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Chinese Language: Chinese Classics

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A Dream of Red Mansions

A Dream of Red Mansions, an ancient novel written by Tsao Hsueh-chin and Kao Hgo; Dream of Red Mansions, an English translation by Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang, illustrated by Tai Tun-Pang, Volumes I II III, 1,900 pages, hardcover with cloth, Foreign Language Press, Beijing, 1995

The novel as a literary genre has a long history in China, germinating at the time of Wei and Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (A.D. 220-589), growing apace through Tang and Song, and blossoming forth in full splendor during the Ming and Qing Dynasties with the emergence of some renowned writers and works of which the best known are Luo Guanzhong of late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties and his Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Shi Naian of the same period and his Outlaws of the Marsh, Whu Chenen of Ming Dynasty and his Journey to the West and Cao Xueqin of Qing Dynasty and his book A Dream of the Red Mansions. All these full-length novels are characterized by a complicated and interesting plot, an extensive vista and scope, vivid and realistic characterization and elegant and evocative language, testifying to the high artistic achievement of the authors and the maturity of novel writing in early Chinese literature. These books have enjoyed great popularity among the people and exerted a tremendous influence on their minds. Many of the characters and stories in these novels are known to everyone in China, not excluding housewives and children.

红楼梦, sometimes translated as The Dream of the Red Chamber, the great classical Chinese novel written in the mid-eighteenth century during the reign of Emperor Chien-lung of the Ching Dynasty, has been widely popular throughout the last two hundred years and more. The four great houses of Chia, Shih, Wang and Hsueh described in this novel were typical basic political units of feudal society. Such families were linked with the court above and the local officials below to form a network of control with the feudal autocratic state power as its centre. The book depicts the inevitable doom of these families, riven as they are by fierce struggles among themselves and in society, focusing on the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and also provides a panorama of the lives of people of various levels in the degenerating empire. It is the only one novel so brilliantly integrated with these that readers are fascinated and moved by it. With superb artistry the author presents a panoramic genre-painting, a whole gallery of highly individual yet typical characters. Through detailed descriptions of their daily life he succeeds in depicting their different idiosyncrasies, thoughts and feelings. In the use of dialogue too he shows outstanding skill, putting such distinctive speech into each character's mouth that the reader feels as if he can see and hear the speaker. The Ching Dynasty (1644-1911) was the last feudal dynasty in China. The Chien-lung era (1736-95) was the turning point towards the decline of the Ching Dynasty. Crisis-riven feudalism was already on its last legs. The whole fabric of Chinese feudal society was tottering on the verge of final collapse. This was the period in which Tsao Hsueh-chin the author of A Dream of Red Mansions lived. Tsao Hsueh-chin died in the twenty-eighth year of Chien-lung (1763).

The novel is a great realistic work among early Chinese novels, a superb achievement in both ideological and artistic terms. Lu Xun, the great 20th century Chinese writer, has this comment on the novel: "The appearance of A Dream of Red Mansions shatters all traditional ideas and techniques of writing."

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