The Odyssey and The Tale of Genji: on human nature, customs, and literary tradition

In an earlier blog post, I wrote “I actually had more trouble trying to understand the characters in The Tale of Genji (about 1,000 years old) than the ones in the Odyssey (about 2,700 years old).” My friend Susan asked why that was, so perhaps I’ll write a bit about the subject.

The Odyssey is—if we have to boil it down to one word—about homecoming. The only thing strange about is the concept of xenia—hospitality and guest-friendship—because why does Odysseus’s household have to keep feeding the suitors and allowing them to eat up the estate in his absence? Athena’s involvement is perhaps also a bit strange, but not that strange if you think of her as a character—the gods are like human beings, just with power—and if you’re used to the depiction of the gods’ interferences in Greek tragedy. Everything else is familiar: Odysseus’s urge to go home and his companions’ unthinking recklessness and Poseidon’s anger and Telemakhos’s hatred of the suitors and Odysseus’s caution upon his return and Penelope’s suffering and so on are all familiar.

The Tale of Genji is closer to us in time, but more alien. It requires us to adjust to that world, but many things remain baffling and incomprehensible, if not downright reprehensible: on the one hand, men and women at the Heian court who aren’t married to each other can’t even have a conversation except through servants, and upon further acquaintance, behind screens; but on the other hand, someone like Genji has sex with everyone and nothing seems out of bounds, as he has sex with (or even forces himself on) his first cousin and his best friend’s lover and his own stepmother and other relatives, and he even abducts an eight-year-old and raises her to be his perfect wife.  

Not only so, the characters don’t have names! As the narrator is a lady-in-waiting, like Murasaki Shikibu, she has to refer to them by titles or nicknames or some other ways—we have to keep track of hundreds of characters without names (unless you take the easy way and read another translation instead of Royall Tyler’s). 

That doesn’t mean that The Tale of Genji can’t be appreciated, or even loved, by readers used to Western culture and tradition. It is among my Top 10 novels (or at least was, when I last made the list over a year ago). Once you (manage to) get past the weird stuff in The Tale of Genji, many experiences and feelings are—to use a word lots of readers seem to like—relatable: love and jealousy and heartbreak and suffocation and disappointment and envy and loneliness and fear and grief, etc. Murasaki is especially good at writing about death, grief, women’s suffering, and the impermanence of everything. Her novel simply requires more efforts from the reader. 

But it’s not just that 11th century novel, I also had a hard time when I was exploring 20th century Japanese novels. It’s a different tradition, with different styles and expectations. The only Japanese writer I wholeheartedly embrace is Akutagawa (at least the 18 short stories I’ve read). With all others, there are barriers and the novels often seem blurry to me, as someone interested in characters, details, and metaphors: the characters often seem blurry, without the vividness and complexity of characters in Western novels (except for the main characters in Kokoro and Botchan); descriptions tend to be impressionistic; metaphors are generally rare (Mishima and Abe Kobo excepted); but above all, I’m baffled by the (lack of) sense of pacing and tension, either because it has an odd structure and ends so abruptly (such as Kokoro), or because of its evenness of tone and lack of emphasis (like some novels of Kawabata and Tanizaki). I love Japanese cinema, which I know the best after American and British cinema, but Japanese literature remains for me a challenge. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out I have more difficulty with Japanese plays than with the ancient Greek plays.

It is perhaps for the same reasons—different tradition, different styles and expectations—that I took quite a while to get into Hong lou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) from 18th century China, even though I’m familiar with Chinese culture, whereas I took to the 17th century Don Quixote immediately. Descriptions in Don Quixote may be crude—to use Nabokov’s word—but descriptions in Hong lou meng are all catalogues, awkwardly listing qualities or different aspects of someone or something like items. More importantly, Cao Xueqin often doesn’t go very far in depicting characters’ thoughts: sometimes he writes down some thoughts and one expects him to go further, but he doesn’t. Reading Hong lou meng, I had to make an effort and readjust my expectations. 

Where am I going with all this? My point is that it’s important to think of works of literature as part of a tradition. This is why I didn’t randomly pick up a single play from ancient Greece and stop, I read Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes. This is why, with my interest in Western literature, I’m now going back to its foundation. This is why I advocate for teaching Shakespeare and the Western canon in school. This is why, when I explore literature outside the West (especially before the 20th century), I keep in mind that it’s a different tradition and try to explore multiple works and multiple writers. 

All that said, isn’t it amazing that the Odyssey is so relatable—to use again a word I don’t particularly like—after something like 2,700 years? 

PS: I recently read Cyclops by Euripides but didn’t blog about it, as I had nothing to say. 

Can we comment on a translation without knowing the original?

1/ Amidst all the shock and horror on twitter over people never having heard of The Odyssey, arose a new quarrel about Emily Wilson’s translation (is it woke? is it badly written? or are detractors simply ignorant?). A few white knights have come to the rescue, saying that those who don’t read ancient Greek don’t get to have an opinion and call it a bad translation. 

Isn’t that just a way to shut down conversation?  

Of course, the opinions of people who can read the original are more valid—they can talk about accuracy and fidelity (or lack of)—but others can still comment on other aspects of the translation: how it reads in the target language, whether it’s good prose/ poetry, if it ends up being translationese, and so on and so forth. After all, do we not make a judgement when we compare passages in order to pick a translation to read? 

Also, we may not be able to criticise Emily Wilson if we only have her and Fagles (who I have heard has a habit of embroidering the text), but why can’t we if we have multiple passages in multiple translations—by Lattimore, by Fitzgerald, by Fagles, by Rouse, by Butler, by her? 

2/ So I’m not going to feel guilty about taking a dislike to, and telling others not to read, Washburn’s translation of The Tale of Genji. I don’t speak Japanese, true, but having compared Waley, Seidensticker, Tyler, and him, I can see what Washburn’s doing and I don’t like it. 

3/ Nor am I going to feel bad about my dislike of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. But it’s not an entirely ignorant view—Gary Saul Morson has pointed out what’s wrong with their literalist approach. 

4/ Knowledge is sometimes a hindrance, though. I would never be happy with any translation of Truyện Kiều. Would any Vietnamese? 

5/ I guess Chinese speakers feel the same about translations—especially of Chinese poetry—into Western languages. 

I don’t speak Chinese, but I read Hong lou meng in a Vietnamese translation and occasionally glanced at the English text by David Hawke and could see some of the changes he made—Bảo Ngọc’s (Baoyu) building “Di hồng viện”, “hồng” (“hong”) meaning red, became “Green Delights” because of different connotations of the colours in the two cultures; his nickname “Di hồng công tử” in the poetry club became Green Boy.  

6/ I know a Vietnamese intellectual whose translations I would never criticise to his face. I know what he would say. He would ask about inaccuracies and I would have no responses. He would talk about the two schools of translation (that John Rutherford calls the cavaliers vs the puritans) and I would have no arguments. But no amount of rhetoric will persuade my ears that his translations are well-done, because his sentences in Vietnamese would follow the sentence structure and order of English or Spanish or whatever the source language—it ain’t natural Vietnamese. 

7/ I do think we should not criticise a poet if we cannot read them in the original. My friend Himadri (Argumentative Old Git) is irritated by Nabokov casually dismissing Tagore as a mediocrity, and I can see why. Criticise novelists and playwrights and other prose writers if you like; but I don’t think we can dismiss poets who wrote in a language we do not read. More is lost in translation. 

(I am of course talking about poets who are highly esteemed and influential). 

Anyway, Happy New Year!

On picking a translation

Under my last blog post, I got a comment from Thomas Parker asking how I selected translations, so let’s jot down some thoughts. 

1/ Anyone who loves Russian literature knows about the translation wars. Anna Karenina and War and Peace each have about a dozen translations—how do we choose? Here are my rules: never Constance Garnett (except her Chekhov); never Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Garnett, because she has a reputation for being fast and making mistakes and throwing out difficult passages. Pevear and Volokhonsky, because their sentences are clunky and I’m no fan of the literalist school of translation (nor am I a fan of their pumping out one translation after another of books that have been translated a million times—how convenient—contrast them with Robert Chandler, who introduced the Anglophone world to Vasily Grossman). 

Anna Karenina I’ve read in two translations—Aylmer and Louise Maude, and Rosamund Bartlett—both were enjoyable, I preferred the latter’s prose. 

War and Peace I’ve also read in two translations, and I tend to recommend Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker. Other versions may modernise the language or anglicise the names or remove the French passages or remove the feminine endings in names—the Maude-Mandelker seems to be the best option—I want something close to the original without being clunky or awkwardly literal. 

My choice of Ignat Avsey for The Brothers Karamazov went against my general preference and habit (I’m full of contradictions), largely because of my struggle to get into Dostoyevsky in the translation of David McDuff. Next time will be a different version. It flowed well and I ended up loving the book, but once in a while something stuck out like a sore thumb, such as the phrase “my ex”. 

