture still holds surprises:
• Like Don Quixote, this has postmodern aspects of metafiction and stories within stories, as well as frequently addressing the reader directly: most chapters end on a cliff-hanger, telling the reader why they should read the next one.
• The attitudes to sex are remarkably relaxed: the cook’s wife is known as “the Mattress” because almost all the men (family and staff) have slept with her and she has “pneumatic charms and omnivorous promiscuity”. Youngsters have sex, or close to it, often after wine, with each other, across class boundaries. But the Emperor’s concubine can talk to her father only through a paper screen.
• I found it odd that many of the fairies, maids, and nuns had Latinate names (Disenchantment, Citronella, Sapientia). The translator’s choice, but names of rooms and places were more poetic and less Latin (blossom and flowers).
Authorship
This is epic in scope but doesn’t hang together as a single story, or even series of stories. It’s like a composite in different genres, by different authors, some with more of a narrative than others. This makes sense. The author died in 1763 and this was first published nearly 30 years later. It was incomplete, there is no definitive version, and the wordplay, hidden jokes, and 16th century symbolism (old-fashioned at the time Cao wrote it), make it tricky to translate.
Nevertheless, it’s a classic of Chinese literature. Cao is sometimes called “the Chinese Proust” (my Proust review HERE), though for me, Miguel Cervantes seems closer (my Don Quixote review HERE), given the humour and dreams.
Penguin published it in three volumes, each over 500 pages, plus introductions, appendices, character lists, and family trees. This is a review of the first.
Image: Painting of one of the grand receptions by Sun Wen (Source)
Quotes
• “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real.”
• “Cheeks as white and firm as a fresh lychee and a nose as white and shiny as soap made from goose-fat.”
• “Initiate him in the pleasures of the flesh… to shock the silliness out of him.”
• “The leaves are picked in the Paradise of the Full-blown Flower on the Mountain of Spring Awakening… It is infused in water collected from the dew that lies on fairy flowers and leaves. The name is ‘Maiden’s Tears’.”
• “Two women came in bearing… bowls and dishes containing all kinds of meat and fish, only one or two of which appeared to have been touched.” [the uninvited guest is from a lower branch of the clan]
• “The plays… seemed to involve much rushing in and out of supernatural beings, and the sound of drums and cymbals and blood-curdling battle-cries, as they whirled into combat.”
See also
• An equally lyrical, but easier, novel involving the philosophy of garden design and object placement (Japanese design, but much in common with Chinese), is Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists, which I reviewed HERE.
• A very different sort of red chamber is a traumatic feature of Jane Eyre’s childhood. See my review HERE.
August 1, 2015
All these different lines and verses combined into a single overpowering impression, riving her soul with a pang of such keen anguish that the tears started from her eyes.
The first volume of Cao Xuequin's The Story of the Stone is appropriately titled The Golden Days, one thinks of robust innocence. While on one level the novel is the story of an affluent family in the Manchu China of the 18th Century, on another it is a philosophical examination into both the personal/existential as well as those issues of cultural heritage. Questions of social justice hover about. There are many allusions cast in the first novel that the family in question is on the verge of ruin. This doesn't diminish their present spending. That said, the supernatural asserts its primacy despite the two main characters. Bao-yu and Dai-yu may have been the Edward and Bella of their particular time, an editorial note alludes to the heated arguments and violence which arose debating the merits of the characters in courtly circles.
The subconscious reigns here in this world or tradition and lavish expenditure. Hexes and lustful fairies follow the protagonists back into the waking world. All the while the focus remains with the pair of teens adjusting to the breaking dawn of adult expectations (sorry for that).
The first volume of Cao Xuequin's The Story of the Stone is appropriately titled The Golden Days, one thinks of robust innocence. While on one level the novel is the story of an affluent family in the Manchu China of the 18th Century, on another it is a philosophical examination into both the personal/existential as well as those issues of cultural heritage. Questions of social justice hover about. There are many allusions cast in the first novel that the family in question is on the verge of ruin. This doesn't diminish their present spending. That said, the supernatural asserts its primacy despite the two main characters. Bao-yu and Dai-yu may have been the Edward and Bella of their particular time, an editorial note alludes to the heated arguments and violence which arose debating the merits of the characters in courtly circles.
The subconscious reigns here in this world or tradition and lavish expenditure. Hexes and lustful fairies follow the protagonists back into the waking world. All the while the focus remains with the pair of teens adjusting to the breaking dawn of adult expectations (sorry for that).
October 16, 2015
’Jing-qing, old fellow! It’s me! it’s Bao-yu!’ - he called him several times, but Qin Zhong [formal name for Jing-qing] seemed unaware of his presence. Again he called:
‘It’s Bao-yu!’
In point of fact Qin Zhong’s soul had already left his body and the few faint gasps of breath in his failing lungs were the only life that now remained in it. The ministers of the underworld, armed with a warrant and chains to bind him with, were at that very moment confronting him; but his soul was refusing to go quietly. Remembering that he left no one behind him to look after his family’s affairs...But the infernal visitants had no ear for his entreaties and silenced him with an angry rebuke...
Qin Zhong finally hears Bao-yu and begs the spirits to allow him just a moment back in the living world with his friend--the spirits learn the friend is Bao-yu, full of mischief and vibrancy, and who, to boot, is a descendant of the Duke of Rong-guo.
‘What?’ screamed the officer in charge of the party in great alarm. He turned angrily on his demon minions.
‘I told you we ought to let him go back for a bit, but you wouldn’t listen. Now look what’s happened! He’s gone and called up a person full of life and health to come here right in our midst! This is terrible!’
This isn’t a typical quote from Stone, but one that reminds the reader of the mythological/mystical foundation for the embedded story with no particular dynasty or events to ground it in time. It’s also just fun, which is a critical element of the novel. Woven throughout is the continuing conflict between the lively teenager Bao-yu and his Confucian father, Jia Zheng.
Since this is only the first of five volumes, I’m going to comment on a few things that struck me, and mention a couple of strategies I’m using to survive a 2500 page novel with hundreds of characters set hundreds of years ago in a foreign culture.
Since I’m also working intermittently on The Plum in the Golden Vase, the Stone’s similarity to that well-to do family saga is immediately at hand. One important difference is that the wealth in Plum is from trade, while the Jias in Stone are hereditary nobility, but in both the focus on the novel is on life inside the compound, and on the women of the extended family. In both a self-indulgent man whiles away his days with these women, creating and surviving the petty jealousies this attitude creates. Yet, at least so far, Bao-yu’s escapades in Stone are meant to be relatively innocent.
The other common thread that is so different from western novels is the active role played by the servants in the houses. Rarely is one conscious of a servant in European novels, especially serious ones. Sam Weller and Sancho Panza are conspicuous in their uniqueness. But here, the sexual roles of both male and female servants, and their actions in advancing the plots, are quite visible. This was true of Plum as well.
Strategy. The Hawkes translation (Penguin) includes an excellent introduction to the history of the text, and brief family trees of three familes in the back. But after 100 pages I was totally awash in the names and relationships. So I went back and reread, while drawing my own version of the family trees with notations about character and age. I salso drew the two family compounds at a very rough level to understand how a woman had to get a palanquin, go out an interior gate, an exterior gate, be carried/hauled 300 feet to the neighboring compound of her cousin, and go in through two gates and more gardens, galleries and halls to see said cousin or brother. This helped immensely to get the major characters fixed in my mind. I didn’t do enough of it; one should also note which maid belongs to which family member, and which part of the garden which cousin is later assigned to.
I also located a book which I recommend to anyone attempting this. Approaches to Teaching The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber edited by Andrew Schonebaum and Tina Lu, is very promising. I’ve just finished the first 33 pages, which help immensely with understanding the naming conventions and the literal meaning of the characters names, as well as the temporal and physical setting. Main lesson: be content with ambiguity. Very helpful: names carry a lot of meaning. For example, Bao-yu’s name connotes truth, his father’s falsity. After this initial contextual background come about twenty essays on various aspects of the novel, such as education, gardens, material culture, religion, etc.
One of the essays is on intertextuality, which is the focus on another used book I picked up a few weeks ago at Alexander Book Store in San Francisco. [Alexander is a terrific resource, with excellent displays of literature in translation. Stock is almost exclusively new, although there is a textbook floor I’ve never been to; I dont’ know how this used book crept into the mythology section.) The work I found is titled The Story of Stone: Intertextuality, Ancient Chinese Stone Lore, and the Stone Symbolism of Dream of the red Chamber, Water Margin, and The Journey to the West by Jing Wang. It opens with quotes from the opening scenes of these three classics, emphasizing the presence of an essential stone in each. I’ve only read the first few pages, but just knowing this about the connection between the books will be useful. In fact, since the other two are on my list and precede the Stone in composition date, I’m tempted to detour through them so the intertextuality I find will be in sequential order. Wang’s work is pretty academic, so perhaps I’ll do more dipping in that reading straight through.
To close, a poem from near the end of volume one. Bao-Chai, the solid, virtuous girl cousin, is telling the story about the Fifth Patriarch , who is old and looking for a worthy successor. He orders a contest to compose the best gatha. One contender offers:
Our body like the Bo-tree is
Our mind’s a mirror bright.
Then keep it clean and free from dust,
So it reflects the light.
But the winner refutes him with:
No real Bo-tree the body is,
The mind no mirror-bright.
Since of the pair none’s really there,
On what could dust alight?
December 29, 2022
Enjoyable and intriguing. I'm looking forward to reading on.
August 4, 2011
This book was unlike anything I have read before and I loved it. It starts with the story of goddess Nu-wa repairing the heavens with various stones, and there is one that is left unused and so it tossed down to earth. This stone can speak, write poetry, turns itself into jade, and places itself in the mouth of the baby Bao-yu who is born into the prestigious Wang family of the Jia clan. This novel covers the comings and goings of the Wang, Ning-guo, and Rong-guo houses of the Jia clan and most of the story takes place within the clan compound when Jia Bao-yu is between the ages of 11 and 13.
Some of the most fascinating things about this book were the ‘insider info’ it provided into the lives of Chinese upper class citizens (those literally one or two steps below the emperor). I’ve read a lot of novels about western aristocrats of the same time period (1700s) and drawing comparisons between the rich of the east and the rich of the west was entirely too much fun. Chinese aristocrats had far more servants, slaves etc, but the biggest difference was the way in which they were treated. Concubines who bore sons were elevated to the status of second, third etc wives and should the sons of the first wife not make it to adulthood, those of the concubines could inherit and rule the families. Servants and slaves were not just there to provide labor (as in the west) but they participated actively in family affairs, shared meals, spent hours reciting poetry to each other, making up riddles, throwing parties, practicing calligraphy, staging plays, and playing various games to pass the time. Because of the importance of the ‘help,’ this provided one of the richest casts of characters that I’ve seen since Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but it also meant that since this was my first foray into Chinese literature the names of the over 200+ characters in this book took a lot of getting used to… (for instance: Jia Cheng, Jia Cong, Jia Dai-ru, Jia Huan, Jia Jing, Jia Jun, Jia Lan, Jia Lian and so on and so forth for at least 40 more Jias, and then come the Fengs, the Qins, the Rongs, the Wangs, and the Zhous). It is well worth the time spent flipping back to the list of characters provided in the appendix and the family trees until you know them well enough, otherwise I imagine this book being too confusing to read.
The best part of the story occurred around page 130 when Bao-yu is visited, while dreaming, by the Fairy of Disenchantment and is allowed to look into the registers at the Department of the Ill-Fated Fair, where he reads riddles that forecast the fate of each of the female members of his household. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the rest of the novel trying to figure out who might have been meant by each riddle…for example: When power is lost, rank matters not a jot; when families fall, kinship must not be forgot. Through a chance kindness to a country wife, deliverance came for your afflicted life…
Honestly, this book has it all. Sex, lies, murder, revenge, love, fortune, lost identities, family drama, kidnappings, fate, - everything you could want from what is called in China ‘the most popular book ever written.’ And this was just volume one! I can’t wait to read the other five and see what is in store for these hilarious, lovable, and devious characters (especially the meddling Grandmother Jia who continually enjoys too much rice wine and likes to get her grandchildren as drunk as she is in order for them to spill their secrets!)
