Hong lou meng: chapters 73-74, 3 Spring girls, timing issues

1/ Cao Xueqin drops some hints before, but it’s in chapter 73 that the garden is invaded and corrupted—no longer the perfect, utopian place it has been so far for Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and the girls. 

2/ Thám Xuân (Tanchun) appears in the chapter, which is a good reason to mention a good essay I read the other day about her. 

Bài viết của Anh Nguyễn “Giả Thám Xuân: con phượng hoàng sinh trong ổ quạ”: http://soi.today/?p=163273 

In an earlier blog post, I said she’s a phoenix born in a crows’ nest, which is the way other characters see her—the word “phoenix” is not quite perfect. The bird is the fenghuang, a bird in Chinese mythology that is sometimes known as the Chinese phoenix though there aren’t many similarities between it and the Western phoenix (the same way the Chinese dragon is nothing like the Western dragon). 

The word phượng (feng) in Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) is phượng hoàng (fenghuang) but the true fenghuang in Hong lou meng is Thám Xuân (Tanchun). Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) is mostly street-smart and cunning, knowing how to flatter and manipulate, but she is shallow; Thám Xuân (Tanchun) is truly intelligent, educated, and wise.  

The image is reinforced when the girls play kites in chapter 70, and her kite is a fenghuang. 

This is something I have noticed myself, but the essay also mentions that Thám Xuân (Tanchun) is linked to the kite motif. It appears 3 times in the novel. 

The 1st time, there’s an image of a kite in her page in Kim lăng thập nhị thoa chính sách (The 12 Beauties of Jinling—official register). 

The 2nd time, when the teenagers write riddles for Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) to guess and hers is about the kite. 

The 3rd time, the kite-playing scene above.  

3/ Overall many girls in Hong lou meng are excellent. Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) always comes last. He’s forever the redundant stone.  

4/ Not all the girls are intelligent and interesting however—look at Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun). So far she’s been left in the background, now chapter 73 is her chapter. 

Thám Xuân (Tanchun) and Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun) are, I think, foils—both are named Xuân (Chun), meaning “spring”; both are daughters of concubines, but if the former is sharp, intelligent, good at poetry, shrewd, and assertive, the latter is soft, meek, slack, passive, boring, and spineless. The only good thing that can be said about Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun) is that she’s mild and nice.  

I like the way a servant describes her as so meek that even if you poke her with a sewing needle, she wouldn’t know to say ow. 

In this chapter, Cao Xueqin creates a single memorable image that can sum up everything about her—she fixes her gaze on a book to ignore the fighting going on around her, involving her. She stands outside everything. 

5/ There is a bit confusion about time.  

In chapter 66, the mandarin tells Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) to come back in October. Liễu Tương Liên (Liu Xianglian) returns in August. 

In chapter 68, Cao Xueqin doesn’t say which month it is, but Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) goes to see the mandarin and doesn’t come back till 2 months later. 

In his absence Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) brings Vưu Nhị Thư (You Erjie) to the family mansions. I’m still not sure about the timeline, but Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) comes back and gets rewarded Thu Đồng (Autumn), the chamber-wife. Then in chapter 69 there’s a line about Vưu Nhị Thư (You Erjie) becoming sick due to stress and unhappiness after a month. 

In the same chapter she says to Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) that she has been there about half a year, and later he says to a doctor that she hasn’t had a period for 3 months. 

In chapter 70, Vưu Nhị Thư’s (You Erjie) funeral is at the end of the year. 

Now in chapter 73, it is August and Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) says to Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) that it’ll soon to be her first death anniversary. 

The timeline of Hong lou meng is rather messy, I assume due to the various revisions (5, as Cao Xueqin says?) and stories he grafts onto the novel at a later stage. The Tale of Genji doesn’t have this problem—Murasaki Shikibu always mentions the month, even the date, so Royall Tyler can create a clear chronology and determine the characters’ age. The Tale of Genji doesn’t really have mistakes, except for the Rokujo Haven’s age at the beginning of the novel and some details in the odd chapters 42-44, which seem to be tampered with—the rest of the novel doesn’t have timing issues or continuity issues despite its length, scope, and complexity. 

6/ The episode about Vương phu nhân (lady Wang) and Tình Văn (Qingwen/ Skybright) in chapter 74 reinforces 2 things: 

- Tình Văn (Skybright) mirrors Đại Ngọc (Daiyu): both of them are compared to Tây Thi (Xi Shi), one of the 4 great beauties in ancient China, while Bảo Thoa (Baochai) is compared to Dương Quý Phi (Yang Guifei), another great beauty; both of them often get jealous and sarcastic, and have a short temper; both of them are not very popular, compared to Tập Nhân (Xiren/ Aroma) and Bảo Thoa (Baochai) respectively. 

- Vương phu nhân (lady Wang) may appear to be a kind mistress normally, but she can be very irrational, unfair, and cruel. See the case of Kim Xuyến (Jinchuan/ Golden). It’s not a surprise that she now goes nuts about Tình Văn (Skybright). 

7/ Chapter 74, as Knulp Tanner puts it, could be titled Much Ado about Nothing: people lose their shit over a little bag with some sexy image. 

It gives Thám Xuân (Tanchun) a chance to shine however, and she’s now one of my favourite characters. She is the most interesting of the Xuân (Chun) girls. I’ve liked her since she took over Vương Hy Phượng’s (Wang Xifeng) role to manage the household during her illness, and now she’s the only one of the young people who uses some strong words with Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng). How could you not love that? I also love the way she defends her maids, not allowing vợ Vương Thiện Bảo (Wang Shanbao’s wife) to humiliate them, nor herself.  

8/ Contrasted with her during the raid is Tích Xuân (Xichun), who is ready to throw her maid under the bus. 

I like the way Cao Xueqin puts many characters under the same situation—the raid—to characterise and contrast them. I don’t mind that he puts Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) and Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun) in bed and therefore out of the way, because I think his main point is to contrast Thám Xuân (Tanchun) and Tích Xuân (Xichun). 

Tích Xuân (Xichun) is the fourth of the Xuân (Chun) girls and so far has been in the background—the main thing we know about her is that she’s not very good at poetry but she can paint well. In this chapter, she comes across as very cold and selfish, especially in her treatment of the maid Nhập Họa (Picture in Hawkes’s version). 

At the same time, is it not understandable that she wants to break from her branch of the family, so as not to get involved in all the dirty stuff of Giả Trân (Jia Zhen) and Giả Dung (Jia Rong) and perhaps Vưu Thị (You-shi)? 

9/ Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun) is too weak-willed and passive to defend her maid Tư Kỳ (Chess). Tích Xuân (Xichun) is too cold to bother about her servant Nhập Họa (Picture).