2/ It’s because of my wish for something close to the original that I read The Tale of Genji as translated by Royall Tyler. Madness. But Murasaki Shikibu referred to her characters by title or nickname or relation to someone else—the characters have no names—Royall Tyler retains the same effect and it reflects the world in which Murasaki and her characters live.  

As for you, read Seidensticker if you wish. No strong opinion there. But I would advise against Washburn—I know I’m no expert, but The Tale of Genji is a very subtle novel and Washburn removes all subtlety—he explicitly states that he incorporates explanations into the text itself rather than use notes. 

3/ If I read Chinese literature, which you may have noticed I don’t often do, it’s a matter of course that I would always go for a Vietnamese translation rather than an English one. 

So I might not be able to read Hong lou meng in the original, but at least I’m closer, much closer to it than an English speaker is. 

4/ More is lost in translation of poetry. Perhaps all is lost. Nguyễn Du in translation is no longer Nguyễn Du. Is Hàn Mặc Tử? Is Bùi Giáng? 

People ask me what I recommend for Truyện Kiều and I never know what to say except to stay away from Timothy Allen. 

5/ I haven’t read Pushkin, but then I also don’t read poetry in translation. 

But I don’t read poetry anyway, you’re going to say— but I do a little and will do more—even if I am to take the extreme position of never reading poetry in translation, there’s still a world of Vietnamese poetry and English poetry to read. 

6/ I might contradict myself and read Tang poetry in (Vietnamese) translation. 

7/ I’m sad I can’t read Cervantes, Flaubert, Proust, Pushkin, Homer… in the original. English native speakers complaining about Shakespeare’s English and saying that the rest of the world have the “advantage” of reading/ watching his plays in translation is something I could never understand.  

Don Quixote: “… it’s all made up, and fiction, created by idle minds”

1/ As I’m reading Don Quixote, it may be a good idea to examine the long-held view that Don Quixote is the first modern novel, and the recent claim that the first modern novel is The Tale of Genji from the 11th century. 

(Lots of people actually call The Tale of Genji the first novel, but it obviously wasn’t—there were ancient Greek novels). 

Personally, I have never bought the counter-argument that The Tale of Genji is a monogatari and the novel is a Western concept. The novel is a flexible form: Don Quixote, Clarissa, Tristram Shandy, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Bleak House, Ulysses, As I Lay Dying, One Hundred Years of Solitude… — very different in form and structure—are all novels.

The Oxford Dictionary defines the novel as “a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.” The Britannica definition is “an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.” By these definitions, The Tale of Genji is undoubtedly a novel. It’s not an epic or heroic narrative. 

And if the modern novel is defined by psychological depth, in which characters are individualised, and characterised by thoughts as well as actions, The Tale of Genji too meets the condition. I’m starting this discussion, which I’m probably too ignorant to handle, not to say that East Asians beat Europeans, but to argue that the novel as a form developed independently along different paths around the world. 

Don Quixote is more modern though: there are multiple narrators, perhaps unreliable narrators; there are first-person narrators as well as third-person narrators; there are stories within the story; Cervantes reminds the readers that we are reading fiction (even before the metafiction in Part 2), etc.  

The quote in the headline comes from P.1, ch.32, said by the priest to the innkeeper about chivalry romances. 

2/ I think Shakespeare would have liked the story of Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla in Don Quixote. It handles some of his favourite themes: male friendship, a woman’s purity, love, jealousy, betrayal, manipulation, pretence… It’s a story within the story of Don Quixote, but within it, the characters put on an act for an audience (Anselmo) as though performing onstage: when Camilla, knowing that her husband Anselmo is watching through a keyhole, speaks out loud to herself like a heroine in a tragedy, she is mimicking—but Cervantes is mocking or at least referencing—soliloquies in theatre. 

Anselmo asking Lotario to help him test Camilla’s loyalty reminds me of Posthumus’s wager with Iachimo about Imogen’s fidelity in Cymbeline. 

I also like the complex layers of Don Quixote: we follow Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, with the narrator sometimes interrupting to remind us of the other narrator Cide Mahamate Benengeli; Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet Cardenio, we get the Cardenio story and then get interrupted, and we get back to the main plot; at some point, the narrative leaves the main characters and follows the priest and the barber, who meet Cardenio, and he tells his story; the priest, the barber, and Cardenio then meet Dorotea, who tells her story; then Cardenio and Dorotea—so far subplots—join the main plot as they meet Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; but interestingly, they join the main plot by deceiving the knight and his squire and make up a story about Dorotea being Princess Micomicona; Cervantes then interrupts the main plot, giving us the story of Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla; the inserted story is then interrupted by the main plot, as Sancho Panza runs in and yells that Don Quixote is fighting a giant; then the narrative returns to the Anselmo story; when it’s finished, new characters arrive, and now the plot of Cardenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando, and Dorotea gets resolved; and so on. You get the idea. 

What I’m saying is that Don Quixote has constant movements, constant interruptions, constant digressions. 

3/ I note that Don Quixote goes out in the world in armour seeking adventures and gets nothing but trouble and beatings, but some of the people he encounters have had adventures (like Ruy Perez, the captive) or colourful, dramatic experiences (Cardenio, Dorotea). 

Interestingly enough, Ruy Perez’s story must be inspired by Cervantes’s own experience as a soldier “sold into slavery in Algiers, the centre of the Christian slave traffic in the Muslim world.” Shakespeare’s life was rather boring in comparison. 

My Twitter friend Alok Ranjan has mentioned that he likes the interplay of Romance and Realism in Don Quixote, so I’ve been thinking about the differences: the main plot of Don Quixote is Realism, as he, inspired by chivalry romances, goes into the real world and gets beaten up; the subplots tend to be Romance, defined by Oxford English Dictionary as “a fictitious narrative, usually in prose, in which the settings or the events depicted are remote from everyday life, or in which sensational or exciting events or adventures form the central theme; a book”, or defined by Britannica as “sometimes marked by strange or unexpected incidents and developments.” 

At the same time, where do you draw the line? Isn’t Cervantes’s life full of adventures and strange incidents, like a romance?  

4/ I’ve noticed that so far, all the important female characters are beautiful, extremely beautiful: Luscinda, Dorotea, Zoraida. In the inserted story, Camilla is also beautiful. 

What about the ugly women, Miguel?  

5/ In my last blog post, I complained about Tom Lathrop’s translation, but except for a couple of odd words, I generally enjoy this edition. Generally speaking, the language is not really modernised, and it is funny. 

Some readers complain about the longueurs in Don Quixote, but I’ve enjoyed all of it so far.

Wonderful book! 

East Asian literature 2020

2020 somehow became my year of East Asian literature and I’ve just realised that I forgot to put up a list of the works I read. Here it is: 

Vietnamese (included because Vietnam is culturally East Asian even though it is geographically Southeast Asian): 

- Nguyễn Du: Văn tế thập loại chúng sinh (Văn chiêu hồn), Truyện Kiều. 

- Đoàn Thị Điểm/ Phan Huy Ích: Chinh phụ ngâm (translated into verse in chữ Nôm from the original in chữ Hán by Đặng Trần Côn). 

- Nguyễn Gia Thiều: Cung oán ngâm khúc. 

Japanese: 

- Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji (trans. Royall Tyler), The Diary of Lady Murasaki (trans. Richard Bowring).

- Sei Shonagon: The Pillow Book (trans. Meredith McKinney). 

- The daughter of Sugawara Takasue, also known as Lady Sarashina: Sarashina Nikki (retitled As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, trans. Ivan Morris).

- Natsume Soseki: Kokoro (trans. Meredith McKinney), Kusamakura (retitled The Three-Cornered World, trans. Alan Turney).

- Kawabata Yasunari: The Sound of the Mountain (trans. Edward. G. Seidensticker), Snow Country (trans. Edward. G. Seidensticker).

- Tanizaki Junichiro: Some Prefer Nettles (trans. Edward. G. Seidensticker), Naomi (trans. Anthony H. Chambers). 

- Akutagawa Ryunosuke : Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (trans. Jay Rubin).

- Abe Kobo: The Woman in the Dunes (trans. E. L. Saunders). 

Chinese: 

- Cao Xueqin: Hong lou meng, also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, A Dream of Red Mansions, or The Story of the Stone, and Hồng lâu mộng in Vietnamese (trans. Vũ Bội Hoàng group). 

In total: 4 long poems, a collection of short stories, 10 thin or average-sized books (not including the collection and Truyện Kiều), and 2 doorstoppers. 

All were newly discovered authors except for Nguyễn Du (because what Vietnamese person doesn’t grow up with Nguyễn Du?). 

Favourites: 

Hong lou meng

The Tale of Genji

Truyện Kiều 

Kokoro 

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

The Pillow Book 

Murasaki Shikibu, Cao Xueqin, Lev Tolstoy, and my top 10 novels

If you’ve been reading my blog or following me on twitter, you may have guessed correctly that the 2 greatest novels I’ve read this year are: Genji monotagari, better known as The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, and Hong lou meng, also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, A Dream of Red Mansions, or The Story of the Stone, by Cao Xueqin. 