Some of the most fascinating things about this book were the ‘insider info’ it provided into the lives of Chinese upper class citizens (those literally one or two steps below the emperor). I’ve read a lot of novels about western aristocrats of the same time period (1700s) and drawing comparisons between the rich of the east and the rich of the west was entirely too much fun. Chinese aristocrats had far more servants, slaves etc, but the biggest difference was the way in which they were treated. Concubines who bore sons were elevated to the status of second, third etc wives and should the sons of the first wife not make it to adulthood, those of the concubines could inherit and rule the families. Servants and slaves were not just there to provide labor (as in the west) but they participated actively in family affairs, shared meals, spent hours reciting poetry to each other, making up riddles, throwing parties, practicing calligraphy, staging plays, and playing various games to pass the time. Because of the importance of the ‘help,’ this provided one of the richest casts of characters that I’ve seen since Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but it also meant that since this was my first foray into Chinese literature the names of the over 200+ characters in this book took a lot of getting used to… (for instance: Jia Cheng, Jia Cong, Jia Dai-ru, Jia Huan, Jia Jing, Jia Jun, Jia Lan, Jia Lian and so on and so forth for at least 40 more Jias, and then come the Fengs, the Qins, the Rongs, the Wangs, and the Zhous). It is well worth the time spent flipping back to the list of characters provided in the appendix and the family trees until you know them well enough, otherwise I imagine this book being too confusing to read.
The best part of the story occurred around page 130 when Bao-yu is visited, while dreaming, by the Fairy of Disenchantment and is allowed to look into the registers at the Department of the Ill-Fated Fair, where he reads riddles that forecast the fate of each of the female members of his household. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the rest of the novel trying to figure out who might have been meant by each riddle…for example: When power is lost, rank matters not a jot; when families fall, kinship must not be forgot. Through a chance kindness to a country wife, deliverance came for your afflicted life…
Honestly, this book has it all. Sex, lies, murder, revenge, love, fortune, lost identities, family drama, kidnappings, fate, - everything you could want from what is called in China ‘the most popular book ever written.’ And this was just volume one! I can’t wait to read the other five and see what is in store for these hilarious, lovable, and devious characters (especially the meddling Grandmother Jia who continually enjoys too much rice wine and likes to get her grandchildren as drunk as she is in order for them to spill their secrets!)
September 2, 2014
The Story of the Stone, also known as Dreams In the Red Chamber, is probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Chinese classical novels of all time.
The best way to describe the book is probably to address it as a 'family saga'. As the story progresses, we can follow the main characters and look into the daily life of a (fictional) Chinese noble family, there are romances, tragedies, family dramas, rivalries, conflicts and so much more in the book, all of them richly written by the author, Cao Xueqin, who also came from a decayed noble family in the 1700s.
The heart and soul of The Story of the Stone is its well developed, vividly described characters, especially the young ladies and girls (with nobles, commoners, servants, slaves among them). Through his writing, Cao breathed life into his female characters with so much fondness, respect and sadness, giving them remarkable and different personalities. By the way, the author made it no secret that he spent more than 20 years to write The Story of the Stone in order to immortalize all the lovely, highly talented ladies he had met in his life. Although these female characters in the book, lovely that they certainly are, are not without flaws in personalities and behaviors, which makes them so much more realistic and believable.
There're a lot of joy and sadness; love and lust, dreams and reality, comedies as much as tragedies in the book. It can be read as a coming of age story whilst it can also be read as a fable or a myth with lot of insight about life and death, fate and emptiness, in between the events and human dramas.
Last but not least, The Story of the Stone is also filled with great poetry and awesome writing. Reading this book is the same like stepping into a carefully and masterfully crafted unique world, which allows us to have a look at the world of a bygone ancient China and know the people who resident in this unique world.
However, I am NOT saying it's a book for everyone. To many readers, the pace might appear to be too slow, and the naturism undertone means hardly anything and anyone in the book is plainly black and white, sometime the events become too complicated and too difficult to follow. I dare say many people would also think the main character, Jia Bao-yu (an anti-hero!?) is too passive and nothing-doing for a male lead. So I think it's all up to your own taste. ^_^;;;
Also, I must give thank to the translator for undertaking such a hard work, I can even imagine him vomiting blood while translating this masterpiece into English. What a task it must be!
The best way to describe the book is probably to address it as a 'family saga'. As the story progresses, we can follow the main characters and look into the daily life of a (fictional) Chinese noble family, there are romances, tragedies, family dramas, rivalries, conflicts and so much more in the book, all of them richly written by the author, Cao Xueqin, who also came from a decayed noble family in the 1700s.
The heart and soul of The Story of the Stone is its well developed, vividly described characters, especially the young ladies and girls (with nobles, commoners, servants, slaves among them). Through his writing, Cao breathed life into his female characters with so much fondness, respect and sadness, giving them remarkable and different personalities. By the way, the author made it no secret that he spent more than 20 years to write The Story of the Stone in order to immortalize all the lovely, highly talented ladies he had met in his life. Although these female characters in the book, lovely that they certainly are, are not without flaws in personalities and behaviors, which makes them so much more realistic and believable.
There're a lot of joy and sadness; love and lust, dreams and reality, comedies as much as tragedies in the book. It can be read as a coming of age story whilst it can also be read as a fable or a myth with lot of insight about life and death, fate and emptiness, in between the events and human dramas.
Last but not least, The Story of the Stone is also filled with great poetry and awesome writing. Reading this book is the same like stepping into a carefully and masterfully crafted unique world, which allows us to have a look at the world of a bygone ancient China and know the people who resident in this unique world.
However, I am NOT saying it's a book for everyone. To many readers, the pace might appear to be too slow, and the naturism undertone means hardly anything and anyone in the book is plainly black and white, sometime the events become too complicated and too difficult to follow. I dare say many people would also think the main character, Jia Bao-yu (an anti-hero!?) is too passive and nothing-doing for a male lead. So I think it's all up to your own taste. ^_^;;;
Also, I must give thank to the translator for undertaking such a hard work, I can even imagine him vomiting blood while translating this masterpiece into English. What a task it must be!
May 18, 2023
Omg omg omg omg omg
I'm sorry, but I haven't been this excited by the first volume in a series for a long time. It is a testament to the addictive nature of this book that I simply had to begin with the second part. This is the first time I have ever read any work of Chinese literature and to be honest I was afraid that reading this would be a slog. I mean, 18th-century Chinese classics don't really sound like bedtime reading, you know?
I was, however, quite pleased to be proven wrong. The Golden Days often reads like a modern novel, like a cross between the Forsyte saga and Buddenbrooks, but with a huge twist. You know it's good news when family sagas depict servants and those on the fringes of society in great detail. Bonus points when a sizeable chunk deals with women who play significant roles. Perhaps one reason why the novel feels so modern is that apart from the lush descriptions (and ho boy, these easily rival Balzac), Xueqin provides a window into the innermost thoughts and feelings of his characters.
Does the work feel a bit bloated due to the sheer number of descriptions and meanderings? Yes. Does it add immeasurably to the pleasurable experience of reading? Also yes.
Spring griefs and autumn sorrows were by yourselves provoked.
Flower faces, moonlike beauty were to what end disclosed?
It's not all lush descriptions and pleasurable outings though. Family secrets, many unspeakable, cast their dark shadow. In fact, the Baroque motifs of memento mori and vanitas are omnipresent, not surprising in a tale of decadence and eventual ruin.
There is a dreamy, almost hypnotic feel to some of these chapters, which considering the fact that these pertained to supernatural yet plausible events, were all the more significant. I also appreciated the fact that Xueqin heavily foreshadows the fate of twelve important female characters through songs and riddles. As the story advances, it is enjoyable (and sometimes sorrowful) to recall them and correlate them.
I'm sorry, but I haven't been this excited by the first volume in a series for a long time. It is a testament to the addictive nature of this book that I simply had to begin with the second part. This is the first time I have ever read any work of Chinese literature and to be honest I was afraid that reading this would be a slog. I mean, 18th-century Chinese classics don't really sound like bedtime reading, you know?
I was, however, quite pleased to be proven wrong. The Golden Days often reads like a modern novel, like a cross between the Forsyte saga and Buddenbrooks, but with a huge twist. You know it's good news when family sagas depict servants and those on the fringes of society in great detail. Bonus points when a sizeable chunk deals with women who play significant roles. Perhaps one reason why the novel feels so modern is that apart from the lush descriptions (and ho boy, these easily rival Balzac), Xueqin provides a window into the innermost thoughts and feelings of his characters.
Does the work feel a bit bloated due to the sheer number of descriptions and meanderings? Yes. Does it add immeasurably to the pleasurable experience of reading? Also yes.
Spring griefs and autumn sorrows were by yourselves provoked.
Flower faces, moonlike beauty were to what end disclosed?
It's not all lush descriptions and pleasurable outings though. Family secrets, many unspeakable, cast their dark shadow. In fact, the Baroque motifs of memento mori and vanitas are omnipresent, not surprising in a tale of decadence and eventual ruin.
There is a dreamy, almost hypnotic feel to some of these chapters, which considering the fact that these pertained to supernatural yet plausible events, were all the more significant. I also appreciated the fact that Xueqin heavily foreshadows the fate of twelve important female characters through songs and riddles. As the story advances, it is enjoyable (and sometimes sorrowful) to recall them and correlate them.
October 4, 2020
Amazing and so different from anything I’ve read from western culture. Be prepared for a lot of etiquette, funerals, birthday celebrations and hosting important relatives and guests. A lot walking in the garden and creating poetry for everything in it. Also a lot minutiae and everyday life of this enormous family but with a lot of drama, betrayals and sex. The only problem is that there are 40 main characters with similar names. And I could recognise the principals but even by the end of the book there were lots of characters I needed to look up.
February 8, 2017
This book is first of a five volume English translation of a Chinese classic, Dream of the Red Chamber (a.k.a. The Story of the Stone) composed by Cao Xueqin. It generally considered as one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was written sometime in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty, and the setting of the story is early in the 18th century.
This book was selected by Great Books KC group as our exposure to non-western literature for the year 2016. At the time Dream of the Red Chamber was selected for our schedule we didn't realize how long the complete work is. The Story of the Stone (1973–1980), the first eighty chapters translated by Hawkes and last forty by John Minford, consists of five volumes and 2,339 pages of actual core text (not including Prefaces, Introductions and Appendices). Total page count is 2,572. Our group decided to limit our discussion to the first volume as a more manageable reading assignment. I have no intention of completing the other four volumes any time in the foreseeable future.
It's my understanding that the complete story is about the beginning grandeur and eventual decline of the aristocratic Jia family clan. As indicated by its title, The Golden Days, this first volume is focused on the beginning prosperous years. The book provides a detailed insight into wealthy Chinese cultural life of the time and the story's narrative includes frequent use of poetry.
But this novel lays out a sprawling story line with numerous characters with names impossible for western readers to remember or pronounce. This is combined with excruciating details which at times can be beautiful, but overall becomes a heavy forest of words for the reader to slog through. Frankly, I didn't appreciate the experience very much. If I feel this way after the first volume I hate to imagine how I would feel should I manage to complete all five volumes.
The following link lists four books that need to be read to understand modern day China:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/0...
This book was selected by Great Books KC group as our exposure to non-western literature for the year 2016. At the time Dream of the Red Chamber was selected for our schedule we didn't realize how long the complete work is. The Story of the Stone (1973–1980), the first eighty chapters translated by Hawkes and last forty by John Minford, consists of five volumes and 2,339 pages of actual core text (not including Prefaces, Introductions and Appendices). Total page count is 2,572. Our group decided to limit our discussion to the first volume as a more manageable reading assignment. I have no intention of completing the other four volumes any time in the foreseeable future.
It's my understanding that the complete story is about the beginning grandeur and eventual decline of the aristocratic Jia family clan. As indicated by its title, The Golden Days, this first volume is focused on the beginning prosperous years. The book provides a detailed insight into wealthy Chinese cultural life of the time and the story's narrative includes frequent use of poetry.
But this novel lays out a sprawling story line with numerous characters with names impossible for western readers to remember or pronounce. This is combined with excruciating details which at times can be beautiful, but overall becomes a heavy forest of words for the reader to slog through. Frankly, I didn't appreciate the experience very much. If I feel this way after the first volume I hate to imagine how I would feel should I manage to complete all five volumes.
The following link lists four books that need to be read to understand modern day China:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/0...
Read
April 20, 2021Will have more to say when I finish the series. I have been swapping off this translation with the Gladys Yang translation (apparently done while a political prisoner); this translation probably takes more liberties, but is more engaging for a Western reader.
This first book really is dreamlike in its blend of the fantastic and everyday life, verging on comedy of manners. Unlike any of the other Chinese classics I've read so far, this one focuses right in on women, including the servants. There is an enormous cast, and a great deal of description in huge wodges at times, and for a Western reader the pacing is like following a meandering river rather than Act One Rising Action, but perseverance pays off.
This first book really is dreamlike in its blend of the fantastic and everyday life, verging on comedy of manners. Unlike any of the other Chinese classics I've read so far, this one focuses right in on women, including the servants. There is an enormous cast, and a great deal of description in huge wodges at times, and for a Western reader the pacing is like following a meandering river rather than Act One Rising Action, but perseverance pays off.
