Masterpiece: Dream of the Red Chamber

After nearly one thousand years of development, Dream of the Red Chamber, the masterpiece among Chinese classical novels, emerged in the 18th century.

Dream of the Red Chamber is also known as The Story of the Stone. After its emergence, it spread in the form of hand-written copies for several decades. "At that time, hardworking people sold each hand-written copy on the market at the price of dozens of tales of gold, and it spread far and wide!" At that time, there was also a saying, "If one does not talk about Dream of the Red Chamber, he has read the Book of Songs and the Book of History in vain."

The most widely known stories in Dream of the Red Chamber are the love story of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and the story of the decline of the influential Jia, Wang, Shi and Xue families. The book consists of 120 chapters. It is generally thought that the first 80 chapters were written by Cao Xueqin and that the last 40 chapters were written by Gao E.

Figure of Cao Xueqin, painted by contemporary Jiang Zhaohe.

Cao Xueqin, with the given name of Zhan and the alias of Xueqin, was born in Jiangning Prefecture (today's Nanjing) around 1715 and died around 1763 in the Qing Dynasty. His ancestor served as Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in Jiangning, and he went through the course of his family's quick decline, experienced the sudden change in the feudal dynasty's political environment and felt social snobbery and inconstancy of human relationships. After his family declined, he led a wretched life and "the whole family often bought porridge and wine on credit." Therefore, he had a special deep understanding of society and life. Cao Xueqin used to say, "Pages full of fantastic talk penned with bitter tears; all men call the author mad, none his messages hears." All Good Things Must End in Dream of the Red Chamber vividly describes such changes in world affairs and extremes of fortune:

All men long to be immortals,

Yet to riches and rank each aspires;

The great ones of old, where are they now?

Their graves are a mass of briars.

All men long to be immortals,

Yet silver and gold they prize.

And grub for money all their lives,

Till death seals up their eyes.

All men long to be immortals

Yet dote on the wives they've wed,

Who swear to love their husband evermore,

But remarry as soon as he s dead.

All men long to be immortals,

Yet with getting sons won't have done.

Although fond parents are legion,

Who ever saw a really filial son?

This just reveals the decline of the four families and the inevitability of such decline. In Dream of the Red Chamber, description follows the main line of the Ning mansion's decline. This distinguished Jia family impressive in appearance has numerous hidden problems. If we analyze the reasons for the Jia family's decline, the direct reason is none other than Concubine Yuan's death. As a result, the Jia family loses favor, is squeezed by people in power and is raided. However, the fundamental reasons are as follows: first, the Jia family's children have no initiative or drive, waste money at will, seek Taoist immortality, and stubbornly adhere to outworn rules and ideas; second, they are imperious and despotic like Wang Xifeng, and often extort money by blackmail and kill for money; third, the whole Jia family is full of conflicts. As Tanchun says, "We must start killing each other first before our family can be completely destroyed."

The most thrilling story in Dream of the Red Chamber is the love tragedy of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, which is a tragedy of fate, of personality and of the society of that period. Firstly, the tragedy of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu is a tragedy of fate. The love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu seems predestined by the deeply moving "pledge between plant and stone," but fate plays tricks because the saying of "well-matched gold and jade" emerges. Facing the "pledge between plant and stone" and "well-matched gold and jade," though Jia Baoyu has a liking for Lin Daiyu, he is tiny in front of the feudal ethical codes. This is also the fate of Jia Baoyu as the only heir of the Jia family's children who can possibly revive the family. Therefore, elder members of the family must destroy the love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and must choose Xue Baochai who supports feudalism as his wife. Besides, the troubled Jia family also longs for the Xue family's support and urgently needs the capable Xue Baochai to run the family. The "well-matched gold and jade" reflect the Jia and Xue families' fundamental interests. Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu can hardly escape such fate.

Secondly, it is a tragedy of personality. Daiyu "looks more sensitive than Pi Gan." While living in the Jia family, "she must watch her step in her new home, she decided, be on guard every moment and weigh every word, so as not to be laughed at for any foolish blunder." However, though Daiyu depends on other people for a living, she is proud and aloof by nature, innocent, straightforward, artless and clearly aware of whom to love and whom to hate, making no attempt to conceal her pleasure, anger, likes and dislikes. The poem Weeping Over Fallen Blossoms is the best picture of Daiyu:

I long to take wing and fly

With the flowers to earth s uttermost bound;

And yet at earth's uttermost bound

Where can a fragrant burial mound be found?