The 2 novels have quite a few things in common. Both are East Asian classics—The Tale of Genji is recognised as Japan’s greatest and most important novel, and Hong lou meng is one of the 4 Chinese classic novels though some people would argue that it’s the greatest novel from China. Both handle Confucianism and Buddhism, but the former is a Buddhist novel while the latter is a Taoist novel. 

Both are extremely long, Hong lou meng is much longer than War and Peace, and both have a great scope with about 400-500 characters. The Tale of Genji depicts all aspects of the Japanese court during the Heian period: life at court, hierarchy, beliefs and lifestyles, exorcism, rituals, festivals, letter-writing, calligraphy, poetry, music, dance, incense-making, painting, gardening, fashion, Buddhist philosophy, marriage politics, double standards for men and women, etc. Similarly, Hong lou meng depicts everything about Chinese society in the 18th century: festivities, funeral rites, customs, cuisine, medicine, drinking games, card games, music, poetry, classic literature, painting, architecture, gardening, fashion, mythology, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, polygamy, sexuality, human trafficking, corruption, etc. 

Both have a male character in the centre, but focus more on the surrounding female characters. Both have sympathy for women. However, Murasaki Shikibu’s novel follows Genji from birth to death, then moves on to the new generation, whereas a large part of Cao Xueqin’s novel focuses on the teenage years of Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and the girls. 

Now you may ask, which one is better? I can’t really say. Murasaki Shikibu and Cao Xueqin have very different styles, and the 2 novels have different qualities.

The Tale of Genji is a psychological novel while Hong lou meng is more like a novel of manners, in which the characters are largely characterised through action and dialogue—in a way, Cao Xueqin writes like a playwright. Compared to Cao Xueqin, Murasaki Shikibu has a more beautiful style, exquisite sensibility, and a melancholic tone—the entire novel is pervaded by a sense of mono no aware, and one of the main themes of the novel is transience and the uncertainty of life. Her novel may have more emotional depth. Out of all the writers I’ve read, Murasaki Shikibu and Tolstoy are the two I think are best at handling death—no one else comes close. The difference is that Tolstoy mostly focuses on the person who is dying while Murasaki Shikibu also writes about it but writes more about the impact of death on other people—death of a beloved or family member as a transforming experience. She doesn’t kill off characters to serve the plot as most writers do—every single death has significance. 

Compared to Cao Xueqin, she is also a more visual writer, especially in her descriptions of nature. Everyone who reads The Tale of Genji is always conscious of its beauty, on every page. 

The qualities of Hong lou meng are a different kind. It is a rich, diverse book—Cao Xueqin seems to write about all kinds of people, of both sexes, and from different classes of society. While Murasaki Shikibu focuses on a handful from her large cast of characters, Cao Xueqin treats nearly 40 characters as major, and there are many pairs who appear similar but they are all distinct and memorable. The former focuses more on depth and writes about a much longer span of time, following the main character from birth to death to his descendants, while the latter focuses more on breadth. We know Genji much better than we know Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), but as a whole the characters in Hong lou meng are better-realised, more vividly real, more colourful, and more diverse. The novel is especially striking in its sympathy for women and humane portrayal of servants.  

Like War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Hong lou meng has an expansive scope but at the same time has great attention to detail. Like Tolstoy’s novels, it has a vividness and naturalness that feels more like life than a work of art, and every single character, even the most secondary and unimportant ones, feels like a real person. I expect that Cao Xueqin’s characters would stay with me the way Tolstoy’s characters have stayed with me over the years. 

Cao Xueqin is comparable to Tolstoy in his humanity, in his compassion and true sympathy for everyone. In terms of psychological depth, Tolstoy is much superior—he is unsurpassable, while the characters in Hong lou meng are largely conveyed through action, dialogue, and occasionally monologue, though Cao Xueqin also characterises them through poetry. Tolstoy is superior in terms of style. 

However, Cao Xueqin has his own qualities. He is no preacher, no moralist—his presence is not felt in the text. He is no sexist—Hong lou meng has a wide range of female characters, and the most intelligent, excellent characters in the novel are girls. 

Above all, Hong lou meng has supernatural or dream elements and the real/unreal theme. There are also supernatural elements in The Tale of Genji, mostly ghosts: the jealous and vengeful spirit of the living Rokujo Haven is one of the most powerful images I’ve encountered in literature, especially when the Rokujo Haven herself is not aware of any anger or resentment, suggesting that Murasaki Shikibu is aware of the gap between conscious and unconscious feelings. Hong lou meng goes even further in its dream elements: the novel is framed as the story of the stone, which comes to earth as Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), so there’s a real/unreal theme that runs through the entire novel and there are many magical elements such as the Land of Illusion, the Buddhist monk and Taoist priest, the Mirror for the Romantic, the double, ghosts, demons, and so on. These elements add another layer of meaning to the novel and elevate it beyond a social novel or a family novel. My favourites are the story of Giả Thụy (Jia Rui) and the mirror, and the encounter of the 2 Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu).

To me, Hong lou meng and The Tale of Genji are not just my best reads of 2020, but they’re the best over the past few years, and I do think that they’re on a par with the finest works of Western literature. To be honest, most novels would appear small and narrow next to them. 

And yet in the West, they’re often neglected. 

Updating my top 10 favourite novels (order changed on 18/5/2022): 

Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy

War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Hong lou meng by Cao Xueqin 

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 

_________________________________________________

Here is Kenneth Rexroth on The Tale of Genji and Hong lou meng: 

“When I was a kid, I used to read novels by sets: Tolstoy, Conrad, James, Dostoevski, Turgenev, Zola, Flaubert. They weren’t one book at a time, but a whole world that would envelop me for months and from which I would emerge into real life with the strange outlandish feeling of someone back from years abroad. One Chinese novel can do this to you, sweep you away out of sight of home and self, and lose you for a week or more in its own pullulating verisimilitude.

It is this total verisimilitude which differentiates the greatest Chinese novels from the Japanese and puts The Dream of the Red Chamber in a nobler class than Genji. The Japanese novel is a universe of exquisite sensibility. It is concerned with the most profound moral issues ever undertaken in any work of fiction, and implicitly with philosophical issues utterly beyond the grasp of any European novelist. It handles all this with breathtaking skill. But it is possible, immediately, to say these things about it. They are patent. You are unaware of anything like this in The Dream of the Red Chamber until the week after you have laid it down. You are always aware of the vertiginously beautiful style of Lady Murasaki. In The Dream of the Red Chamber, you are unaware you are reading, and nobody remembers who the author was. It is the difference, on a much lesser plane, between Walter Pater and Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser is horribly crude, but Pater is barbarous. I am afraid Dreiser is the better stylist. In Genji they eat but seldom, drink a little, but never move their bowels. In the Chinese novel, as in the gardens of Italy where the nightingale sings in the blooming pomegranate, the odor of the night soil of ten thousand years is never out of your nose.

[…] The Dream of the Red Chamber is the better novel because it is the truer, the more profoundly humane. Genji is true and profound and humane and beautiful, too, but we are not all able to identify ourselves with the insouciant demigod who dips souls from Hell through ten million reincarnations, just, as it were, for fun. On the other hand, there is no question but that we too are part of that astronomical mass of living human beings made of real flesh, sweeping past forever like stardust, and that if we are wise, we will take it easy, like the resting stone and the falling stream.” (source) 

Hong lou meng: chapters 52-53, Cao Xueqin’s humanity, Ning-Rong, textual problems

1/ Let’s again compare Hong lou meng and The Tale of Genji, in terms of characterisation. Both novels have a large scope and have about 400-500 characters, but whereas The Tale of Genji has about 20 characters we know well or truly well and within that group Murasaki Shikibu focuses on a handful of characters, Cao Xueqin treats nearly 40 characters as major. Murasaki Shikibu focuses more on depth, so we know Genji much better than we know Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) for example, but if we look at the entire canvas and compare the 2 novels as a whole, Cao Xueqin’s characters are more well-realised, more colourful and diverse, including people from different classes of society. The characters in Hong lou meng feel real, and there are often pairs of characters who appear similar but who are nevertheless distinct. 

For example, Tình Văn (Qingwen/ Skybright) also gets jealous and often makes snide remarks like Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) but doesn’t have her depth and sensitivity and tends to be more short-tempered; Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun) and Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) are both charming, loud, and full of vitality, but Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) is cruel and often flatters the grandmother and gets away with slightly insulting her or pointing out her foibles by disguising it as a joke, whereas Tương Vân (Xiangyun) is forthright, sometimes without tact, but still lovable because she is kind, open-hearted, and intelligent; Tập Nhân (Xiren/ Aroma) and Bình Nhi (Ping’er/ Patience) are both excellent servants and kind girls, but Tập Nhân (Aroma) seems more reserved and patient, and doesn’t mind suffering a bit loss, such as with vú Lý (nannie Li), etc. 