January 11, 2019
If I'm going to evangelize about this then right away I want to break any notions about the accessibility of a single volume in an intimidatingly large novel. I notice the common experience with Proust is people reading the first volume without necessarily committing to the rest, and indeed it does provide a general sketch of the ideas that the subsequent volumes play with. I'd invite a similar treatment of this book. Roughly the first 150 pages of this volume give you a general albeit somewhat masked schema from which to understand the other five .
Chapter one establishes the mythic allegory behind the novel. A goddess makes the mistake of a single superfluous stone, meant for an edifice to hold up the sky, then becomes a blessed leftover, and this is our titular stone. Water drips off the stone, which nurtures and grows a beautiful flower. The Stone tells its story. We pass through the threshold to the Land of Illusion, where "Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true" and "Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real."
We then wake up in a realist novel, which already offers an interesting tension. The realism is a peculiar device because it means we're to take seriously a dream or illusion of ordinary people, and conversely the cosmic significance of what we ordinarily take to be mundane. Bao-yu is born with the jade stone in his mouth, and we start following him from adolescence. Chapter three has him meeting Dai-yu and he immediately gets upset, cursing the stone. Being born with the stone, he feels has given him an undue privilege which is wasted on him, who just wants to neglect work and read poetry. He's concerned particularly with the girls of the house who are are all uniquely interesting, intelligent, competent, and refined, yet will never garner the ounce of respect he gets for just having been born lucky.
In chapter five he falls asleep and has a dream of the Land of Illusion. The Fairy of Disenchantment leads him to a register, which in vague poetic form outlines all the fates of everyone he knows. She then tells a poem outlining the story in similar poetic detail. If it wasn't obvious, it is clear Bao-yu is the stone and Dai-yu the flower, and due to the centuries the stone spent watering the flower, the flower owes him a debt of tears. Furthermore, Disenchantment warns him about his lust. Lust, she says, is the fundament of relations no matter how understated the sexuality, and Bao-yu is particularly sensitive and susceptible. She warns him it's a destructive impulse in every form, when it's more vital he study and cultivate his virtue. To innoculate him against lust, in prime Ovidian fashion he has him learn sex. He wakes up with wet pants remembering nothing, but he instantly starts noticing his sexual chemistry with his maid Aroma.
Thus, the novel. In 150 pages we know to look for the relations of love and sexuality, of transcendence, of social roles and structures, of Family dynamics, of fate and karma, of the blurred lines of myth, fiction, and reality, of literature, of the notion of space, of the specific relations of very distinct characters, and the riddle of plot points which we're to see unfold over the next 2350 pages. You'd be forgiven if you miss that in the dreamlike presentation, but as you see you might very well read the bare minimum of this volume and still get a sense and appreciation of what it's doing. I mentioned I previously read excerpts, and even the parts which stuck strongly with me I managed to get new transformative revelations about on returning, and even further on contemplating.
If that's not already dense and incredible, this novel's place in Chinese literature only enhances it, and I must explain why the particular setting is important. Character since ancient times in China focuses on Exemplary Figures; the master historian Sima Qian's work is very biographical in nature, but only as far as the leaders and captains he describes are worthy of praise or blame. It's great men or bad men all the way down. The Analects is not Confucius's treatise, but rather the Teachings of Master Kong, even dedicating book 10 to show how the Great Person conducts himself in daily affairs. And as the literary tradition progressed there is still the notion of the exceptional person, from the great generals in Three Kingdoms, to the Handsome Monkey King of Journey to the West. The tradition was not devoid of nuance of course, but for the most part it was the exceptional people who get the character development.
The Peach Blossom Fan flattened it entirely. It strove to make a point about realistic affairs and the regimented structure of Chinese society in a way that all its characters were intentionally flat cliches which actively force out the artificiality of the drama, and thus the artificiality of what they represent. It shows the aspects of missing realistic character by burning all nuance and showing the puppets strings and pointing out the unreality.
Does that not strike a cord with the Land of Illusion mantra above? Cao Xueqin makes a similar point but instead by intuitively focusing on mundane matters and the forgotten sidelined people in a large aristocratic structure. Instead of the tragedy of PBF's non people working out artificial drama, The Dream of the Red Chamber has the tragedy of well thought out fleshed out individuals who nonetheless are forced by circumstance. He makes the point with the cosmic myth that there IS significance and necessity to what these seemingly inconsequential people do, and it has nothing to do with the illusory cultural structures which they find themselves needing to navigate. In a way this is an account of Exemplary Figures, but they're the ones nobody (except Bao-yu) sees as such.
I've so far only given a rough sketch, and it's increasingly clear why there is a literary field dedicated to this one novel. David Hawkes is a hero in how well this is rendered and reads in English, and this is indeed the edition to get. My hope in evangelizing even just this one part is partially to motivate an idea of just what people see in the story, and also with the hope that people actually don't stop at the first volume after having seen what's going on. Tricked you, but I'm playing a useful illusion here. Strong recommendation.
Chapter one establishes the mythic allegory behind the novel. A goddess makes the mistake of a single superfluous stone, meant for an edifice to hold up the sky, then becomes a blessed leftover, and this is our titular stone. Water drips off the stone, which nurtures and grows a beautiful flower. The Stone tells its story. We pass through the threshold to the Land of Illusion, where "Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true" and "Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real."
We then wake up in a realist novel, which already offers an interesting tension. The realism is a peculiar device because it means we're to take seriously a dream or illusion of ordinary people, and conversely the cosmic significance of what we ordinarily take to be mundane. Bao-yu is born with the jade stone in his mouth, and we start following him from adolescence. Chapter three has him meeting Dai-yu and he immediately gets upset, cursing the stone. Being born with the stone, he feels has given him an undue privilege which is wasted on him, who just wants to neglect work and read poetry. He's concerned particularly with the girls of the house who are are all uniquely interesting, intelligent, competent, and refined, yet will never garner the ounce of respect he gets for just having been born lucky.
In chapter five he falls asleep and has a dream of the Land of Illusion. The Fairy of Disenchantment leads him to a register, which in vague poetic form outlines all the fates of everyone he knows. She then tells a poem outlining the story in similar poetic detail. If it wasn't obvious, it is clear Bao-yu is the stone and Dai-yu the flower, and due to the centuries the stone spent watering the flower, the flower owes him a debt of tears. Furthermore, Disenchantment warns him about his lust. Lust, she says, is the fundament of relations no matter how understated the sexuality, and Bao-yu is particularly sensitive and susceptible. She warns him it's a destructive impulse in every form, when it's more vital he study and cultivate his virtue. To innoculate him against lust, in prime Ovidian fashion he has him learn sex. He wakes up with wet pants remembering nothing, but he instantly starts noticing his sexual chemistry with his maid Aroma.
Thus, the novel. In 150 pages we know to look for the relations of love and sexuality, of transcendence, of social roles and structures, of Family dynamics, of fate and karma, of the blurred lines of myth, fiction, and reality, of literature, of the notion of space, of the specific relations of very distinct characters, and the riddle of plot points which we're to see unfold over the next 2350 pages. You'd be forgiven if you miss that in the dreamlike presentation, but as you see you might very well read the bare minimum of this volume and still get a sense and appreciation of what it's doing. I mentioned I previously read excerpts, and even the parts which stuck strongly with me I managed to get new transformative revelations about on returning, and even further on contemplating.
If that's not already dense and incredible, this novel's place in Chinese literature only enhances it, and I must explain why the particular setting is important. Character since ancient times in China focuses on Exemplary Figures; the master historian Sima Qian's work is very biographical in nature, but only as far as the leaders and captains he describes are worthy of praise or blame. It's great men or bad men all the way down. The Analects is not Confucius's treatise, but rather the Teachings of Master Kong, even dedicating book 10 to show how the Great Person conducts himself in daily affairs. And as the literary tradition progressed there is still the notion of the exceptional person, from the great generals in Three Kingdoms, to the Handsome Monkey King of Journey to the West. The tradition was not devoid of nuance of course, but for the most part it was the exceptional people who get the character development.
The Peach Blossom Fan flattened it entirely. It strove to make a point about realistic affairs and the regimented structure of Chinese society in a way that all its characters were intentionally flat cliches which actively force out the artificiality of the drama, and thus the artificiality of what they represent. It shows the aspects of missing realistic character by burning all nuance and showing the puppets strings and pointing out the unreality.
Does that not strike a cord with the Land of Illusion mantra above? Cao Xueqin makes a similar point but instead by intuitively focusing on mundane matters and the forgotten sidelined people in a large aristocratic structure. Instead of the tragedy of PBF's non people working out artificial drama, The Dream of the Red Chamber has the tragedy of well thought out fleshed out individuals who nonetheless are forced by circumstance. He makes the point with the cosmic myth that there IS significance and necessity to what these seemingly inconsequential people do, and it has nothing to do with the illusory cultural structures which they find themselves needing to navigate. In a way this is an account of Exemplary Figures, but they're the ones nobody (except Bao-yu) sees as such.
I've so far only given a rough sketch, and it's increasingly clear why there is a literary field dedicated to this one novel. David Hawkes is a hero in how well this is rendered and reads in English, and this is indeed the edition to get. My hope in evangelizing even just this one part is partially to motivate an idea of just what people see in the story, and also with the hope that people actually don't stop at the first volume after having seen what's going on. Tricked you, but I'm playing a useful illusion here. Strong recommendation.
March 15, 2023
A Chinese classic novel with WOMEN!
There are four widely-recognized classic Chinese novels. Seriously, do a web search for "classic Chinese novels" and you will find dozens of pages referring to "The Four Classic Novels of Chinese Literature". (Wikipedia lists six on its Classic Chinese Novels page" -- these include the usual four, plus two others.) The phrase "Four classic Chinese novels" also appears frequently in commentary on Chinese literature. The four are
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Water Margin
Journey to the West
The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber
Red Chamber is distinctly different from the first three. It is the only one that feels (to me) like a modern novel. For instance, there are WOMEN! And they are not mere objects or cardboard cut-outs, but real, complex characters who carry the plot. Cao intended Red Chamber to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth. And there is a love story!
The protagonist, alas, is not a woman, but a young man, Jia Baoyu, probably somewhat autobiographical. Jia Baoyu belongs to a prominent family, now waning in importance. (Thus, Red Chamber is a sort of Chinese Buddenbrooks, although, given the dates, it would be more fair to say that Buddenbrooks is a sort of German Red Chamber.) The rise and fall of the Jia family forms one of the two main plot threads. The other is Jia Baoyu's love story -- a triangle of him and his two cousins, Lin Daiyu, his soulmate (a term I use intentionally), and Xue Baochai, the cousin whom he is expected to marry. Lin Daiyu is impulsive and artistic -- Xue Baochai is wise and more controlled. Despite the complex romantic entanglements, the three are all friends and admire each other.
In my memory the books consist largely of Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai wandering around the Jia family's big garden, committing acts of artistry at each other. Most of this, alas, flew miles over my head -- I do not have the knowledge or talent to appreciate classic Chinese music, poetry, or graphic arts. (I suspect it is not entirely my fault -- these passages had all the earmarks of something untranslatable.)
Authorship is complicated -- although Red Chamber is attributed to Cao Xueqin, he only finished the first 80 chapters during his lifetime. The current "complete" versions are 120 chapters long, the last 40 having been added by the publishers of the first printed version, Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan, supposedly based on Cao's manuscripts. It's a huge and very complicated story.
It is great literature, but you should be aware going in that reading Red Chamber is a major project, especially in translation.
Blog review.
There are four widely-recognized classic Chinese novels. Seriously, do a web search for "classic Chinese novels" and you will find dozens of pages referring to "The Four Classic Novels of Chinese Literature". (Wikipedia lists six on its Classic Chinese Novels page" -- these include the usual four, plus two others.) The phrase "Four classic Chinese novels" also appears frequently in commentary on Chinese literature. The four are
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Water Margin
Journey to the West
The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber
Red Chamber is distinctly different from the first three. It is the only one that feels (to me) like a modern novel. For instance, there are WOMEN! And they are not mere objects or cardboard cut-outs, but real, complex characters who carry the plot. Cao intended Red Chamber to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth. And there is a love story!
The protagonist, alas, is not a woman, but a young man, Jia Baoyu, probably somewhat autobiographical. Jia Baoyu belongs to a prominent family, now waning in importance. (Thus, Red Chamber is a sort of Chinese Buddenbrooks, although, given the dates, it would be more fair to say that Buddenbrooks is a sort of German Red Chamber.) The rise and fall of the Jia family forms one of the two main plot threads. The other is Jia Baoyu's love story -- a triangle of him and his two cousins, Lin Daiyu, his soulmate (a term I use intentionally), and Xue Baochai, the cousin whom he is expected to marry. Lin Daiyu is impulsive and artistic -- Xue Baochai is wise and more controlled. Despite the complex romantic entanglements, the three are all friends and admire each other.