Better shroud the fair petals in silk

With clean earth for their outer attire;

For pure you came and pure shall you go,

Not sinking into some foul ditch or mire.

Now you are dead I come to bury you;

None has divined the day when I shall die;

Men laugh at my folly in burying fallen flowers,

But who will bury me when dead I lie?

See, when spring draws to a close and flowers fall,

This is the season when beauty must ebb and fade;

The day that spring takes wing and beauty fades

Who will care for the fallen blossom or dead maid?

"For pure you came and pure shall you go" is just her pursuit of character. She never flatters the rulers in the Jia family to curry favor with them. Because of her poor family background and strong self-esteem, Daiyu is particularly sensitive to others' discrimination and ridicule. Based on the self-defense psychology, Daiyu sometimes says bitterly sarcastic words and sometimes cries, giving people the impression that she "loses her temper like a child." Such temperament and temper can hardly let her integrate into the complex and big Jia family and, on the contrary, aggravate others' prejudice against her.

Still of TV series Dream of the Red Chamber

As to Jia Baoyu, the author made a general and vivid explanation in Chapter 3: "Absurdly he courts care and melancholy and raves like any madman in his folly; for though endowed with handsome looks is he, his heart is lawless and refractory. Too dense by far to understand his duty, too stubborn to apply himself to study, foolhardy in his eccentricity, he's deaf to all reproach and obloquy." The most distinctive personality attributed to Jia Baoyu by the author is the rebellious spirit out of tune with the society of that period. He is discontent with, disgusted by and even resentful of the life of extravagance, ease and glory, and refuses to take the road of "pursuing studies to become officials" taken by most children of aerostatic families. He boldly challenges the concept of male domination and female subordination, and places all his passions and ideals on those innocent girls. Lin Daiyu happens to be his ideologically intimate friend. He declares in public, "Has Miss Lin ever talked such disgusting nonsense? If she had, I'd have stopped having anything to do with her long ago." This shows the side out of tune with feudal thoughts in the personalities of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. As a result, they cannot be possibly permitted by the feudal society to love.

Lastly, it is a tragedy of society. The two protagonist lovers in Dream of the Red Chamber Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu are no longer a talented man and a beautiful woman often depicted in previous dramas and novels but two persons who have eccentric personalities, are ridiculed by others as "idiots" and rebel against feudalism. This tragedy is caused by the impossibility of free courtship in the society of that period as well as shackles of many ideological and living problems. For example, male domination and female subordination in feudal families, master-servant relationships, ethical codes, moralities, etc. are all the whole society's problems that cannot be possibly resisted by Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu as rebellious people alone. Therefore, what causes the tragedy is not simple unmatched social and economic status or free courtship violating the feudal marriage system but the social intolerance of the anti-feudal color in the love itself. This fundamentally determines the tragic end of the love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu.

Dream of the Red Chamber excels in storytelling, and the artistic methods used in it, especially the art of language, striking everyone with admiration. First, characters' dialogues are especially brilliant. Characters' dialogues in Dream of the Red Chamber have not only the function of depiction of characters, but also the function of narration, theme revelation and personality summarization. Words that seem flat and implicit contain deep connotations, making people feel as if they can hear the sound clearly. For example, when Wang Xifeng appears, "her sound is heard before she is seen." Her status as a capable and experienced housekeeper saying artful words and having insinuating countenance is revealed at once. Second, words are expressive, precise and to the point. This is fully manifested in Dream of the Red Chamber: words are clear, coherent, very meaningful, extremely concise and diversified. Its wording and phrasing even reach the state of "no possible word change, no possible word addition or deletion and empathy." Third, the language in Dream of the Red Chamber has a kind of plain beauty containing a strong poetic quality. Those beautiful poems add an infinite poetic flavor, poeticizing life, environment and characters' feelings and personalities. Plain and poetic language makes Dream of the Red Chamber reach the artistic state of suiting both refined and popular tastes.

Dream of the Red Chamber not only belongs to China, but also to the world. There are abridged translations and complete translations in more than ten languages including English, French and Russian, many foreigners study it, and many works about it have been written. Dream of the Red Chamber has become the whole world's common spiritual wealth.