Hong lou meng: chapters 49-51, newcomers, linked verse, girls vs women vs men

1/ Chapter 49 introduces several characters at once, whom I can’t fit in my family tree, so I have to write them down: 

- Hình Tụ Yên (Xing Xiuyan), niece of Hình phu nhân (Lady Xing). 

- Vương Nhân (Wang Ren), brother of Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng). 

- Lý Văn (Li Wen) and Lý Ỷ (Li Qi), cousins of Lý Hoàn (Li Wan). 

- Tiết Khoa (Xue Ke) and Tiết Bảo Cầm (Xue Baoqin), cousins of Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan) and Tiết Bảo Thoa (Xue Baochai). Tiết Bảo Cầm (Xue Baoqin) is taken as goddaughter to Vương phu nhân (Lady Wang). 

We know Hình phu nhân (Lady Xing) isn’t kind, so she hands her niece over to Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), who doesn’t want responsibility and lets Hình Tụ Yên (Xing Xiuyan) live with Giả Nghênh Xuân (Jia Yingchun), daughter of Giả Xá (Jia She) and a concubine. 

This means that there are now 13 people in the garden—Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) and 12 girls. They should not be confused with Kim lăng thập nhị thoa (the 12 beauties of Jinling) however: none of the newcomers are part of the 12 beauties. 

  

2/ I’ve been enjoying Hong lou meng a lot more than I did at the beginning, and do think it’s a great novel, but still don’t like the laundry list kind of descriptions. When Cao Xueqin describes what a character is wearing, we get a list of clothing items and material and some accessories but don’t quite see what the character looks like. Cao Xueqin doesn’t convey the whole look and the impression on other characters, and when he describes a character’s physical appearance, he usually uses conventions. To someone mostly raised on 19th century British, Russian, and American novels like me, this is a bit irritating. 

The strengths of the novel are the characterisation, the dialogue, the supernatural elements and philosophical ideas, and Cao Xueqin’s humanity. 

3/ Chapter 50 has a fascinating scene of a linked verse game. At the beginning, after Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) leaves, there are 13 people participating including Hương Lăng (Caltrop), but it quickly turns into a very competitive game between 3 girls, or rather, it’s Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) and Bảo Cầm (Baoqin) against Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun).

Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), the only guy, always comes last.  

My girl Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun) is the star in this scene, overshadowing everyone else. In a way, she’s the star of the whole chapter, at least to me, because her strong personality comes out in the way she dresses like a boy and later in the deer-eating scene. 

At the end of the chapter, the girls have a riddle game, and again the ones who stand out are Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun) and the new girl Tiết Bảo Cầm (Xue Baoqin), and to some extent, Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu). Bảo Thoa (Baochai) is rather overshadowed, and then in chapter 51, both Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) and Lý Hoàn (Li Wan) tell her off for being stuffy. 

4/ Lý Hoàn (Li Wan) says she doesn’t like Diệu Ngọc (Miaoyu/ Adamantina). Neither does Bảo Thoa (Baochai). So far she hasn’t appeared very much. Wikipedia says she has an obsession with cleanliness but it doesn’t seem correct—in the one scene that she has appeared in earlier, she seems less obsessed with cleanliness and more arrogant and snobbish, and prejudiced against Già Lưu (Grannie Liu) because she’s poor. As a nun even with her hair intact, she doesn’t quite behave like a nun. 

5/ In chapter 51, Tiết Bảo Cầm (Xue Baoqin) creates 10 riddles about something in 10 places she has been to. She has been to northern Vietnam! 

One thing is odd, however: her second riddle is named after Giao Chỉ (Jiaozhi), which wikipedia says “was the Chinese name for various provinces, commanderies, prefectures, and counties in northern Vietnam from the era of the Hùng kings to the middle of the Third Chinese domination of Vietnam (c. 7th–10th centuries) and again during the Fourth Chinese domination (1407–1427)”.

The weird part is that David Hawkes translates the name of the riddle as Hanoi. 

6/ As I’ve now read about 50 chapters, I suppose it’s fair to make some generalisations about Hong lou meng: most of the warmth of the novel is in the scenes of the girls in the family with or without Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), and the scenes of the young female servants—there may be teasing and joking around, there may be some mockery and sarcasm, but it’s all innocent and harmless and these scenes still have fun and warmth and a sense of friendship. In the scenes of the adults, there are more negative stuff like flattery, hypocrisy, feigned humility, jealousy, anger, deceit, malice, cruelty, and so on.

Just look at the way Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) and Bảo Thoa (Baochai) and Tương Vân (Xiangyun) talk to each other, or the way Tập Nhân (Aroma) and Bình Nhi (Patience) and Uyên Ương (Faithful) joke around—it’s all innocent. Now compare it to the way Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) talks to Lý Hoàn (Li Wan) or Vưu Thị (You Shi) around the time of the birthday party—they may laugh but there is no warmth. Now if you look at the scenes where Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) jokes with Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu) at family gatherings, on the surface there appears to be warmth because all the family members laugh together, but there is no real warmth—she jokes in order to flatter, to distract or to soothe the grandmother, or to get away with something. The one thing I like is that she can slightly insult the grandmother or point things out that she wouldn’t be able to say without a joking tone and without her charisma. 

With boys, it depends. There is warmth in the scenes of Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and Tần Chung (Qin Zhong). But the majority of the boys and men in Hong lou meng are not exactly lovely.  

For instance, look at Giả Hoàn (Jia Huan), the black sheep, the one nobody likes. Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) always sees herself as an outsider, but the true outsider is Giả Hoàn (Jia Huan), who is not part of anything, not welcome to anything. He is full of envy and hatred.

Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan) is ignorant, selfish, violent, and used to getting away with anything because he’s rich and part of the Tiết (Xue) family—he beats a man to death over a slave girl and grooms young boys for sex. 

The adult men of the Giả (Jia) family aren’t much better either: Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) is short-tempered, and distant and ineffectual as a father; Giả Xá (Jia She) and his son Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) are the type that can’t keep it in their pants but Giả Xá (Jia She) is also violent; Giả Trân (Jia Zhen) and his son Giả Dung (Jia Rong) seem to be similar in their horniness, and Giả Trân (Jia Zhen) is said to have an affair with his daughter-in-law, etc. 

Cao Xueqin and Murasaki Shikibu are not that different in their view of men. Much of The Tale of Genji is about male entitlement—just look at Genji, To no Chujo, Yugiri, Kashiwagi, Kaoru, Niou, etc. Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) as a kid says girls are made of water, boys are made of dirt, girls are pure and boys are dirty; I don’t know if Cao Xueqin shares the sentiment but he seems to prefer the female sex. 

Another thing I’ve noticed though, is that the girls are all much nicer than the married women. Just look at Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu), Vương phu nhân (Lady Wang), Tiết Di Ma (Xue Yima/ Aunt Xue), Hình phu nhân (Lady Xing), Triệu Di Nương (concubine Zhao), Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng)…They all have negative traits and tend to be unperceptive, cruel, malicious, selfish… in varying degrees. Even Vương phu nhân (Lady Wang), who normally seems like a kind woman, doesn’t seem so in her treatment of Kim Xuyến (Golden).  

The only exception is Lý Hoàn (Li Wan), but she is a widow and I’m under the impression that she wasn’t married very long. 

7/ One thing I’ve learnt about Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) from chapter 51 is that he’s not ignorant about medicine but he doesn’t understand money. Without Tập Nhân (Aroma), he is helpless.