In my memory the books consist largely of Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai wandering around the Jia family's big garden, committing acts of artistry at each other. Most of this, alas, flew miles over my head -- I do not have the knowledge or talent to appreciate classic Chinese music, poetry, or graphic arts. (I suspect it is not entirely my fault -- these passages had all the earmarks of something untranslatable.)
Authorship is complicated -- although Red Chamber is attributed to Cao Xueqin, he only finished the first 80 chapters during his lifetime. The current "complete" versions are 120 chapters long, the last 40 having been added by the publishers of the first printed version, Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan, supposedly based on Cao's manuscripts. It's a huge and very complicated story.
It is great literature, but you should be aware going in that reading Red Chamber is a major project, especially in translation.
Blog review.
February 11, 2011
So, how can one give one of the world's greatest classics only four stars? The more I have read this novel over the years, the more I have come to have reservations about David Hawkes' translation. There is no doubt that his English is exceedingly rich, well-suited to capture the richness of the original Chinese. But Hawkes has a way of over-translating, particularly at critical points. For example, when one of the servant's describes Xi-feng (Phoenix) as 臉酸心硬 "sour-faced and hard-hearted," Hawkes says "a sour-faced, hard-hearted bitch" (p271). This adds a slight sexual innuendo that is not only absent in the original but is quite inappropriate, at least when applied to Xi-feng. Often Hawkes additions, like this one, change the tone of the original or even disambiguate it in ways that are not justified. Now, this is only the first volume of a five-volume novel. I have read and taught all five volumes of the Hawkes/Minford volume before, but I think this time, in my more leisurely reading, I will turn to the newly reprinted Bencroft Joly translation, which seems a more literal translation of the original than Hawkes much-praised volumes.
January 15, 2014
Amazingly engrossing book/volume. The semi-autobiographical story of an upper class family in 1700's Qing China. The list of characters reaches War and Peace proportions.
November 5, 2014
Not quite like anything I've ever read before, and I'm not sure what to make of it, or whether or not to say I "liked" it. Something like 3 stars for enjoyment, bumped up to four for novelty and for my curiosity about where this is all going. In any case, I'll definitely be continuing to the second volume (of five).
The Story of the Stone, more commonly (I think?) known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, is one of the "four great classical novels" of Chinese literature, and often said to be the greatest of the four. Sometime last year I become curious about Chinese literature, about which I knew nothing at all, and figured this would be as good a place to start as any.
I feel a bit hesitant about focusing in this review on how unusual this novel is to someone not familiar with Chinese literature. I don't want to overstate its distance from "Western literature" -- which after all is a giant category that includes many disparate and odd things -- or present it merely as some sort of exotic curiosity to be gawked at rather than a work to be judged on its merits like any other. However, having read only a small part of the whole work at this point, I don't really feel qualified to judge it or even say much about its artistic qualities at all. All I have are some preliminary impressions that amount to, "well, that was different." So here we go.
The two main things that struck me as "odd" or "different" about this book were the tone and the narrative structure. The tone is a mixture I haven't encountered before. On the one hand, much of the story is lighthearted and whimsical in a way that reminds me of nothing more than Western children's literature. This feeling is bolstered by the fact that the central characters are young adolescents, and that the protagonist, Bao-Yu, is cosmically "special" (being the incarnation of a magic piece of jade) in the way many children's fantasy protagonists are. The young characters are depicted as realistically childish, and there is a great deal of teasing, awkward juvenile flirtation, and the like, none of which would be out of place in, say, one of the earlier Harry Potter books.
However, the story as a whole is emphatically not a "children's story" -- there are intermittent bursts of shocking violence, morbid cruelty, explicit sexuality (among the older characters), and so forth. As well, the childish antics take place within a large aristocratic clan and a great number of pages are given over to the day-to-day business, minor power struggles, and the like that take place among the older family members and among the numerous servants.
So if I could try to describe the overall "feel" of the book by comparison to Western literature, the closest thing I could come up with is something like "a cross between one of the first few Harry Potter books and some 19th-century chronicle of an aristocratic family, with recurring flashes of gothic horror and metafiction." Though even that isn't really very accurate.
As for the structure, it's highly episodic and lacks a "through-line" of narrative tension. Highly tense or dangerous situations arise quite suddenly from time to time, but are typically resolved within the same chapter that introduces them (or, if not, in the following chapter), and tend to make few obvious marks on the story as a whole. Many chapters have nearly no tension and simply recount some episode of minor clan politics (among the adult or servant characters) or juvenile antics (among the child characters). Most of this is pleasant, in a low-key way, but creates little feeling that the story is "going somewhere" or building progressively, which is odd in conjunction with the portentous way it begins (Bao-Yu is incarnated from a magic piece of jade, and one expects his life to be somehow special or unique in consequence).
Much as it contains many discrete episodes whose significance to the whole is not always made clear to the reader, the book also contains a very large number of characters (hundreds, I think), and it makes little effort to indicate directly which of these characters are most central or important. As a result, it was quite difficult to get my bearings in the early chapters, as I was confronted with a flurry of names, some of which recurred from chapter to chapter and some of which didn't. (Of course it was harder to keep track of the characters because I'm not used to Chinese names; what's more, many of the characters are related and have the same family names. Thankfully, this edition has an appendix of characters.) After a while, it became clear that certain people were major characters and I began to recognize them as distinct entities, but it took a few hundred pages for me to really feel comfortable, and even after 500 pages I still resigned myself to thinking "who's (s)he? oh well, probably doesn't matter" pretty frequently.
The characterization even of the main characters takes place in this distinctive atmosphere, one in which scores of people continually disappear and reappear from view and the reader is expected to cheerfully keep track of it all as though every one were a dear friend. The relationships between Bao-Yu and various other characters, for instance, are rarely "introduced" to the reader in a distinct way, but instead become gradually apparent as one watches him interact with people he has already formed pre-existing ties to. There is a constant feeling of coming into something complicated in medias res and trying to get a sense of it without clear signposts.
The back cover of my edition, for instance, informs me that the story centers around a sort of love triangle between Bao-Yu and two other characters, Dai-Yu and Bao-Chai. But this is not introduced to the reader in a set of clear-cut dramatic set-pieces; instead these three characters appear incidentally in various episodes, sometimes individually, sometimes apart, and if their relations to one another are especially important, it is left for the reader to "pick up" on this signal coursing through a much larger sea of (realistically?) profuse details. It wasn't until the last third of this volume, for instance, that I had any sense of Dai-Yu's personality -- Dai-Yu being, like all the other characters, a figure who pops up from time to time rather than a player in some consistent, progressively developed dramatic narrative -- and Bao-Chai is still largely a mystery to me (I hope and expect she will be more thoroughly characterized in later volumes).
Much of what I've said may just reflect the fact that I have only read a small part of a larger whole. It's possible, for instance, that the "dramatic through-line" I found lacking simply hasn't developed yet. But it nonetheless seems significant that such a through-line hasn't emerged in 500 pages of incident. All in all, I'm not sure how I feel about this style of storytelling, or about the book as a whole, and am hesitant to say any more until I've read further. But my curiosity is piqued, though I'm not sure how much of that is due to Xueqin's skill and how much of it is due to the simple novelty of such an unfamiliar literary form.
(As always with translations, I also wonder what I'm missing by not reading it in the original. David Hawkes' translation is apparently well thought of, and it reads pleasantly and maintains a impish, whimsical tone [which I imagine is consistent with the original?], but it's rarely excellent, as opposed to merely serviceable, by the standards of English prose.)
The Story of the Stone, more commonly (I think?) known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, is one of the "four great classical novels" of Chinese literature, and often said to be the greatest of the four. Sometime last year I become curious about Chinese literature, about which I knew nothing at all, and figured this would be as good a place to start as any.
I feel a bit hesitant about focusing in this review on how unusual this novel is to someone not familiar with Chinese literature. I don't want to overstate its distance from "Western literature" -- which after all is a giant category that includes many disparate and odd things -- or present it merely as some sort of exotic curiosity to be gawked at rather than a work to be judged on its merits like any other. However, having read only a small part of the whole work at this point, I don't really feel qualified to judge it or even say much about its artistic qualities at all. All I have are some preliminary impressions that amount to, "well, that was different." So here we go.
The two main things that struck me as "odd" or "different" about this book were the tone and the narrative structure. The tone is a mixture I haven't encountered before. On the one hand, much of the story is lighthearted and whimsical in a way that reminds me of nothing more than Western children's literature. This feeling is bolstered by the fact that the central characters are young adolescents, and that the protagonist, Bao-Yu, is cosmically "special" (being the incarnation of a magic piece of jade) in the way many children's fantasy protagonists are. The young characters are depicted as realistically childish, and there is a great deal of teasing, awkward juvenile flirtation, and the like, none of which would be out of place in, say, one of the earlier Harry Potter books.
However, the story as a whole is emphatically not a "children's story" -- there are intermittent bursts of shocking violence, morbid cruelty, explicit sexuality (among the older characters), and so forth. As well, the childish antics take place within a large aristocratic clan and a great number of pages are given over to the day-to-day business, minor power struggles, and the like that take place among the older family members and among the numerous servants.
So if I could try to describe the overall "feel" of the book by comparison to Western literature, the closest thing I could come up with is something like "a cross between one of the first few Harry Potter books and some 19th-century chronicle of an aristocratic family, with recurring flashes of gothic horror and metafiction." Though even that isn't really very accurate.
As for the structure, it's highly episodic and lacks a "through-line" of narrative tension. Highly tense or dangerous situations arise quite suddenly from time to time, but are typically resolved within the same chapter that introduces them (or, if not, in the following chapter), and tend to make few obvious marks on the story as a whole. Many chapters have nearly no tension and simply recount some episode of minor clan politics (among the adult or servant characters) or juvenile antics (among the child characters). Most of this is pleasant, in a low-key way, but creates little feeling that the story is "going somewhere" or building progressively, which is odd in conjunction with the portentous way it begins (Bao-Yu is incarnated from a magic piece of jade, and one expects his life to be somehow special or unique in consequence).
Much as it contains many discrete episodes whose significance to the whole is not always made clear to the reader, the book also contains a very large number of characters (hundreds, I think), and it makes little effort to indicate directly which of these characters are most central or important. As a result, it was quite difficult to get my bearings in the early chapters, as I was confronted with a flurry of names, some of which recurred from chapter to chapter and some of which didn't. (Of course it was harder to keep track of the characters because I'm not used to Chinese names; what's more, many of the characters are related and have the same family names. Thankfully, this edition has an appendix of characters.) After a while, it became clear that certain people were major characters and I began to recognize them as distinct entities, but it took a few hundred pages for me to really feel comfortable, and even after 500 pages I still resigned myself to thinking "who's (s)he? oh well, probably doesn't matter" pretty frequently.
The characterization even of the main characters takes place in this distinctive atmosphere, one in which scores of people continually disappear and reappear from view and the reader is expected to cheerfully keep track of it all as though every one were a dear friend. The relationships between Bao-Yu and various other characters, for instance, are rarely "introduced" to the reader in a distinct way, but instead become gradually apparent as one watches him interact with people he has already formed pre-existing ties to. There is a constant feeling of coming into something complicated in medias res and trying to get a sense of it without clear signposts.
The back cover of my edition, for instance, informs me that the story centers around a sort of love triangle between Bao-Yu and two other characters, Dai-Yu and Bao-Chai. But this is not introduced to the reader in a set of clear-cut dramatic set-pieces; instead these three characters appear incidentally in various episodes, sometimes individually, sometimes apart, and if their relations to one another are especially important, it is left for the reader to "pick up" on this signal coursing through a much larger sea of (realistically?) profuse details. It wasn't until the last third of this volume, for instance, that I had any sense of Dai-Yu's personality -- Dai-Yu being, like all the other characters, a figure who pops up from time to time rather than a player in some consistent, progressively developed dramatic narrative -- and Bao-Chai is still largely a mystery to me (I hope and expect she will be more thoroughly characterized in later volumes).
Much of what I've said may just reflect the fact that I have only read a small part of a larger whole. It's possible, for instance, that the "dramatic through-line" I found lacking simply hasn't developed yet. But it nonetheless seems significant that such a through-line hasn't emerged in 500 pages of incident. All in all, I'm not sure how I feel about this style of storytelling, or about the book as a whole, and am hesitant to say any more until I've read further. But my curiosity is piqued, though I'm not sure how much of that is due to Xueqin's skill and how much of it is due to the simple novelty of such an unfamiliar literary form.