We watch these characters go about their daily lives, watch them enter and exit the scenes… then Cao Xueqin gradually drops more details about them, gives them a backstory or adds some more layers and creates more depth. 

In chapter 19, he gives Tập Nhân (Aroma) a backstory, a family outside the Giả (Jia) family, and again alludes to it in chapter 51. 

In chapter 44, we get to know Bình Nhi (Patience) better. 

Now chapter 52 is devoted to Tình Văn (Skybright), another servant. 

This doesn’t mean that Cao Xueqin only cares about servants—earlier in the novel, we already saw him hint at the suffering of Giả Nguyên Xuân (Jia Yuanchun), the Imperial Consort. But the servants seem to get more sympathy, more understanding and love from him. 

As a novel, Hong lou meng is full of humanity and sympathy. At some point I would write a Cao Xueqin vs Tolstoy comparison, but not yet. 

2/ A very small detail in chapter 53 catches my attention: Giả Dung’s (Jia Rong) new wife Hồ thị (Hu-shi) is in the room with her mother-in-law Vưu thị (You-shi), but she leaves the room to avoid Giả Trân (Jia Zhen) when he enters. 

3/ The 2 men of the 2 branches of the Giả (Jia) family are named “for the first time” in chapter 53. Previously they were only referred to by their titles.  

Ninh quốc công (Duke of Ningguo) is Giả Diễn (Jia Yan). 

Vinh quốc công (Duke of Rongguo) is, well… 

Here, there is a continuity issue: the Vietnamese translation follows the Chinese text and says the name of Vinh quốc công (Duke of Rongguo) is Giả Pháp (Jia Fa), but the English translation goes with Jia Yuan because that’s the name given in chapter 3, when Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) moves into the house and sees the sign. The name in Vietnamese is Giả Nguyên. 

Now, if you look at my family tree, the majority of the characters are part of Vinh quốc (Rongguo) house: Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu), Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu), Giả Nguyên Xuân (Jia Yuanchun), Giả Thám Xuân (Jia Tanchun), Giả Nghênh Xuân (Jia Yingchun), Giả Liễn (Jia Lian)… 

A few others belong to the Ninh (Ningguo) house: Giả Trân (Jia Zhen), Giả Dung (Jia Rong), Giả Tích Xuân (Jia Xichun)…

Looking again at the family tree made me realise that I’d always grouped Tích Xuân (Xichun) together with the young people of the Vinh quốc (Rongguo) house because she’s brought up with other Xuân (Chun) girls and always hangs out with them, and Giả Dung (Jia Rong) is around their age, but Tích Xuân (Xichun) is actually the younger sister of his father Giả Trân (Jia Zhen).

4/ As I read about the Lunar New Year celebrations in chapter 53 (note that I say Lunar New Year, not Chinese New Year—Vietnamese people also celebrate it), I can’t help thinking that Hong lou meng has to be written by a rich person who went poor. 

Not a poor person, who wouldn’t have known such luxuries and wouldn’t have the education and the knowledge of so many fields.

Not a rich person who stayed rich either, who wouldn’t have known decline and in such a society of strict hierarchy probably wouldn’t have understood so well servants and poor people. 

5/ Chapter 53 would be the final chapter in volume 2 of the Penguin edition (David Hawkes and John Minford). Volume 2, as David Hawkes has pointed out in his introduction, focuses on the material world—gone are the Buddhist monk and Taoist priest, gone is Thái hư ảo cảnh (The land of illusion), nor do we see any ghosts. The supernatural and mythological elements were my favourite part of volume 1, but their absence in volume 2 isn’t a problem because the characters are now more developed and there is more poetry. In volume 2, we also see more, much more of Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun), my favourite of the girls.

Volume 2 ends with some bad signs: many characters have delicate health, especially Đại Ngọc (Daiyu), who constantly gets sick; and now we start to hear from the Giả (Jia) people themselves that they struggle financially because of their extravagant lifestyles and wasteful habits, and aren’t as wealthy and secure as they appear. 

6/ After reading David Hawkes’s preface to volume 3, I’m rather concerned about the different solutions of different texts to the continuity errors of the Chinese original. For the Hong lou meng read-along, Knulp Tanner is reading the French version, Vishy is reading the English translation by the Yangs called Dream of the Red Mansions, others are reading the English translation called The Story of the Stone by David Hawkes and John Minford, and I’m reading the Vietnamese one and occasionally check the Hawkes-Minford one. 

I remember the scene with Diệu Ngọc (Miaoyu/ Adamantina) in chapter 41. After her rant about tea and water…

This is the Hawkes text: 

“Dai-yu was too well aware of Adamantina’s eccentricity to attempt a reply; and since it felt awkward to sit there saying nothing, she signalled to Bao-chai that they should go.” 

This is the Vietnamese text:

“Bảo Thoa biết Diệu Ngọc có tính dở hơi, không thích nói nhiều, cũng không thích ngồi lâu; uống nước xong, rủ Đại Ngọc đi ra.” 

My translation of the Vietnamese text: 

“Baochai knows Miaoyu is eccentric so she doesn’t want to talk much, and doesn’t want to stay long; after drinking the tea, signals to Daiyu that they leave.” 

See the difference? So now I don’t know which of them dislikes Diệu Ngọc (Miaoyu/ Adamantina).  

Hong lou meng: chapters 45-48, horny men, Chinese culture and poetry

1/ I like that the widow Lý Hoàn (Li Wan) is raised to be a traditional woman in Chinese society, to have a very limited education and to know her place, but she’s not depicted as all lovely, passive, and meek. The stuff she says to Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) in chapter 45 are delicious. 

2/ I’ve come across a few articles on the internet, by Chinese people or Westerners, saying that Westerners (should) read Hong lou meng to understand China and the Chinese—what they don’t say is that Hong lou meng depicts and exposes some rather ugly aspects of Chinese culture and society in the 18th century. In the previous blog post, I noted the treatment of the servants at the birthday party. Chapter 45 has a scene where a female servant kowtows to her mistress Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) for giving her husband Chu Thụy (Zhou Rui) 40 strokes by the heavy bamboo instead of firing him. Chapter 48 shows the powerlessness of normal people when facing a corrupted government official like Giả Vũ Thôn (Jia Yucun). 

3/ After showing how shitty it is to be a servant in 18th century China, Cao Xueqin goes on, in these chapters, to depict how much shittier to be a good-looking female servant, because if you are, like Uyên Ương (Yuanyang/ Faithful), some animal of a master like Giả Xá (Jia She) may want you as a concubine or a chamber-wife. Cao Xueqin lets us see that at least there’s still the matriarch of the house and there’s nothing Giả Xá (Jia She) can do while his mother Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu) is there, so that’s the good thing about hierarchy and respect for elders, but Cao also hints at the same time that Uyên Ương (Faithful) is only safe while Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu) is alive.

I like that we have seen Uyên Ương (Faithful) before, playing a prank on the old countrywoman and making fun of her, and now we see her better—the other servants are not all lovely and perfect and full of goodness like Tập Nhân (Xiren/ Aroma), Tình Văn (Qingwen/ Skybright) for example can be jealous and sarcastic, and Uyên Ương (Faithful) can be razor-sharp when she loses her temper. 

4/ It’s funny how similar Giả Xá (Jia She) and Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) are. Like father, like son. But if Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) is married to a lion named Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), his mother Hình phu nhân (Lady Wing) is rather soft on her husband, or perhaps rather scared of him, and Giả Xá (Jia She) can do whatever he wants. 

Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) is different from his father Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) however. He is more sensitive and perceptive, and to his father’s disappointment, has no interest in chasing name and reputation. His sensitivity makes me think of Genji. 

5/ Chapter 47 brings schadenfreude to anyone who dislikes Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan). Everyone, I guess. 

Interestingly, the incident with Liễu Tương Liên (Liu Xianglian) is set up in a way that it makes me think of some previous incidents: 

- The competition between Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan) himself with another man at the beginning of the novel over Chân Anh Liên (Zhen Yinglian), who is now Hương Lăng (Xiangling/ Caltrop). Note too that the avenger is Liễu Tương Liên (Liu Xianglian), sharing the same name Liên (莲 Lian) with the girl. 

- The story about Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) and Giả Thụy (Jia Rui). Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) uses brains and manipulation, Liễu Tương Liên (Liu Xianglian) manipulates then uses force.

- Giả Liễn’s (Jia Lian) affair and Giả Xá’s (Jia She) attempt to get a chamber-wife. The first one gets interrupted, the second one doesn’t get what he wants, and the third one, well… 

Tiết Bảo Thoa (Xue Baochai) is smarter and has more sense than her mother. We can see that she may not be warm or passionate but isn’t a cold, heartless bitch, and she knows her brother is wrong.  