(As always with translations, I also wonder what I'm missing by not reading it in the original. David Hawkes' translation is apparently well thought of, and it reads pleasantly and maintains a impish, whimsical tone [which I imagine is consistent with the original?], but it's rarely excellent, as opposed to merely serviceable, by the standards of English prose.)
December 13, 2012
紅樓夢 is my favorite novel, one of the reasons I'm learning Chinese is so that I can read it in the original. This translation however is not my favorite. The translator does some annoying things, writing for an audience that doesn't know Chinese culture he tends to remove or change a lot of the cultural references, which I find really annoying. One of the things I liked about the Yangs translation so much when I read this book the first time was all the things I learned about Chinese culture and history. Here Hawkes takes English or Japanese words and uses them a little too liberally, "The Lord" and "Yama" being two examples that spring to mind right away. He also makes the poetry rhyme, and it virtually becomes unreadable. What I can say for this book is that he does stick quite closely to the original text. Having read passages from this volume, I had no trouble locating and reading the passages in my Chinese edition. Vol. 1 contains the background of the stone, the Taoist and Buddhist monk, the building of the garden, Granny Liu's first visit, BaoYu and Xifeng being possessed by demon's and going insane, the cute gay boys at school, dreams set in the world of the immortals, and a lot of Xifeng being very capable.
March 10, 2021
'The Golden Days' is an excellent escapist novel (well, volume of a novel) for lockdown times. The combination of 18th century Chinese historical detail and interpersonal melodrama is beguiling. I was particularly fascinated by all the lavish descriptions of clothing, jewellery, and furnishings. The narrative orbits around Bao-yu, a privileged teenage boy, while encompassing the sprawling household he lives in, and beyond. At one point, Cao Xuequin interjects an editorial comment to the effect that in a community of three hundred people there's bound to always be drama happening somewhere. The story flows along as a series of domestic incidents large and small, from minor arguments to grand funerals and a visit from Bao-yu's sister Yuan-Chun, who is the emperor's concubine. Her visit, after years away from her family, occasions an extraordinary amount of preparation, including the construction of an entire new complex of buildings and gardens. Everyone is involved in the preparations, as everything must be perfect. After anticipation has reached a fever pitch, Yuan-Chun has ceremoniously arrived, and formal bows and speeches have taken place, she finally sees her brother: "What a lot you have grown-!" she began. But the rest was drowned in a flood of tears.' The emotion of her reunion with family is all the more touching for the lengthy build up involved.
Indeed, there is a great deal of intense emotion throughout the novel. Bao-yu, his relatives, friends, maids, and acquaintances are all evoked vividly. The reader is given glimpses of more minor characters' feelings, but pays the greatest attention to Bao-yu and his female cousins, especially Dai-yu. They all live in close proximity, together with Bao-yu's grandmother, and are constantly dropping in on each other to chat and bicker. Women run the household, predominantly the intimidatingly well-organised Xi-feng. The family dynamics are exceedingly complex and carefully built up via many small interactions. In addition, I found 'The Golden Days' much racier than I expected. Bao-yu experiences his sexual awakening via a dream about fairies; another character is gruesomely yet appositely punished for lecherous behaviour. Male bisexuality appears unremarkable, although liaisons between boys at the household school provoke jealousy and fights.
I found the translation lyrical and readable, although David Hawkes admits that it cannot capture all the imagery of the original. He attempted to translate all the puns, though. Poetry is scattered throughout, often composed by young characters as part of their education. The dialogue is witty and informal, as it largely takes place within the household. The Penguin edition also includes a Hawkes' introduction from 1973, elucidating the authorship, history, and structure of 'The Story of the Stone' as a whole. Given that nearly 50 years have passed, I assume that more may be known (or at least hypothesised) about Cao Xuequin. It's a very interesting introduction nonetheless, and for once I recommend reading it before the novel itself. I'm glad I did so, as it provides useful historical context for uninformed readers like me rather than discussion of plot or characters. I found the time spent amid 18th century Chinese domesticity delightful and will definitely look for a copy of volume 2, The Crab-Flower Club.
Indeed, there is a great deal of intense emotion throughout the novel. Bao-yu, his relatives, friends, maids, and acquaintances are all evoked vividly. The reader is given glimpses of more minor characters' feelings, but pays the greatest attention to Bao-yu and his female cousins, especially Dai-yu. They all live in close proximity, together with Bao-yu's grandmother, and are constantly dropping in on each other to chat and bicker. Women run the household, predominantly the intimidatingly well-organised Xi-feng. The family dynamics are exceedingly complex and carefully built up via many small interactions. In addition, I found 'The Golden Days' much racier than I expected. Bao-yu experiences his sexual awakening via a dream about fairies; another character is gruesomely yet appositely punished for lecherous behaviour. Male bisexuality appears unremarkable, although liaisons between boys at the household school provoke jealousy and fights.
I found the translation lyrical and readable, although David Hawkes admits that it cannot capture all the imagery of the original. He attempted to translate all the puns, though. Poetry is scattered throughout, often composed by young characters as part of their education. The dialogue is witty and informal, as it largely takes place within the household. The Penguin edition also includes a Hawkes' introduction from 1973, elucidating the authorship, history, and structure of 'The Story of the Stone' as a whole. Given that nearly 50 years have passed, I assume that more may be known (or at least hypothesised) about Cao Xuequin. It's a very interesting introduction nonetheless, and for once I recommend reading it before the novel itself. I'm glad I did so, as it provides useful historical context for uninformed readers like me rather than discussion of plot or characters. I found the time spent amid 18th century Chinese domesticity delightful and will definitely look for a copy of volume 2, The Crab-Flower Club.
November 5, 2020
P.S. Looks like GRAmazon censored this review for my inclusion of one of the edition's quotes. Don't you want readers to know what they're getting into?
Coming into this work requires patience, as a near 50 page introduction, customary in such texts, combined with near as long a setting up of the story's background means the three main named characters show up literal generations after the narrative's first beginning. Eventually, after rises and falls and favors given and reimbursed, we have a boy and two girls running (and crying) around the premises of their obscenely wealthy family estate, accompanied by all sorts of servants, uncles, "aunts" (sometimes true, sometimes concubine), and extraneous hanger ons seeking to siphon off some of the wealth for themselves. Main events include murder over an as of yet unrevealed noblewoman kidnapped as a child and sold as a slave, the visitation of a different, more household daughter lately elevated to the status of Imperial Concubine and all the ensuing architectural necessity of splendor, school and its rivalries both petty and otherwise in the not too straight hotbed of single gender classes, sex among adults as well as teens and borderline children (legal being barely a gleam in anyone's eye, judging by Delaware's contemporaneous age of consent set at seven), edible delicacies, cultural refinements, objects of crafted elegance and unspeakable cost, and events both heavenly and mortal flowing through a royalty blessed household already hinting at the disaster to come. A number of named characters have already died during the initial stage of bloom, and there's no telling who else, despite all hints to the seeming contrary, will fall in the succeeding volumes.
2019 could very well be a year where I do nothing but work and school assignments with the odd out of town familial visit, hopefully less odd internship/work experience opportunity, and more dependent on luck odd date. Whatever happens, I'll have the next four volumes of this by my side part way through, and thus far, I'm engaged, leastwise on the level of fascination with a landscape foreign in both space and time. Time itself will tell whether the author becomes less admirably realistic in his painting of human relations or whether the story will become increasingly bogged down by intrigue and cultural rituals, but so far, I"m willing to at least pick up the next volume once 2019 starts. It will be interesting to delve into something of such wide yet esoteric (in the Anglo side of things at any rate), and I will admit, the reading credit accumulated by the end won't be too shabby either.
'Whether we fuck arseholes or not,' he said, 'what fucking business is it of yours? You should be bloody grateful we haven't fucked your dad. Come outside and fight it out with me, if you've got any spunk in you!'So begins my five volume, 2200 page plus excursion into a scene more modern than Journey to the West and less so than A Search for Lost Time. Thus far, loads of characters, myriad customs, and both a subtlety and a frankness surprising in some respects: Xueqin was forbidden from speaking of an affair (or perhaps an assault) between a wife and her father in law, and thus couched her death in far less accurate, if sensational, terms of a suicide via hanging, but buggering, both gay and bisexual ranges from being barely veiled to outright boasted of, as displayed by the excerpt above. All in all, while I'm more engaged in the end due to not drowning so much in names and descriptions, I'm in this more for the knowledge of the broad range of themes on display, replete with the burgeoning familiarity of poetic inventions, political machinations, and heavenly doctrine showing up in timely moments to to give the story an almost foreordained structure, complete with interference by holy monks and demons from hell. Thus far, our "hero" wafts complacently over many a female cousin and less passively in interactions with everyone else, especially a spiteful father, and despite hints given in combination of text and end note explanations, it's rather unclear what will happen next.
Coming into this work requires patience, as a near 50 page introduction, customary in such texts, combined with near as long a setting up of the story's background means the three main named characters show up literal generations after the narrative's first beginning. Eventually, after rises and falls and favors given and reimbursed, we have a boy and two girls running (and crying) around the premises of their obscenely wealthy family estate, accompanied by all sorts of servants, uncles, "aunts" (sometimes true, sometimes concubine), and extraneous hanger ons seeking to siphon off some of the wealth for themselves. Main events include murder over an as of yet unrevealed noblewoman kidnapped as a child and sold as a slave, the visitation of a different, more household daughter lately elevated to the status of Imperial Concubine and all the ensuing architectural necessity of splendor, school and its rivalries both petty and otherwise in the not too straight hotbed of single gender classes, sex among adults as well as teens and borderline children (legal being barely a gleam in anyone's eye, judging by Delaware's contemporaneous age of consent set at seven), edible delicacies, cultural refinements, objects of crafted elegance and unspeakable cost, and events both heavenly and mortal flowing through a royalty blessed household already hinting at the disaster to come. A number of named characters have already died during the initial stage of bloom, and there's no telling who else, despite all hints to the seeming contrary, will fall in the succeeding volumes.
2019 could very well be a year where I do nothing but work and school assignments with the odd out of town familial visit, hopefully less odd internship/work experience opportunity, and more dependent on luck odd date. Whatever happens, I'll have the next four volumes of this by my side part way through, and thus far, I'm engaged, leastwise on the level of fascination with a landscape foreign in both space and time. Time itself will tell whether the author becomes less admirably realistic in his painting of human relations or whether the story will become increasingly bogged down by intrigue and cultural rituals, but so far, I"m willing to at least pick up the next volume once 2019 starts. It will be interesting to delve into something of such wide yet esoteric (in the Anglo side of things at any rate), and I will admit, the reading credit accumulated by the end won't be too shabby either.
June 22, 2020
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Stone
it has a mythic quality to it where the spiritual and everyday physical world permeate each other's borders
the "stone" in this title is actually the structural frame of the story... and the book takes a while to actually get started because it takes so long with this framing device. but whereas some may be frustrated with this, i found the framing to be very interesting, especially since it was written so long ago, that this level of a story within a story and intricate device is quite inventive even by today's standards
i love that even the smaller characters like the maids have their own lives here, and often the story would veer so that it focuses on some super minor character
i do feel like there are a lot of scenes that are just about logistics though, which I did not enjoy, i.e. how a certain character found themselves in the company of another character instead of just starting in media res
it is alluded to the fact that the real world is a dream, an illusion, and perhaps the spiritual world is the real one
episodic, almost plotless, court intrigue, seemingly inconsequential although there are some stories here that touch on class and society that are more important than they seem
lots of foreshadowing of a future downfall of this family
lots of rowdy humor in here as well
some really boring repetitive sections like the naming of the places chapter (bao-yu, his father, and a bunch of scholars walk around thinking of names for different places in the palace in preparation for a visit by his royal-concubine sister, bao yu comes up with names that all the others praise, but his father insults it, this happens over and over and over again for each place)
if i had to compare it to anything western, i'd say proust, just because the story of bao-yu as a child surrounded by luxuries and women seems to remind me of proust's protagonist and how coddled he was, and also both are concerned with society in a similar way, and both are concerned with memory, of some idyllic past time, but of course the two are super different as well
because of its plotless nature, i don't really feel like i HAVE to read on in order to have "gotten" something from this novel, I could stop here and I just may, it was enjoyable throughout (except for some specific parts that I already mentioned) not that continuing won't have its rewards as well, I just might need a break from this world now
there are soooo many characters, it's hard to keep straight, and sometimes their names are so similar
the translation is excellent, though i'm surely missing many references, but what does come through is the tone and the feeling of it, the rhythms of speech and the characters are all very alive, even though it was written in 18th century china
it has a mythic quality to it where the spiritual and everyday physical world permeate each other's borders
the "stone" in this title is actually the structural frame of the story... and the book takes a while to actually get started because it takes so long with this framing device. but whereas some may be frustrated with this, i found the framing to be very interesting, especially since it was written so long ago, that this level of a story within a story and intricate device is quite inventive even by today's standards
i love that even the smaller characters like the maids have their own lives here, and often the story would veer so that it focuses on some super minor character
i do feel like there are a lot of scenes that are just about logistics though, which I did not enjoy, i.e. how a certain character found themselves in the company of another character instead of just starting in media res
it is alluded to the fact that the real world is a dream, an illusion, and perhaps the spiritual world is the real one
episodic, almost plotless, court intrigue, seemingly inconsequential although there are some stories here that touch on class and society that are more important than they seem
lots of foreshadowing of a future downfall of this family
lots of rowdy humor in here as well
some really boring repetitive sections like the naming of the places chapter (bao-yu, his father, and a bunch of scholars walk around thinking of names for different places in the palace in preparation for a visit by his royal-concubine sister, bao yu comes up with names that all the others praise, but his father insults it, this happens over and over and over again for each place)
if i had to compare it to anything western, i'd say proust, just because the story of bao-yu as a child surrounded by luxuries and women seems to remind me of proust's protagonist and how coddled he was, and also both are concerned with society in a similar way, and both are concerned with memory, of some idyllic past time, but of course the two are super different as well
because of its plotless nature, i don't really feel like i HAVE to read on in order to have "gotten" something from this novel, I could stop here and I just may, it was enjoyable throughout (except for some specific parts that I already mentioned) not that continuing won't have its rewards as well, I just might need a break from this world now
there are soooo many characters, it's hard to keep straight, and sometimes their names are so similar
the translation is excellent, though i'm surely missing many references, but what does come through is the tone and the feeling of it, the rhythms of speech and the characters are all very alive, even though it was written in 18th century china
July 27, 2022
Been on a quest to read the Four Great Classics of Chinese literature and this is one of them. This was unexpectedly more engaging than I thought it would be, but in a very gossipy sort of way. I'm always struggling to figure out how old these characters are because they seem plenty young to be having so much ummm... activity.
Some parts of these were really engrossing, but some parts seemed really long and irrelevant. I was a little surprised at how much homoeroticism there was in this book. One would associate 1700s China with homophobia but apparently that was not the case. At least the men in this book seemed to have no qualms about having sex with male or female partners, and it wasn't remarked as unusual at all for boys and men to form close bonds with other males, whether it's based on physical attraction or an emotional affinity.
There're a whole ton of female characters in this book and while it's far from being feminist, the girls and women in this book are also not entirely passive. They have desires, they have agency, and they aren't afraid to use whatever position and power they may have in this patriarchal society. Dai-yu remains my favourite character so far, although it's not saying much since all the characters are not as fully fleshed out as I am used to.
This is only just Volume 1 out of 5 so it all feels like a lot of set-up for other things to happen. A longer and fuller review will follow when I'm done with the entire series.
Some parts of these were really engrossing, but some parts seemed really long and irrelevant. I was a little surprised at how much homoeroticism there was in this book. One would associate 1700s China with homophobia but apparently that was not the case. At least the men in this book seemed to have no qualms about having sex with male or female partners, and it wasn't remarked as unusual at all for boys and men to form close bonds with other males, whether it's based on physical attraction or an emotional affinity.
There're a whole ton of female characters in this book and while it's far from being feminist, the girls and women in this book are also not entirely passive. They have desires, they have agency, and they aren't afraid to use whatever position and power they may have in this patriarchal society. Dai-yu remains my favourite character so far, although it's not saying much since all the characters are not as fully fleshed out as I am used to.
This is only just Volume 1 out of 5 so it all feels like a lot of set-up for other things to happen. A longer and fuller review will follow when I'm done with the entire series.
December 30, 2017
A global classic so irrepressibly dull that I couldn't make it halfway through, which rarely happens. I wanted to give it a go since pretty much everyone in the universe seems to love it. I wonder, though, if they actually finished reading it since reviews don't seem very enlightening, more impressionistic. My main home-slice Lu Xun loved this book, so I feel doubly awful about not liking it (frankly, his opinion means more to me than yours), but, honestly, it's terrible. I can't decide if it is merely a poor translation or if the utterly dull meanderings in and out of the various humdrum and yawn-inducing social nuances of a wealthy Chinese family are just wildly and fascinatingly uninteresting. Maybe both.
There are some fascinating little bits. Stylistically, I love the intrusion of poetics into the text (which also might read differently in the original), I love all the funny little songs that Disenchantment shows Bao-yu, and there is a quirky kind of supernatural charm that feels as if certain chapters dealing with the surreal and fairylike qualities of the world were lifted from an entirely different book and plopped down in this boring mass.
Often compared to Proust, I can't see it. I devoured "La Recherche" recently for the second time and couldn't put it down. Not enough to love here, though.
There are some fascinating little bits. Stylistically, I love the intrusion of poetics into the text (which also might read differently in the original), I love all the funny little songs that Disenchantment shows Bao-yu, and there is a quirky kind of supernatural charm that feels as if certain chapters dealing with the surreal and fairylike qualities of the world were lifted from an entirely different book and plopped down in this boring mass.
Often compared to Proust, I can't see it. I devoured "La Recherche" recently for the second time and couldn't put it down. Not enough to love here, though.
August 18, 2015
Having finished this first volume of The Story of the Stone, I'm doubtful that I'll continue on through the rest of this Dream of Red Mansions. It's a great book for getting a feeling of what aristocratic life consisted of in China during the Qing dynasty, and it certainly has many features that distinguish it from similar western fare likewise concerning the aristocracy, but unfortunately these intriguing facets of the book serve no larger narrative purpose, nor do they aid in an exploration of the characters. Perhaps reading all five volumes would reveal an overarching story, but the fact that these first 500 pages didn't make me invest in any of the characters, lacked any dramatic tension, and featured sluggish momentum means that I'm disinclined to slog through another 2,000 pages.
The first few pages of The Golden Days depict a magical stone being given the chance to live a human life by a Buddhist and a Taoist monk. The narrative never returns to that framing story in this volume, though the two monks have a brief cameo near the end of the volume. The rest of the book concerns two aristocratic families, and the text largely consists of whatever happens to occur to either of those two families. Illnesses, loaning money, deaths, construction projects, birthdays, and whatever else is going on in their lives makes up the majority of the activity in this book. As previously mentioned, these events are almost completely void of any dramatic tension, as the characters are the wealthy who have few problems to begin with, and the writing style makes the narrative feel detached from the characters. Even when something apparently important happens, like when a prank indirectly leads to a man dying in "a large, wet, icy patch of recently ejaculated semen" the narrative doesn't ascribe much significance to it. The woman who played a key role in the prank goes on to do some event planning three pages later and the deceased is never mentioned again. Don't go into this book expecting any psychological exploration of the characters. One event flows into the next, and by the end of the volume nothing much seems to have happened and no one seems to have changed.
This style of book can work, as demonstrated by Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but while that work and this one both have the same meandering style of narrative, The Story of the Stone lacks the distinctive voice Proust gives to his narrator, and it likewise lacks the sublime writing that made Proust the finest prose stylist to ever put pen to paper. Without either of those qualities, The Golden Age left me bored far more often than engaged, something that certainly could not be said of Proust.
Instead of the characters or events depicted, the things that I will likely remember from this book are the features you are unlikely to find in western novels. The Story of the Stone frequently inserts snippets of poetry into the narrative to describe a person or scene, and there are numerous poetry contests throughout the text. Furthermore the book spends a significant amount of time discussing matters that would be glossed over in a western story, like characters talking about medical treatments and medicinal recipes, gifts exchanged, courtesies performed, and a very lengthy segment spent discussing the construction of an imperial pavilion. The Story of the Stone also is replete with Buddhist and Taoist teachings, with trips to and objects from the Land of Illusion making appearances throughout the story. I have heard that a large portion of the text can be interpreted as relating to Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, but not being an expert on those things I'm sure I missed everything except the blatant references.
These distinguishing features made the book intellectually interesting for me, but these aspects alone couldn't make the experience of reading the book particularly enjoyable where the narrative, characters, and writing all failed to engage. I'm judging only a single portion of a much larger work, to be fair, but I think I gave The Story of the Stone a fair shake and I've decided that it isn't worth my time to continue with it. Perhaps you'll enjoy it more than I did, but in my opinion you're far better off reading Proust.
The first few pages of The Golden Days depict a magical stone being given the chance to live a human life by a Buddhist and a Taoist monk. The narrative never returns to that framing story in this volume, though the two monks have a brief cameo near the end of the volume. The rest of the book concerns two aristocratic families, and the text largely consists of whatever happens to occur to either of those two families. Illnesses, loaning money, deaths, construction projects, birthdays, and whatever else is going on in their lives makes up the majority of the activity in this book. As previously mentioned, these events are almost completely void of any dramatic tension, as the characters are the wealthy who have few problems to begin with, and the writing style makes the narrative feel detached from the characters. Even when something apparently important happens, like when a prank indirectly leads to a man dying in "a large, wet, icy patch of recently ejaculated semen" the narrative doesn't ascribe much significance to it. The woman who played a key role in the prank goes on to do some event planning three pages later and the deceased is never mentioned again. Don't go into this book expecting any psychological exploration of the characters. One event flows into the next, and by the end of the volume nothing much seems to have happened and no one seems to have changed.
This style of book can work, as demonstrated by Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but while that work and this one both have the same meandering style of narrative, The Story of the Stone lacks the distinctive voice Proust gives to his narrator, and it likewise lacks the sublime writing that made Proust the finest prose stylist to ever put pen to paper. Without either of those qualities, The Golden Age left me bored far more often than engaged, something that certainly could not be said of Proust.
Instead of the characters or events depicted, the things that I will likely remember from this book are the features you are unlikely to find in western novels. The Story of the Stone frequently inserts snippets of poetry into the narrative to describe a person or scene, and there are numerous poetry contests throughout the text. Furthermore the book spends a significant amount of time discussing matters that would be glossed over in a western story, like characters talking about medical treatments and medicinal recipes, gifts exchanged, courtesies performed, and a very lengthy segment spent discussing the construction of an imperial pavilion. The Story of the Stone also is replete with Buddhist and Taoist teachings, with trips to and objects from the Land of Illusion making appearances throughout the story. I have heard that a large portion of the text can be interpreted as relating to Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, but not being an expert on those things I'm sure I missed everything except the blatant references.
These distinguishing features made the book intellectually interesting for me, but these aspects alone couldn't make the experience of reading the book particularly enjoyable where the narrative, characters, and writing all failed to engage. I'm judging only a single portion of a much larger work, to be fair, but I think I gave The Story of the Stone a fair shake and I've decided that it isn't worth my time to continue with it. Perhaps you'll enjoy it more than I did, but in my opinion you're far better off reading Proust.
January 4, 2023
Overview: The first volume in the Jia family saga is full of domestic scenes, playful bantering, and lovely poetry. Somehow, everything and nothing happens, but the world that Cao Xueqin created is nonetheless captivating. The translation by David Hawkes is beautifully done too, and the respect that he must have had for the original is clear. There was less direct focus on the "golden trio" Bao-yu, Bao-chai, and Dai-yu than I thought, but there are still plenty of interesting characters. How Cao managed to keep track of everyone is beyond me! The story ranges from slice-of-life to the karmic and supernatural, and while there are relatively low stakes as of yet, that seems like it'll change in future installments.
Notable scenes: One of my favorite scenes is when Bao-yu, his father, and several literary gentlemen are making the rounds in a garden, coming up with names and couplets for various inscriptions. I enjoyed their references to a multitude of different poems and Bao-yu's (...unwelcome) critiques. I also thought that the foreshadowing with the lanterns scene, with Jia Zheng feeling uneasy at how so many of the girls' poetry had a melancholic and foreboding feel, was very clever.
Characters: I wish Bao-yu's sister, who became an imperial concubine, had more scenes, and wanted more from Bao-chai and Dai-yu too. I really wanted to like Dai-yu, but I just couldn't...girlie burst into tears every time she was on page, and it was often an overreaction. Aroma was a pleasant surprise, and I feel like she'll continue to be an important character. Grandmother Jia was rather wickedly fun, and a break from the typically stern matriarch. But my favorite is Wang Xifeng - she's an actual girlboss. She's so clever and fierce when she needs to be, but also generous and kind.
Misc. thoughts: Within the Jia house, there's a lot of jealousy and currying for favors to the point you wonder whose interactions are genuine. I guess Bao-yu could be considered as one of the few "purer" characters as he is so unrestrained in his affection for others. Ooh - the symbolism in Dream of the Red Chamber is actually insane, and I think one of the best examples is the twelve songs that represent each girl's fate. Based on the meaning of their names and hauntingly poetic, I wish that there was a more happy ending in their cards...