6/ One of the things that rather bug me about Hong lou meng is that generally I don’t know how old the characters are. In these chapters, I believe that Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) is about 14 according to the East Asian age reckoning, Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu) is about the same, Tiết Bảo Thoa (Xue Baochai) is about 15, and Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu) is not yet 75, but what about everyone else? 

So in an early chapter I saw Giả Trân (Jia Zhen) yell at his son Giả Dung (Jia Rong) and weirdly tell a servant to spit in his face, and now Giả Xá (Jia She) beats the shit out of his son Giả Liễn (Jia Lian), and my thoughts both times are “but how old is the son???”. 

7/ Like The Tale of Genji painting a vivid picture of the Heian court and describing many aspects of Japanese culture in the 10th century, Hong lou meng depicts many aspects of Chinese culture at the time such as festivities, funeral rites, cuisine, drinking games, card games, music, poetry, classic literature, painting, architecture, gardening, fashion, mythology, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and so on. 

Chapter 48 is about Chinese poetry—Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) teaches Hương Lăng (Caltrop), Cao Xueqin teaches Chinese readers. 

To learn Chinese poetry, Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) says, one must first read Vương Ma Cật or Vương Duy (Wang Wei), Đỗ Phủ (Du Fu), and Lý Bạch (Li Bai), before reading others. Guess what, nobody says old texts are irrelevant and should be replaced with contemporary works. 

8/ In chapter 48, Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) and Bảo Thoa (Baochai) are again contrasted, in the way they behave towards Hương Lăng (Caltrop) when she wishes to learn to compose poetry—Bảo Thoa (Baochai) is Sense, thinking that the girl doesn’t need poetry; Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) is Sensibility, teaching her how to read and how to write poetry because why not. They act according to their essence.  

Hong lou meng: chapters 24-27, servants’ names, demons, Daiyu

1/ In chapter 24, 2 new servants are introduced. 

The first one is Uyên Ương (Yuanyang), a servant of Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu) the grandmother. She becomes Faithful in David Hawkes’s translation, but the name means “mandarin duck”, a symbol of fidelity and lifelong affection in Chinese culture (and also in Vietnamese and Japanese cultures).

What Hawkes does with names in Hong lou meng is that he goes for pinyin for all the characters who are not servants (the Yangs’ translation uses the Wade-Giles system instead), and loosely translates names of servants. 

Tập Nhân (Xiren) becomes Aroma but her name doesn’t mean that literally. Her real name is Hoa Trân Châu (I don’t know the pinyin)—Hoa means “flower” and Trân Châu means “pearl”. Because of her last name, Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) gives her a new name, with Tập Nhân (Xiren) meaning “assails men”, because it comes from a line of poetry. Here’s the line in Sino-Vietnamese: 

“Hoa khí tập nhân.” (Ch.3) 

In English: 

“The flowers’ aroma breathes of hotter days.” (Ch.3) 

That’s why her name becomes Aroma in Hawkes’s version. 

Another maid of Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) is Tình Văn (Qingwen). Her name, according to wikipedia, means “sunny multi-coloured clouds”. In Hawkes’s version, she is Skybright. 

It is quite messy so here’s my list of the main servants: 

Tập Nhân (Xiren)= Aroma 

Tình Văn (Qingwen)= Skybright 

Xạ Nguyệt (Sheyue)= Musk 

Tử Quyên (Zijuan)= Nightingale 

Tuyết Nhạn (Xueyan)= Snowgoose 

Bình Nhi (Ping’er)= Patience 

Hương Lăng (Xiangling)= Caltrop

Uyên Ương (Yuanyang)= Faithful

Thu Văn (Qiuwen)= Ripple

Bích Ngân (Bihen)= Emerald 

Dính Yên (Mingyan)= Tealeaf 

The last one is Bảo Ngọc’s (Baoyu) page boy. 

2/ The second servant introduced in chapter 24 is Tiểu Hồng (Xiaohong). There’s an interesting detail that is missing from David Hawkes’s translation as he removes an entire line about her name—her last name is Lâm (Lin) and her first name is Hồng Ngọc (Hongyu), but because the word Ngọc (Yu) in her name would clash with Ngọc in Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and Đại Ngọc (Daiyu), so she has to change her name into Tiểu Hồng (Xiaohong), which means “little Hong”—“little Red”.  

Her real name means “red jade”. 

It is interesting to note that her name is very similar to another name: Lâm Hồng Ngọc (Lin Hongyu) and Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu). 

Đại Ngọc means “black jade”, the kind of thing women use to draw their eyebrows. 

3/ A few people have said that in The Tale of Genji, there is no evil. There is callousness, aggressiveness, force, kidnap, rape, jealousy, deceit… but no malice, no cruelty, no evil. There is revenge, but it is done by ghosts and spirits, not humans. 

In Hong lou meng, in contrast, there is lots of cruelty and malice, lots of falseness and hypocrisy, lots of jealousy and hate and pettiness. There is lots of pettiness and resentment in it, perhaps more than any other novel I have read, not only between the Giả (Jia) family and other families or between the members and in-laws of the family, but also among the servants. Vú Lý (nanny Li) resents Tập Nhân (Aroma), for instance. Thu Văn (Ripple) and Bích Ngân (Emerald) bully Tiểu Hồng (Crimson) for pouring tea for Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), which she isn’t fit for (as she’s not one of his maids). 

The worst kind of pettiness is of course not between the servants as there isn’t much for them to gain or lose, “the competition” isn’t strong. The worst is between the family members themselves—a society that allows polygamy and has inequality and strict hierarchy naturally creates envy and resentment. 

I don’t think this means that Cao Xueqin has a harsh and negative vision of life. Rather, I think the novel reflects Chinese society—you see this kind of pettiness and malice a lot in Chinese films. 

4/ Chapter 25 has a rather silly scene with the demons possessing Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), but the chapter is terrific with the reappearance of the Buddhist monk and Taoist priest that we have seen at the beginning of the novel. It is a marvellous scene, especially with the things they say about happiness and misery in life, and the briefness of life. 

The Vietnamese translation I think is much better than the English translation, not because of any fault of David Hawkes’s but because of the nature of the language. 

Without the supernatural elements and philosophical aspect, chapter 25 would simply be about a concubine harming others out of jealousy, reminiscent of Raise the Red Lantern, but there’s more. Hong lou meng is, as I said before, at its best, its most exhilarating when it moves to the world of dreams, the world of the supernatural. Cao Xueqin’s novel is much more than a novel of manners, or a family novel. 

5/ Cao Xueqin doesn’t refer to passing time in a clear, consistent way as Murasaki Shikibu does in The Tale of Genji, so sometimes he mentions a new season, a festival, or someone’s birthday, but it’s not quite clear how much time passes. We know in chapter 25, however, that 13 years have passed since the monk and the Taoist priest last met the stone, so according to the Chinese age reckoning, Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) should be 14. 

He drinks way too much for a 13-year-old though (I’m switching back to today’s system of age reckoning). What an alcoholic. 

That raises an important question however: how old was he when he first had sex in chapter 6, with Tập Nhân (Aroma)???    

6/ In these chapters we are introduced to Giả Vân (Jia Yun) and Phùng Tử Anh (Feng Ziying). The former is son of the 5th sister (in-law)—it’s not quite clear who that is—but the guy calls Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) uncle, even though he’s about 4 or 5 years older. The latter is a friend of Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan) and Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu). 

I expect both of them to become more important later on, especially between Giả Vân (Jia Yun) and Tiểu Hồng (Crimson). 

The people in this world don’t have much to do so they just play around and then look for people to bang. 

The mention of Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan) reminds me of something else—it’s strange how this guy has beaten a guy to death and paid nothing for it, and everyone in the family still treats him like nothing happened. 

7/ There’s a passage in chapter 27 that I found a bit confusing, in the conversation between Thám Xuân (Tanchun) and Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu). I had to look at the English version to realise that what looked like a mistake was not a mistake—Thám Xuân (Tanchun) talks like dì Triệu (auntie Zhao) is her auntie because she sees herself as daughter of Vương phu nhân (lady Wang) and doesn’t like the pettiness of her mother and her brother Giả Hoàn (Jia Huan). 

8/ There is a moving scene at the end of chapter 27 and beginning of chapter 28, of Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) sobbing among fallen flowers and reciting a poem about flowers and the fragility of life. Already saddened by the misunderstanding about Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), she looks at the fallen flowers and thinks of her own orphaned lot, and her own death in the future.

This scene shows that Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) is not just over-sensitive and touchy over trifles, but she does have sensibility. The scene also truly establishes for the first time that she and Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) are very similar. Imagine someone else encountering her instead, like Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan)! Or Giả Liễn (Jia Lian). 

I should note though, that there’s some slight difference in tone between the Vietnamese text and the English text by David Hawkes. 

For example, in chapter 27, there is a scene where the girls are celebrating the festival and Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) is nowhere to be seen so Bảo Thoa (Baochai) volunteers to go look for her. However, on the way she comes across Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and starts thinking, then she changes her mind and goes back without seeing her. This is what she thinks to herself about Đại Ngọc: 

“‘… And Dai-yu, at the best of times, is always so touchy and suspicious.’” 

This is the same line in the Vietnamese text: 

“‘… vả chăng Đại Ngọc tính nết nhỏ nhen, lại hay ghen ghét…’” 

The phrase “tính nết nhỏ nhen” means “petty, narrow-minded, small-minded”; “hay ghen ghét” means “jealous, envious, hateful”. The words here are much stronger, harsher. I don’t know which rendition of this specific line is closer to the original (though I think the 2 translations are based on different versions of Hong lou meng). 

On the way back, Bảo Thoa (Baochai) happens to overhear Tiểu Hồng (Crimson) and a little servant talking about Giả Vân (Jia Yun). As the 2 servants suddenly decide to open the door and Bảo Thoa (Baochai) doesn’t want to have some annoying trouble with them, she decides to create a false scent by pretending that she just saw Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) nearby. Here is what the girls say to themselves after she’s gone. 

“‘If it were Miss Bao that had heard us, I don’t suppose anything would,’ said Crimson, ‘but Miss Lin is so critical and so intolerant. If she heard it and it gets about—oh dear!’” (ibid.) 

This is the same line in the Vietnamese text: 

“‘Cô Bảo nghe thấy chẳng sao, chứ cô Lâm miệng hay xoi bói, bụng hay khe khắt, nghe thấy mà đi nói tung ra thì làm thế nào?’” 

If you think of using Google Translate for this line, forget it. You have to trust me when I say that the Vietnamese line says the same things but has a much more negative tone. The word “critical” is not a very harsh word—it can be a neutral word, and when it’s negative, it’s not as negative in tone as some other words such as “judgmental”, “scathing”, “censorious”, etc. The word “intolerant” can be a stronger word, but “hay khe khắt” in Vietnamese means “harsh, severe, stern” and has a more negative tone. 

Overall I think the Vietnamese text has more tone and voice in dialogue, especially when a character is being sarcastic. However, when we get to that scene at the end of chapter 27, the Vietnamese text didn’t make me like Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) more. Somehow the scene made me think of Kiều coming across the abandoned grave of Đạm Tiên and starting to cry, in Truyện Kiều—which is meant to depict her as sensitive but which makes her appear silly and sentimental. 

The same scene in David Hawkes’s text is much more moving.  

It’s odd. 

Hong lou meng: chapters 19-23, 2 kinds of hierarchy, characterisation, lesser children

On 13/11, I put aside Hong lou meng out of annoyance, then spent several days reading Naomi by Tanizaki. I returned to Cao Xueqin on 19/11. 

1/ I have written before that this is a society of strict hierarchy and order, but there are actually 2 kinds of hierarchy: social position (say, the emperor > aristocrats > servants) and age. A servant who has served for a long time is held in high regard and has certain authority among the younger generations of the master’s family, which can be seen in the way Giả Trân (Jia Zhen) and his family let the servant Tiều Đại (Big Jiao) get away with a lot (until he crosses the line and starts yelling about incest) or the way Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) tries to respectfully soothe vú Lý (nanny Li) during her ridiculous tantrum. 

Another thing about (18th century) Chinese society that might intrigue Western readers is that women hold all the power within the family. The gender inequality is that boys have their education prioritised and can go to school and take exams, men can become a mandarin or some government official, men can get a title and have power in society, and a woman has to follow her father and then her husband and then her son (the 3 Obediences and 4 Virtues in Confucianism), but women hold all the power within the family and make decisions, including finances. That’s why people who come to the Giả (Jia) family ask for Vương phu nhân (Wang Furen), and Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) manages everything in the house. 

This was the case in China and Vietnam historically, but it’s similar in Vietnam today as well: girls and women now get the same education and job opportunities as boys and men, but in the house, women still keep all the money and manage all the finances. That’s how you tell it with a Vietnamese couple in a restaurant—if the man pays, they’re not married; if the woman pays, they are.  

As for Japanese society, I know nothing about the 18th century but know from The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book that there’s appalling gender inequality in the 11th century: boys get more of an education, men can go (almost) anywhere while women always have to hide behind a screen or at least a fan, men can learn and write in Chinese and write nonfiction such as history whereas women are barred from the Chinese script and the Chinese classics, only allowed to write in Japanese, and write fiction, which isn’t good enough for men. It is just ironic that over time it was women who dominated Heian literature and became instrumental in developing the vernacular Japanese. 

2/ I think I have figured out the way Cao Xueqin characterises his characters: he uses a few (opposing) strokes, like an action or image, to convey what kind of person a character is, and repeats the action or image. For example, vú Lý (nanny Li) is a greedy servant who eats everything she finds, even when something she comes across is left by Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) for Tập Nhân (Aroma), and always reminds people of what she did for Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu). Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) is a libertine who is nevertheless scared by his wife Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), and she is a strong, shrewd woman who manages everything in the house but who is also a cold bitch—she has indirectly caused the deaths of 3 people but doesn’t seem to care. Giả Thụy (Jia Rui) is a spineless man, and appears even more foolish when he falls for Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) and is made a fool of, without knowing it. Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) is a spoilt rich brat and a weirdo who only plays with girls, but he doesn’t put on a façade and does care about people, whereas Tiết Bàn (Xue Pan) is an utter arsehole who doesn’t care about anyone and gets away with anything, including beating a man to death, because he’s rich. Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu), in contrast with her reputation in popular culture, is a petty whiny little bitch who always mocks someone or makes some snide remarks and then cries about everything like a wet jackfruit*. 

Cao Xueqin repeats the image or action multiple times across the novel, so Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) is always mocking people and then regretting it, or fighting with Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and then bursting into tears, or Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) is always finding food gone and being told that vú Lý (nanny Li) has eaten it.  

3/ In these chapters, Tập Nhân (Xiren or Aroma) becomes more interesting. She is servant of Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu), previously a servant for his grandmother Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu). Cao Xueqin gives her a backstory and creates more depth, especially in that scene in chapter 19 when Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) suddenly shows up at her house and she seems to have been crying, but denies it. 

Cao Xueqin also makes her more interesting when she gets annoyed in chapter 21, because so far Tập Nhân (Aroma) has seemed a bit too patient and kind, too perfect. 

He also gives Giả Kính (Jia Zheng) more depth. Before these chapters, Giả Kính (Jia Zheng) has been a grumpy, difficult father who more or less neglects Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and then yells at him for everything. In these chapters, the author hints at something hidden underneath the surface:  

“Jia Zheng glanced up and saw Bao-yu standing before him. The lively intelligence that shone in the boy’s every fear, his almost breath-taking beauty of countenance contrasted strikingly with Jia Huan’s cringing, hang-dog looks and loutish demeanour, and Jia Zheng thought suddenly of his other son, Jia Zhu, his Firstborn, whom he had lost. He glanced at Lady Wang. Of the children she had borne him Bao-yu was now the only surviving son. He knew how much the boy meant to her. He thought of himself, too: ageing now, his beard already grey. And as he thought, much of his customary dislike of Bao-yu slipped away, so that for the time being perhaps only ten or twenty per cent of it still remained.” (Ch.23) 

(This passage in the Vietnamese version, saying the same things, is for some reasons much shorter. Jia Zhu is Giả Châu). 

Earlier in chapter 22, when the characters play a guessing game, Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) is unhappy because “all the girls’ verses contained images of grief and loss” and he wonders why “these innocent young creatures all produce language that is so tragic and inauspicious”. His way of thinking is certainly superstitious, making a lot out of the riddles about firecrackers and kites and so on, but it on the one hand foreshadows what would happen to the girls and on the other hand shows that he’s not as cold as he often appears. 

It was a good idea to put aside Hong lou meng and then come back to it, because I’m now enjoying it more.  

4/ Hong lou meng, like The Tale of Genji, is rich in its depiction of female characters, who are all very different. 

In chapter 18, at the poetry challenge by Giả Nguyên Xuân (Jia Yuanchun), and in chapter 22, when the characters talk about Zen koan, we can see that in the main trio of the novel, Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) and Bảo Thoa (Baochai) are both more intelligent and knowledgeable than Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu). 

There isn’t much I can yet about Bảo Thoa (Baochai), however. 

5/ As the trio grow up, there is more and more poetry in the novel. I can’t help feeling that I’m missing out on a lot, because the translators of the Vietnamese version generally turn them into poems in Vietnamese, but they’re not really Nguyễn Du or Bùi Giáng, are they? Then when I look at the English version by David Hawkes, his poems usually have some kind of rhyme scheme but his renditions often appear to be quite loose. So I think I do miss out on a lot. 

6/ Giả Hoàn (Jia Huan) appears in chapter 20. He is son of Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) by Triệu Di Nương (concubine Zhao)—brother of Giả Thám Xuân (Jia Tanchun) and half-brother of Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu). 