Notable scenes: One of my favorite scenes is when Bao-yu, his father, and several literary gentlemen are making the rounds in a garden, coming up with names and couplets for various inscriptions. I enjoyed their references to a multitude of different poems and Bao-yu's (...unwelcome) critiques. I also thought that the foreshadowing with the lanterns scene, with Jia Zheng feeling uneasy at how so many of the girls' poetry had a melancholic and foreboding feel, was very clever.
Characters: I wish Bao-yu's sister, who became an imperial concubine, had more scenes, and wanted more from Bao-chai and Dai-yu too. I really wanted to like Dai-yu, but I just couldn't...girlie burst into tears every time she was on page, and it was often an overreaction. Aroma was a pleasant surprise, and I feel like she'll continue to be an important character. Grandmother Jia was rather wickedly fun, and a break from the typically stern matriarch. But my favorite is Wang Xifeng - she's an actual girlboss. She's so clever and fierce when she needs to be, but also generous and kind.
Misc. thoughts: Within the Jia house, there's a lot of jealousy and currying for favors to the point you wonder whose interactions are genuine. I guess Bao-yu could be considered as one of the few "purer" characters as he is so unrestrained in his affection for others. Ooh - the symbolism in Dream of the Red Chamber is actually insane, and I think one of the best examples is the twelve songs that represent each girl's fate. Based on the meaning of their names and hauntingly poetic, I wish that there was a more happy ending in their cards...
July 3, 2009
This book (5 volumes) has illuminated my life!
The earliest novel of China, written in the mid 1700s and charting the rise and fall of a multi-generational household with intimate connections to the Manchu Court (through a daughter who is a royal concubine). There is magic - the young heir Baoyu is born with a piece of jade in his mouth, a portent of his future and an echo from the past with repeated visits from a wandering Daoist and a mysterious Buddhist. There is intrigue - a festering underbelly in the human dynamics of this microcosm of noble society. There is poetry - the young cousins form a poetry club and hold regular competitions. There is a garden - created for a single visit from the Qing concubine - and there are the most majestic descriptions of costume, ceremony, theater, and ritual of Qing nobility. This is an incomparable Chinese classic.
I have re-read all five volumes approximately eight times. If I were stuck on a desert island and had to pick one novel, this would be it (if two novels, I would also pick Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn).
The earliest novel of China, written in the mid 1700s and charting the rise and fall of a multi-generational household with intimate connections to the Manchu Court (through a daughter who is a royal concubine). There is magic - the young heir Baoyu is born with a piece of jade in his mouth, a portent of his future and an echo from the past with repeated visits from a wandering Daoist and a mysterious Buddhist. There is intrigue - a festering underbelly in the human dynamics of this microcosm of noble society. There is poetry - the young cousins form a poetry club and hold regular competitions. There is a garden - created for a single visit from the Qing concubine - and there are the most majestic descriptions of costume, ceremony, theater, and ritual of Qing nobility. This is an incomparable Chinese classic.
I have re-read all five volumes approximately eight times. If I were stuck on a desert island and had to pick one novel, this would be it (if two novels, I would also pick Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn).
August 8, 2012
There are other translations found under "Dream of the Red Chamber." Do not be fooled; get the Hawkes version. The translator does an awesome job with the poetry and it is a terrific translation. It is also not condensed, which means there are five volumes of this monster, but the glory is in the details, and the details are why this thing is so damn long.
The downside is that the names are in pinyin, which means (a) they are a little difficult to keep straight and (b) the meanings of the characters' names can get lost. But wait! There are handy-dandy family trees to reference and it's shorter than the stuff in the back of the Game of Thrones series.
I have read this thing over and over and over since I was 18. It stands up to 20+ years of re-reading.
The downside is that the names are in pinyin, which means (a) they are a little difficult to keep straight and (b) the meanings of the characters' names can get lost. But wait! There are handy-dandy family trees to reference and it's shorter than the stuff in the back of the Game of Thrones series.
I have read this thing over and over and over since I was 18. It stands up to 20+ years of re-reading.
Currently reading
November 23, 2023i'm on like page 10. this is INSANE
March 1, 2013
Die chinesischen Buddenbrooks
Sehr interessant und auch überraschend kurzweilig wird das Alltagsleben einer großen chinesischen Adelsfamilie beschrieben. Der Band ist mit "The Golden Days" untertitelt, und diesen Eindruck hat man beim Lesen auch: Der Überfluss und die Dekadenz, die Ritualfixierung des Alltagslebens und der ständige Ennui bei gleichzeitiger dauernder Unruhe dieser privilegierten Schicht wird sehr plastisch geschildert. Diese Kapitel des Romans wirken unbeschwert und leicht; vom späteren Niedergang ist noch nichts spürbar.
Der Leser, der moderne Romane gewohnt ist, wird sich auf ein paar Eigenheiten der klassischen chinesischen Romane einstellen müssen. Auch wenn das vorliegende Werk das Erbe der mündlichen Weitergabe schon deutlich hinter sich lässt, sind immer noch typische Merkmale, wie die Einleitungsgedichte, die Kapitelschlussformulierung und die in Gedichtform eingestreuten Umgebungsbeschreibungen vorhanden. Auch der für chinesische Romane typische Überfluss an Personen kann etwas einschüchternd wirken, gerade zu Beginn; die ersten 5 Kapitel sind nicht leicht zu lesen, danach wird es deutlich besser verständlich, wenn die wichtigsten Figuren eingeführt sind.
Man darf natürlich bei diesem Werk auch keine sprachliche Ausgefeiltheit wie bei Mann oder eine Charakterisierung wie bei Dostojewskij erwarten, dazu ist die Gattung bei diesem Roman noch nicht weit fortgeschritten genug. Trotzdem bietet sich dem Leser ein Familiendrama, das einen schnell in seinen Bann zieht.
Der hier vorliegende Band 1 enthält die Kapitel 1 bis 26 (von 120), man muss sich also auch die anderen 4 Bände zulegen, um die Geschichte ganz zu lesen. Eine gelungene Einführung und äußerst hilfreiche Familienstammbäume runden das Werk ab. Die Übersetzung von David Hawkes ist sehr gelungen und hat neben einigen leseerleichternden Kunstkniffen (Namensübersetzung von Nebenpersonen) auch einen sehr angenehmen Fluss zu bieten, in dem weder die (homo-)sexuellen Anspielungen noch die teilweise deftige Sprache untergehen.
Wem dieses Werk gefällt, kann sich auch "Die Gelehrten" (Rulin Waishi, The Scholars) ansehen, da sowohl Thematik als auch Stil recht ähnlich sind.
Sehr interessant und auch überraschend kurzweilig wird das Alltagsleben einer großen chinesischen Adelsfamilie beschrieben. Der Band ist mit "The Golden Days" untertitelt, und diesen Eindruck hat man beim Lesen auch: Der Überfluss und die Dekadenz, die Ritualfixierung des Alltagslebens und der ständige Ennui bei gleichzeitiger dauernder Unruhe dieser privilegierten Schicht wird sehr plastisch geschildert. Diese Kapitel des Romans wirken unbeschwert und leicht; vom späteren Niedergang ist noch nichts spürbar.
Der Leser, der moderne Romane gewohnt ist, wird sich auf ein paar Eigenheiten der klassischen chinesischen Romane einstellen müssen. Auch wenn das vorliegende Werk das Erbe der mündlichen Weitergabe schon deutlich hinter sich lässt, sind immer noch typische Merkmale, wie die Einleitungsgedichte, die Kapitelschlussformulierung und die in Gedichtform eingestreuten Umgebungsbeschreibungen vorhanden. Auch der für chinesische Romane typische Überfluss an Personen kann etwas einschüchternd wirken, gerade zu Beginn; die ersten 5 Kapitel sind nicht leicht zu lesen, danach wird es deutlich besser verständlich, wenn die wichtigsten Figuren eingeführt sind.
Man darf natürlich bei diesem Werk auch keine sprachliche Ausgefeiltheit wie bei Mann oder eine Charakterisierung wie bei Dostojewskij erwarten, dazu ist die Gattung bei diesem Roman noch nicht weit fortgeschritten genug. Trotzdem bietet sich dem Leser ein Familiendrama, das einen schnell in seinen Bann zieht.
Der hier vorliegende Band 1 enthält die Kapitel 1 bis 26 (von 120), man muss sich also auch die anderen 4 Bände zulegen, um die Geschichte ganz zu lesen. Eine gelungene Einführung und äußerst hilfreiche Familienstammbäume runden das Werk ab. Die Übersetzung von David Hawkes ist sehr gelungen und hat neben einigen leseerleichternden Kunstkniffen (Namensübersetzung von Nebenpersonen) auch einen sehr angenehmen Fluss zu bieten, in dem weder die (homo-)sexuellen Anspielungen noch die teilweise deftige Sprache untergehen.
Wem dieses Werk gefällt, kann sich auch "Die Gelehrten" (Rulin Waishi, The Scholars) ansehen, da sowohl Thematik als auch Stil recht ähnlich sind.
March 30, 2013
I found this first volume much more readable than I expected for a book of this time period. It depicts it's time and place well, sometimes with some extreme beauty, but the course of the narrative is more modern than I would have expected. There is certainly a lot of politeness, concentration on status and formal ceremony, but then there are certainly some cruder moments than I would have expected. But, this is only the first volume. On to volume II.
February 4, 2017
The Story of the Stone (also called A Dream of Red Mansions) is a novel written by Cao Xueqin in 18th Century China. It is a fascinating story about the lives (and even things beyond the earthly lives) of the wealthy Jia family and those that serve them or interact with them in some form or other. Out of the great number of characters (who are fortunately included in a character list at the back of the book), the ones we follow mainly are the boy Bao-yu, who is the incarnation of a magical stone that was in his mouth when he was born, his cousins Dai-yu and Bao-chai, his older cousin Xi-feng, and his maids such as Aroma.
Just note that there are be a few spoilers in here, but nothing major.
First of all, the book was beautiful to read. The descriptions were lovely, and it all flowed so well that you could end up reading quite a lot in only a short amount of time. Except for a few insignificant instances, I couldn’t tell that it had been translated into English rather than written in English originally. One of the many beautiful descriptions is of the stone: “she saw a stone about the size of a sparrow’s egg, glowing with the suppressed, milky radiance of a sunlit cloud and veined with iridescent streaks of colour,” and another describing Xi-feng with a poem:
“She had, moreover,
eyes like a painted phoenix,
eyebrows like willow-leaves,
a slender form,
seductive grace;
the ever-smiling summer face
of hidden thunders showed no trace;
the ever-bubbling laughter started
almost before the lips were parted.”
There are many verses of poetry within the text, either that the characters made up or quoted from, or just descriptions from the author about the setting or characters themselves. Although I thought it was odd at first, I soon got used to it and found it really added to the atmosphere of the story.
The book is also excellent with its portrayal of the characters’ thoughts and desires, especially exploring conflicting ideas and emotions. So although the book is very detailed in its descriptions of the events and the setting, it doesn’t fall short of exploring the characters’ mentalities, as well intricacies of the plots they might have. For example, Bao-yu’s maid Aroma tricks Bao-yu at one point: “By employing only a minimum amount of deceit, she could use it as a means of ascertaining his real feelings towards her and of humbling his spirit a little, so that he might be in a suitably chastened frame of mind for the lecture which she was preparing to admonish him. She judged from his going off silently to bed that he was shaken and a little unsure of himself. Evidently she had succeeded in the first part of her plan.” Xi-feng is also particularly skilled at manipulating people.
There were many priceless moments of humor as well. For example, when Bao-yu and Qin Zhong go to school (though Bao-yu stops going soon after he begins), there is a fight with all the boys throwing things at each other and it just gets so out of hand: you’d have to read it to see, but it’s absolutely hilarious. Also Xi-feng can be very devious: she was definitely one of my favourite characters, probably the smartest, and not shy of taking charge when the situation calls for her, even though she is extremely busy with running the household. Not to mention when she sets up a plot to get sleazy Jia Rui caught the act of coming to visit her for an amorous meeting. This ends up getting him killed because he is trapped outside in the courtyard overnight and catches a chill, though the fact that he dies is really his own fault when he fails to follow the advice of a Taoist doctor. Xi-feng isn’t sorry one bit, and I have to agree with her.