I’ve been told about him, but his behaviour in these chapters already shows that he would grow up to always be petty and jealous, to always have an inferiority complex because he’s not Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), not the son of a main wife. Thám Xuân (Tanchun) has never seemed that way but I reckon it’s different between boys and girls. 

According to chapter 18, Thám Xuân (Tanchun) is more intelligent and poetic than Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun) and Tích Xuân (Xichun). Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun) is daughter of Giả Xá (Jia She) and a maid. Tích Xuân (Xichun) is daughter of Giả Kính (Jia Jing) and sister of Giả Trân (Jia Zhen). 

Some readers of Hong lou meng might race through the novel even without always knowing who’s who and how the characters relate to each other, but it matters a lot, especially in a society of strict hierarchy like the Chinese. It is of crucial importance that Giả Hoàn (Jia Huan) is born to a concubine for instance—he and Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) would never be the same. The same goes for Thám Xuân (Tanchun), who is “born in the wrong womb”, so to speak. 

It is of crucial importance too that Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu) comes from outside the capital and feels like an outsider, which is why she always makes some snide remarks and alludes to her inferior status among the girls in the house. 

7/ In chapter 23, Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) flirts with Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) for the first time using a line from Tây sương ký (Romance of the Western Chamber). 

Then later on in the same chapter, Cao Xueqin uses some lines from the play, which are melancholic and evoke the transience of life. This is a central theme in The Tale of Genji (mono no aware)—the difference is that in Murasaki Shikibu’s book, the characters think about it when looking at nature and observing the changing seasons, or thinking about their loved ones’ deaths, whereas here Đại Ngọc (Daiyu) thinks about it when hearing the songs the performers are practising. It is more cerebral and, I think, less affecting, especially when we have never got access to her mind at and after her father’s death. 

But let’s see what’s going to happen. 

*: this is a literal translation of a Vietnamese idiom to call those who always cry a lot. 

Hong lou meng: chapters 12-15, death, the funeral, Wang Xifeng

1/ In chapters 12-14, there are several deaths: 

- Giả Thụy (Jia Rui), who has a desperate crush on Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), wife of Giả Liễn (Jia Lian). 

- Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing), wife of Giả Dung (Jia Rong) and daughter-in-law of Giả Trân (Jia Zhen). 

- A hoàn Thụy Châu (her maid Gem), who takes her own life by banging her head against a pillar, to follow her mistress. 

- Lâm Như Hải (Lin Ruhai), father of Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu). 

At the end of chapter 12, Cao Xueqin briefly describes the funeral of Giả Thụy (Jia Rui) and duly notes how much money each side of the family gives to the funeral, he then spends the entirety of chapters 13, 14, and 15 writing about the much grander funeral of Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing). It’s perhaps too early for comparison but I can’t help thinking that Murasaki Shikibu is much superior to Cao Xueqin in her handling of death—just look at the way she writes about the deaths of Aoi, the Kiritsubo Emperor, Fujitsubo, the Rokujo Haven, Murasaki, and so on.

So far among the writers I have read, the ones I think are the best at writing about death are Tolstoy and Murasaki Shikibu. In The Tale of Genji, death is a transforming experience for the people left behind—each death has a profound impact on Genji and each one affects him in a different way. The deaths also make one think of the impermanence of everything and fragility of life. Tolstoy, in contrast, writes more about the experience of death—the feelings of someone approaching death, and he writes about it in a profound and deeply touching way that I find unsurpassable.  

Next to Murasaki Shikibu and Lev Tolstoy, Cao Xueqin’s writing about death seems superficial. He’s more interested in the funeral than Khả Khanh’s death (Keqing) or the subject of death, more interested in customs and rituals than people’s feelings and thoughts. Chapter 13 again is largely filled with dialogue, and then Cao Xueqin writes about how Giả Dung (Jia Rong) buys a title so he can have a grander funeral for his wife. 

2/ Following chapter 13, chapter 14 is about Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) taking on the responsibility to arrange everything for the long funeral. She wants to be seen as capable and efficient. 

The ceremony with its preparations is extravagant and excessive—the funeral seems more prominent than the character Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing) herself. The whole thing also appears very theatrical. 

 “Xi-feng walked slowly through the All-scents Garden until she came to the shrine in the Ascension Pavilion. As soon as she caught sight of the coffin the tears, like pearls from a broken necklace, rolled in great drops down her cheeks. A number of pages were standing […]. Xi-feng gave orders for them to begin and for tea to be offered up inside the shrine. […] In this Xi-feng now sat, and raising her voice to a shrill pitch, wept with abandon, whereupon the entire household, high and low, male and female, indoors and out, responded by breaking into loud and prolonged lamentation. 

Presently a representative […] begged Xi-feng to desist. Brightie’s wife poured out a cup of tea for her to rinse her mouth with, and when she had sufficiently recovered herself she rose to her feet once more, took leave of various members of the clan who were present, and went off to her office in the penthouse.” (Ch.14)  

I have to keep a rather long excerpt so you can see how shallow and theatrical it all is. Right after this show of mourning, Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) goes off to her office to arrange matters and returns to her image of a strict and ruthless mistress—she even gives a female servant 20 strokes of the bamboo for arriving late. Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) appears more affected by the death, coughing up some blood, but Cao Xueqin doesn’t delve deeper into his feelings. 

3/ As a character, Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing) doesn’t feature much. She is significant mostly because it’s her bedroom that Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) has a wet dream, and the first woman he has sex with is the fairy in the dream who shares the name Khả Khanh (Keqing).

In chapter 5, she doesn’t get as much attention as the evocative decorations of her bedroom. Once she’s dead, the funeral is much more prominent and takes up a lot more pages than her—it goes on and on and seems to never stop, spanning chapters 13 and 14 and 15, probably the longest funeral in literature. But the funeral isn’t about her as much as about the woman managing it—Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng). 

There isn’t much I can say about Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing), except that, according to the shouting and cursing of the servant Tiều Đại (Big Jiao), she had an affair with her father-in-law Giả Trân (Jia Zhen). 

4/ Cao Xueqin also doesn’t enter the mind of Tần Chung (Qin Zhong)—we don’t know what he thinks or how he feels about his sister’s death. He doesn’t seem particularly affected. 

In fact, in chapter 15 after the rites at the temple, he first lusts for a young girl at the spinning wheel (lower class) and then flirts with a disciple at the temple, called Trí Năng (Sapientia and then Sappy in David Hawkes’s translation). He even forces himself on her afterwards. Does that look like someone in mourning to you? It doesn’t to me. 

5/ The death of Lâm Như Hải (Lin Ruhai) is announced to the Giả (Jia) family and they make some brief remarks but nobody seems to really care. Cao Xueqin keeps the focus of the story in Nanjing so I would have to wait till Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu) returns to see how she feels about her father’s death. 

It reminds me, however, that nobody seems to care much about the death of Giả Thụy (Jia Rui) either, except his grandfather Giả Đại Nho (Jia Dairu). Cao Xueqin says nothing about Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) and Tần Chung (Qin Zhong), who both know him. Even Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), who indirectly causes his death, is indifferent. 

6/ The focus of these chapters is Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng), who is so far the most vividly alive female character, or even character in the novel. She is, how do I put it, a cold bitch. 

In the Chinese family, there is a clear hierarchy, even among siblings and cousins—people of the same generation. Let’s say Giả Mẫu (Jia Mu), the grandmother, is the first generation; in the second generation, the 2 surviving sons are Giả Xá (Jia She) and Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) in that order; in the third generation, Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) is married to Giả Liễn (Jia Lian), son of Giả Xá (Jia She) by his official wife Hình phu nhân (Xing Furen). Giả Liễn (Jia Lian) has a daughter by a maid. 

So in the hierarchy, Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) is the highest and most important daughter-in-law of the third generation. She is also niece of Vương phu nhân (Wang Furen), wife of Giả Chính (Jia Zheng). Because the men are useless, she therefore is in charge of everything. 

As a character, she’s more vividly alive than the rest because she is exuberant, has a strong personality, and can often be vicious and cruel. But now I’ve seen her weakness—she always wants to prove herself as capable and is easily flattered. 

I don’t have much to say about the 2 main female characters yet, who are Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu) and Tiết Bảo Thoa (Xue Baochai). My impression so far is that Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu) is quite annoying as she cries a lot but also often makes snide remarks and seems mean, has an inferiority complex, and is prone to jealousy, but I expect these 2 characters to grow and change. 

Hong lou meng: chapters 5-8, the dream, fate, ugly aspects of Chinese culture

1/ My last blog post about Hong lou meng wasn’t very positive, but chapter 5 is where things get interesting. As it happens, I like realist novels but like it even more when there is a spiritual aspect such as in the works of Lev Tolstoy and Murasaki Shikibu—in their works there is a sense of transcendence, a sense of something beyond material life. Something similar can be found in Hong lou meng—Cao Xueqin starts the novel with mythology and the story of the Sentient Stone, then tells the story of the stone on earth as Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) and moves between the real world and the world of dreams. But even the real world is like a long dream. Everything returns to nothing. 

2/ In chapter 5, Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) takes a nap in the room of Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing) and dreams that he meets a character that David Hawkes translates as “fairy”. The word “fairy”, I think, is the only option that David Hawkes has—the Chinese fairy is very different from the Western fairy (like the Chinese dragon and the Western dragon are completely different animals).  

You should google “tiên nữ” or “仙女” or “Chinese fairy” to get an idea. 

3/ For many years I have mostly read Western novels so it’s curious and funny to see that the East Asian classics I’ve read this year, Truyện Kiều and The Tale of Genji and now Hong lou meng, have lots of sex. 

There’s even a wet dream in chapter 5! 

Interestingly, the first time Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) has sex is in a dream and it gets a lot more attention than when he does it the first time in the real world, with his servant Hoa Tập Nhân (Hua Xiren, called Aroma in David Hawkes’s translation). 

4/ Apart from Confucianism, which is the basis of the society that Cao Xueqin depicts, the 2 main philosophies in Hong lou meng are Buddhism and Taoism (Kenneth Rexroth has called The Tale of Genji a Buddhist novel and Hong lou meng a Taoist novel). I myself know next to nothing about Taoism. 

I expect that in Hong lou meng, I most likely would struggle with the same ideas that have caused me trouble in Truyện Kiều (The Tale of Kieu): Confucianism and the idea of fate and karma. That wouldn’t necessarily hinder my appreciation of the novel—I have to struggle with Christian ideas when reading Russian novels—so we’ll see. 

If in Truyện Kiều, Kiều meets the ghost of Đạm Tiên in a dream and gets told about her fate, in Hong lou meng chapter 5, Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) meets a fairy from Thái hư ảo cảnh (The Land of Illusion) and happens to see the registers of Kim lăng thập nhị thoa (the 12 beauties of Jinling), which tell the fates of women in Jinling (now Nanjing), but he doesn’t understand them. He also listens to 12 khúc Hồng lâu mộng (the 12 songs of the suite “A Dream of Golden Days”) but again doesn’t understand them. That’s a lot more obscure and subtle, and more dream-like, than in Truyện Kiều. In Truyện Kiều, as I have pointed out, Kiều knows she has a bad fate and would meet Đạm Tiên again at Tiền Đường river, but has everything that happens been predestined as she believes, or does she, in her superstitious and gullible ways, follow and enact Đạm Tiên’s words? In Hong lou meng, Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) has seen the registers but doesn’t understand them, he doesn’t know his or anyone’s fate—he doesn’t even know he’s a reincarnation of a Sentient Stone. 

5/ In chapter 1, the character Chân Sĩ Ẩn (Zhen Shiyin) faces lots of family calamities and one day meets a mad monk and, upon understanding Hảo liễu ca (translated by David Hawkes as the Won-Done song), understands everything and leaves the world to join religion. Is that celebrated by Cao Xueqin? I’m not sure, it seems to be. But is it something to be celebrated when his daughter Anh Liên (Yinglian) has been kidnapped and is nowhere to be found and he leaves his wife behind to handle everything by herself? 

Or maybe it’s too early to discuss it and I have to return to this subject later. 

Anh Liên (Yinglian) reappears in chapter 7 as a servant under the new name Hương Lăng (Caltrop). 

6/ There are 4 girls named Xuân (Chun) in the Giả (Jia) family, meaning “spring”.  

The best way to see their relationship is to look at my family tree.

The oldest one is Nguyên Xuân (Yuanchun), meaning “first spring”, who is Giả Bảo Ngọc’s (Jia Baoyu’s) sister by about a decade. 

The other 3, who so far tend to be grouped together), are: 

Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun), daughter of Giả Xá (Jia She), and Thám Xuân (Tanchun), daughter of Giả Chính (Jia Zheng) and half-sister of Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu), from the Vinh (Rong) house

and

Tích Xuân (Xichun), daughter of Giả Kính (Jia Jing), from the Ninh (Ning) house.  

Judging by my family tree, Tích Xuân (Xichun) is one generation below but I assume they are roughly the same age. 

Nguyên Xuân (Yuanchun) and Thám Xuân (Tanchun) are half-sisters, and they both are cousins of Nghênh Xuân (Yingchun). Tích Xuân (Xichun) is more distant. 

7/ Cao Xueqin/ the narrator only appears once in a while to remind us he’s there, and mostly appears at the end of every chapter to entice readers to read the next one. These lines are removed from the Vietnamese version. 

Cao Xueqin does tell, not only show, but doesn’t really comment on the characters or the action.

In chapter 6, there is a scene between Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) and Già Lưu (Grannie Liu). The former is niece of Vương phu nhân (Wang Furen) and Tiết phu nhân (Xue Furen) and wife of Giả Liễn (Jia Lian), and takes care of everything in the house—she is sharp, well-mannered, shrewd, but also shrewish. The latter is an old woman who comes to ask for help, as a distant relative—she is mother-in-law of a guy called Cẩu Nhi (Gou-er). 

Through dialogue and manners, Cao Xueqin shows the huge difference in social position between the 2 characters, and also shows the hypocrisy of Già Lưu (Grannie Liu).

However, because the author depicts Chinese society as it is and I myself feel distaste for certain aspects of Chinese culture and tradition, a few things bug me—I’m talking about the Confucianism, about the hierarchy and order, about the sense that everyone has a place and must know their own place in society and in relation to others; I’m talking about the subservient and servile mindset, the kowtowing and grovelling behaviour of people towards their superiors. You see it in Chinese films. You see it in other Chinese novels. In Russian and other Western novels, there is class, there are poor people, there are servants and serfs, but you don’t really see such behaviour—not to the same extent. 

For instance, look at this moment when Bảo Ngọc (Baoyu) meets and likes a guy called Tần Chung (Qin Zhong), brother of Tần Khả Khanh (Qin Keqing) and therefore a poor relative. He suggests that Tần Chung (Qin Zhong) join his private school, and this is the reply: 

“‘…if you are really of the opinion that I could be of some service to you, even if it’s only grinding your ink or cleaning your ink-stone, do please arrange it as soon as you can…’” (Ch.7) 

That is a small example. Here’s a more extreme one, look at this passage about a servant named Tiều Đại (Big Jiao)—the speaker is Vưu Thị (You Shi), wife of Giả Trân (Jia Zhen): 

“‘When he was young he went with Grandfather on three or four of his campaigns and once saved his life by pulling him from under a heap of corpses and carrying him to safety on his back. He went hungry himself and stole things for his master to eat; and once when he had managed to get half a cupful of water, he gave it to his master and drank horse’s urine himself…’” (ibid.)  

I mean, what? 

Vưu Thị (You Shi) is explaining why the servant now gets special treatment and behaves badly but people just ignore it. Then Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) says: 

“‘I know this Big Jiao all right’, said Xi-feng, ‘and I still say that you are too weak. You ought to send him away. Right away. Send him to live on one of your farms: that would put a stop to his nonsense!’” (ibid.) 

Cruel.

Intoxicated and angry, Tiều Đại (Big Jiao) starts cursing everybody and even hinting at incest among his masters and mistresses, so the other servants force him into the stables and: 

“Terrified out of their wits at hearing a fellow-servant utter such enormities, the grooms and pages tied him up and stuffed his mouth with mud and horse-dung.” (ibid.) 

These aspects of Chinese culture are the reasons I was uncertain about Hong lou meng before I picked it up. I’m more into the story now, but still can’t help noticing these things. 

8/ Hong lou meng is filled with dialogue. There is lots, lots of dialogue. I’ve noticed that in quite a few places where it’s dialogue (direct speech) in the Vietnamese version, in the English version by David Hawkes it is indirect speech (usually when it could be 1 or 2 sentences). I assume these are Hawkes’s changes for some variation. 

We don’t really have much access to the characters’ thoughts. In chapter 8 for example, there’s a moment where Lâm Đại Ngọc (Lin Daiyu) makes some snide remarks to her servant and we are told that Giả Bảo Ngọc (Jia Baoyu) knows she’s indirectly mocking him but laughs and pretends not to notice and Tiết Bảo Thoa (Xue Baochai) ignores because she’s used to it, but her mother Tiết phu nhân (Xue Furen) makes some protestations. That lets us know what they think but it’s more about what they do—ignoring Đại Ngọc (Daiyu)—than about their thoughts. The characters come alive through action and dialogue, like in a play. 

I have seen a few people compare Cao Xueqin to Jane Austen, but Austen doesn’t only write about manners. She does write characters’ thoughts, and when she writes about people and interactions, she not only writes about what things are but also about what things are perceived to be—Jane Austen’s interested in prejudice and perception and delusion. 

Cao Xueqin writes like a playwright.