As for the main character, Bao-yu, he is the most intriguing and seems to have a connection to things beyond the mortal world around him because he is the incarnation of the stone, even though he doesn’t realize what this entails. Although he has a glimpse of a higher order in the world, he is largely secluded in the Jia household and lives a life of luxury where his every whim is supplied by his maids. It would be nice if, in the next volumes, he is forced to fend for himself, because now, he has no real responsibilities and so he’s never really tested, which is necessary for the protagonist of a novel. He does, however, suffer his own hardships (besides being bored from not having anything to do) because of his melancholy and reflections about himself and the world and wanting to know where he belongs in it. He is never able to really figure it out though, for he is effectively trapped in the Jia household with his family and almost never gets out in the world. On the rare occasion that he does (Qin-shi’s funeral), he is curious about other people and feels a connection to them, especially a girl who works at a farm: “she was standing watching for him beside the road, a baby brother in her arms and two little girls at her side. Bao-yu could not repress a strong emotion on seeing her, but sitting there in the carriage there was not much he could do but gaze back at her soulfully.” This is what usually happens: he is able to watch life from the safety of his “carriage” of existence, but not able to do much of anything.
Also, his interactions with others causes him much turmoil, especially with Dai-yu. Dai-yu was sweet at first, but once she comes to love Bao-yu, she becomes such a brat and gets annoyed at every little thing Bao-yu does. She’s very jealous of Bao-chai, and always takes it out on Bao-yu when he says or does something even slightly out of line. So although he also loves her, they stay at an impasse for the whole book. Though admittedly, Bao-yu isn’t very mature either, so it’s possible that his love for Dai-yu will pass, especially considering that he takes a fancy to many other people (mostly his cousins and maids. The fact that everyone is a cousin or related in some way does not stop any relationships from forming) at various times throughout the book. As is mentioned during a conversation with Yu-cun near the beginning of the book, Bao-yu has an unusual obsession with girls, not only that he likes girls, but that he has grown up with girls and likes to do the activities they do. We often see that he might even want to be a girl, because he sees them as nobler being compared to males. So he often experiences an unspoken frustration simply because he is a boy and so cannot really be like his cousins. And he is definitely in love with his friend Qin Zhong, though nothing comes of this because Qin Zhong eventually dies. But on the whole, Bao-yu is confused in his life, for he is largely estranged from not only the higher reality beyond the world, but even the world outside his very restricted social situation.
As for the stone Bao-yu is born with, although he is largely ignorant of its powers, he knows the inscription on it, which says:
MAGIC JADE
Mislay me not, forget me not.
And hale old age shall be your lot.
On the reverse, it says,
1. Dispels the harms of witchcraft.
2. Cures melancholic distempers.
3. Foretells good and evil fortune.
The stone indeed accomplishes all three of those powers throughout the book (the first is obvious, the second is to (sometimes) relieve Bao-yu from his melancholy, and the third is when Bao-yu is transported to the world with the fairy Disenchantment where he is able to read a part of a book that lays out the unfortunate fates of different girls in the form of poems (though it doesn’t specify which poem corresponds to which girl)).
This dream ties in to one of the major themes in the book, and indeed, the book is also called A Dream of Red Mansions. This “dream,” or transportation to another plane of existence, is when Bao-yu is instructed by Disenchantment to dispel his “lust of the mind” so he can focus on “the serious things in life” rather than illusions of daily life that will only trap him. So far, in the first volume, she hadn’t succeeded, but I believe there’s hope for Bao-yu yet.
This transport to Disenchantment’s land of fairies touches upon the supernatural order that ultimately forms the basis of the world. This is also hinted at with the characters of the Taoist and Buddhist monks who occasionally make an appearance. They are aware that Bao-yu is the stone, though as you would expect from a Buddhist and Taoist, they don’t get involved in the plot much. Other monks and religious persons only get involved in times of deaths and sicknesses, which also illustrates the fact that what really matters is not the incessant clamour of day-to-day routines and customs that occupy most of the characters’ time, but of the ultimate destiny of our soul when it leaves this illusory world. One particularly interesting part is when Qin Zhong is dying and bargains with the demons while he is unconscious so that he can speak to Bao-yu one last time.
The book’s many lavish descriptions of customs, clothing, and architecture, including an enormous garden that is built just so the family can receive their daughter (who has become a royal concubine) for a visit once a year, is very interesting in itself, but it can also be seen as a mask over the fundamental reality that is spoken of at the beginning of the book, and so the story is in one sense a parody. It is this higher world and the beings within it that ultimately determine the characters’ destinies, which they are largely unaware of, and indeed, we even see that some souls were purposely sent into the “great illusion of human life” for a particular purpose. We can’t decide either when we come into the world or when we leave it, but it is at these times that the characters are able to glimpse a higher scheme of things in which their day-to-day lives are insignificant. Bao-yu is sometimes able to sense when he meets a pure soul connected to a higher world, such as the maid Crimson and Dai-yu, who were sent here by the fairy Disenchantment. Ultimately, everything that happens is in accordance with the laws of karma, and the only ones who are really able to escape them are the Taoist and Buddhist monks, who travel between “the land of illusion” and the higher world.
On top of all this, we learn a lot about the time period (China in the 1700s), such as how people lived, what they wore, the different positions in society, medicine, literature, etc. And given that it was actually written in this time period, we can safely assume that it’s accurate.
I would certainly say that Cao Xueqin is the Alexandre Dumas of 18th century China: any fans of Dumas would do well to pick up a copy of this book and enjoy.
Just note that there are be a few spoilers in here, but nothing major.
First of all, the book was beautiful to read. The descriptions were lovely, and it all flowed so well that you could end up reading quite a lot in only a short amount of time. Except for a few insignificant instances, I couldn’t tell that it had been translated into English rather than written in English originally. One of the many beautiful descriptions is of the stone: “she saw a stone about the size of a sparrow’s egg, glowing with the suppressed, milky radiance of a sunlit cloud and veined with iridescent streaks of colour,” and another describing Xi-feng with a poem:
“She had, moreover,
eyes like a painted phoenix,
eyebrows like willow-leaves,
a slender form,
seductive grace;
the ever-smiling summer face
of hidden thunders showed no trace;
the ever-bubbling laughter started
almost before the lips were parted.”
There are many verses of poetry within the text, either that the characters made up or quoted from, or just descriptions from the author about the setting or characters themselves. Although I thought it was odd at first, I soon got used to it and found it really added to the atmosphere of the story.
The book is also excellent with its portrayal of the characters’ thoughts and desires, especially exploring conflicting ideas and emotions. So although the book is very detailed in its descriptions of the events and the setting, it doesn’t fall short of exploring the characters’ mentalities, as well intricacies of the plots they might have. For example, Bao-yu’s maid Aroma tricks Bao-yu at one point: “By employing only a minimum amount of deceit, she could use it as a means of ascertaining his real feelings towards her and of humbling his spirit a little, so that he might be in a suitably chastened frame of mind for the lecture which she was preparing to admonish him. She judged from his going off silently to bed that he was shaken and a little unsure of himself. Evidently she had succeeded in the first part of her plan.” Xi-feng is also particularly skilled at manipulating people.
There were many priceless moments of humor as well. For example, when Bao-yu and Qin Zhong go to school (though Bao-yu stops going soon after he begins), there is a fight with all the boys throwing things at each other and it just gets so out of hand: you’d have to read it to see, but it’s absolutely hilarious. Also Xi-feng can be very devious: she was definitely one of my favourite characters, probably the smartest, and not shy of taking charge when the situation calls for her, even though she is extremely busy with running the household. Not to mention when she sets up a plot to get sleazy Jia Rui caught the act of coming to visit her for an amorous meeting. This ends up getting him killed because he is trapped outside in the courtyard overnight and catches a chill, though the fact that he dies is really his own fault when he fails to follow the advice of a Taoist doctor. Xi-feng isn’t sorry one bit, and I have to agree with her.
As for the main character, Bao-yu, he is the most intriguing and seems to have a connection to things beyond the mortal world around him because he is the incarnation of the stone, even though he doesn’t realize what this entails. Although he has a glimpse of a higher order in the world, he is largely secluded in the Jia household and lives a life of luxury where his every whim is supplied by his maids. It would be nice if, in the next volumes, he is forced to fend for himself, because now, he has no real responsibilities and so he’s never really tested, which is necessary for the protagonist of a novel. He does, however, suffer his own hardships (besides being bored from not having anything to do) because of his melancholy and reflections about himself and the world and wanting to know where he belongs in it. He is never able to really figure it out though, for he is effectively trapped in the Jia household with his family and almost never gets out in the world. On the rare occasion that he does (Qin-shi’s funeral), he is curious about other people and feels a connection to them, especially a girl who works at a farm: “she was standing watching for him beside the road, a baby brother in her arms and two little girls at her side. Bao-yu could not repress a strong emotion on seeing her, but sitting there in the carriage there was not much he could do but gaze back at her soulfully.” This is what usually happens: he is able to watch life from the safety of his “carriage” of existence, but not able to do much of anything.
Also, his interactions with others causes him much turmoil, especially with Dai-yu. Dai-yu was sweet at first, but once she comes to love Bao-yu, she becomes such a brat and gets annoyed at every little thing Bao-yu does. She’s very jealous of Bao-chai, and always takes it out on Bao-yu when he says or does something even slightly out of line. So although he also loves her, they stay at an impasse for the whole book. Though admittedly, Bao-yu isn’t very mature either, so it’s possible that his love for Dai-yu will pass, especially considering that he takes a fancy to many other people (mostly his cousins and maids. The fact that everyone is a cousin or related in some way does not stop any relationships from forming) at various times throughout the book. As is mentioned during a conversation with Yu-cun near the beginning of the book, Bao-yu has an unusual obsession with girls, not only that he likes girls, but that he has grown up with girls and likes to do the activities they do. We often see that he might even want to be a girl, because he sees them as nobler being compared to males. So he often experiences an unspoken frustration simply because he is a boy and so cannot really be like his cousins. And he is definitely in love with his friend Qin Zhong, though nothing comes of this because Qin Zhong eventually dies. But on the whole, Bao-yu is confused in his life, for he is largely estranged from not only the higher reality beyond the world, but even the world outside his very restricted social situation.
As for the stone Bao-yu is born with, although he is largely ignorant of its powers, he knows the inscription on it, which says:
MAGIC JADE
Mislay me not, forget me not.
And hale old age shall be your lot.
On the reverse, it says,
1. Dispels the harms of witchcraft.
2. Cures melancholic distempers.
3. Foretells good and evil fortune.
The stone indeed accomplishes all three of those powers throughout the book (the first is obvious, the second is to (sometimes) relieve Bao-yu from his melancholy, and the third is when Bao-yu is transported to the world with the fairy Disenchantment where he is able to read a part of a book that lays out the unfortunate fates of different girls in the form of poems (though it doesn’t specify which poem corresponds to which girl)).
This dream ties in to one of the major themes in the book, and indeed, the book is also called A Dream of Red Mansions. This “dream,” or transportation to another plane of existence, is when Bao-yu is instructed by Disenchantment to dispel his “lust of the mind” so he can focus on “the serious things in life” rather than illusions of daily life that will only trap him. So far, in the first volume, she hadn’t succeeded, but I believe there’s hope for Bao-yu yet.
This transport to Disenchantment’s land of fairies touches upon the supernatural order that ultimately forms the basis of the world. This is also hinted at with the characters of the Taoist and Buddhist monks who occasionally make an appearance. They are aware that Bao-yu is the stone, though as you would expect from a Buddhist and Taoist, they don’t get involved in the plot much. Other monks and religious persons only get involved in times of deaths and sicknesses, which also illustrates the fact that what really matters is not the incessant clamour of day-to-day routines and customs that occupy most of the characters’ time, but of the ultimate destiny of our soul when it leaves this illusory world. One particularly interesting part is when Qin Zhong is dying and bargains with the demons while he is unconscious so that he can speak to Bao-yu one last time.
The book’s many lavish descriptions of customs, clothing, and architecture, including an enormous garden that is built just so the family can receive their daughter (who has become a royal concubine) for a visit once a year, is very interesting in itself, but it can also be seen as a mask over the fundamental reality that is spoken of at the beginning of the book, and so the story is in one sense a parody. It is this higher world and the beings within it that ultimately determine the characters’ destinies, which they are largely unaware of, and indeed, we even see that some souls were purposely sent into the “great illusion of human life” for a particular purpose. We can’t decide either when we come into the world or when we leave it, but it is at these times that the characters are able to glimpse a higher scheme of things in which their day-to-day lives are insignificant. Bao-yu is sometimes able to sense when he meets a pure soul connected to a higher world, such as the maid Crimson and Dai-yu, who were sent here by the fairy Disenchantment. Ultimately, everything that happens is in accordance with the laws of karma, and the only ones who are really able to escape them are the Taoist and Buddhist monks, who travel between “the land of illusion” and the higher world.
On top of all this, we learn a lot about the time period (China in the 1700s), such as how people lived, what they wore, the different positions in society, medicine, literature, etc. And given that it was actually written in this time period, we can safely assume that it’s accurate.
I would certainly say that Cao Xueqin is the Alexandre Dumas of 18th century China: any fans of Dumas would do well to pick up a copy of this book and enjoy.
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