Chinese Novels

"The true people of China are rooted in the soil that they love. She stepped into her place among them."

"[My father] always said that luck was something inside the character of a man. For one qualified for luck, jars of water will turn into silver; for one unqualified, jars of silver will turn into water."

"Life and death are the very law of existence. A true Taoist merely triumphs over death. He dies more cheerfully than others. He is not afraid of it, because he is 'returning to the Tao,' as we say..." "So you do not believe in immortality," said Mulan. "I do, my child. I am immortal through you and your sister and Afei and all the children born of my children. I am living all over again in you, as you are living all over again in Atung and Amei. There is no death. You cannot defeat nature. Life goes on forever."

"It seemed to them that their own story was but a moment in old, ageless Peking, a story written by the finger of Time itself."

"Better than all medicine is the ability to take things lightly."

"When a family is in poverty it produces a filial son, and when a country is in danger it produces a patriot."

""Do you remember," said Lifu, "how the Chin Emperor was afraid of death and sent five hundred virgin boys to the Eastern Sea to seek the Pill of Immortality? And now the rock survives him." "The rock survives because it has no mortal passion," said Mulan enigmatically. Darkness was quickly enveloping them. What had been a sea of golden fleece was now only a sandy gray surface blanketing the earth; and wandering clouds, tired of their day's journey, came into the valleys before them and settled for the night, leaving the higher peaks like little gray islands in the sea of night. So does Nature herself labor by day and rest by night. It was peace with a terror in it. Five minutes ago Mulan's heart was excited. Now she was calm and strangely sad, the outward excitement having descended into rumbling depths in her belly, hardly perceptible by her head. Dragging her tired legs up the steps, she thought of life and death, of the life of passion and the life of the rocks without passion. She realized that this was but a passing moment in the eternity of time, but to her it was a memorable moment—a complete philosophy in itself, or rather a complete vision of the past and the present and the future, of the self and the non-self. That vision, too, was wordless."

"Mulan's father had begun to take a very light view of his wealth. There was no better way of squandering his money than for the wedding of his favorite daughter—to see happiness while it lasted. Wealth was to him like a fireworks display tracing lines of fire in the dark sky—with plenty of splutter and brilliance, and ending in smoke, ashes, and the charred ends on the ground."

"All life was the result of two forces—centrality and eccentricity. Without eccentricity, there would be no progress, and without centrality there would be no stability. Man's life results from the harmonious complementing of these two opposite principles, like the inter-breeding of the yin and yang which produces the four seasons of the year."

"Do you believe in all the childish things they are advocating?" said Lifu. "They are striking even at ancestor worship. They want to sweep aside everything old. Why, they even denounce 'good mothers and helpful wives' as a degrading ideal hampering the woman's own development as an individual!" "Let them do it," said old Yao. "If they are right, they will do some good, and if they are wrong, they cannot do the Truth (Tao) any harm. As a matter of fact, they are often wrong, as in this individualism. Don't worry. Let them fight it out. When a thing is wrong, they will get tired of it themselves after a while. Have you forgotten Chuangtse? Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Only one thing is right, and that is the Truth, but nobody knows what it is. It is a thing that changes all the time, and then comes back to the same thing."

"If any looters come, offer no resistance but ask them to help themselves. Do not risk your old life for these trash and rubbish! They are not worth it."

"You take this literary revolution, for instance," old Yao continued. "Many people think it is right. Why? Because there is something right in it. Any movement grows only when the time is ripe and it says something which many feel. Many feel that this Old China must be swept aside, or we shall never make any progress. People are wanting to change. You cannot help that, and you cannot stop them. There are excesses, but people cannot say what is wrong and maintain it for long. A falsehood is not argued out of court; it just rubs off, like bad paint, by itself."

"Everything has its destined owner. How many hundred owners do you think those Chou bronzes have had in the last three thousand years? No one ever permanently owns a thing in this world."

"[Mulan] asked [her father], "Why did you say last night that all the curios are trash and rubbish?" "If you consider them trash and rubbish, then they are trash and rubbish," he said."

"And as the scene changed for Mulan, something inside her also changed. She lost all sense of space and direction, lost even the sense of her personal identity, and felt that she had become one of the great common people. She had so often wished to belong to the common people; now she was indeed one of them. The conquest of the ego which her father had achieved by sheer contemplation, she now achieved through human contact with this great company of men, women, and children. ... In this moving mass of refugees, there was now neither rich nor poor. The war and its depredations had leveled them all."

"This novel is neither an apology for contemporary Chinese life nor an expose of it. ... It is neither a glorification of the old way of life nor a defense of the new. It is merely a story of how men and women in the contemporary era grow up and learn to live with one another, how they love and hate and quarrel and forgive and suffer and enjoy, how certain habits of living and ways of thinking are formed, and how, above all, they adjust themselves to the circumstances in this earthly life where men strive but the gods rule."

"Life and death and growth and decay are the very law of nature. Luck and adversity are but the natural consequences of each one's personal character, and there is no avoiding them. So although parting in life or through death is sad according to normal human sentiments, I wish you to take these things and accept them as part of the Way."

"When you yourself are right, nothing that happens to you can ever be wrong."

"Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (trans.), A Dream of Red Mansion, Complete and Unexpurgated (Disruptive Publishing, 2013),"

"John Minford (trans.), The Story of the Stone: The Debt of Tears (Volume IV) (Penguin UK, 2012),"

"David Hawkes (trans.), The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice (Volume III) (Penguin UK, 2012),"

"John Minford (trans.), The Story of the Stone: The Dreamer Wakes (Volume V) (Penguin UK, 2012),"

"Chi-Chen Wang (trans.), Dream of the Red Chamber (Anchor Books, 1958),"

"China's greatest work of literature, the 18th-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, ... is still virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. In its native land, The Story of the Stone, as the book is also known – Stone for short – enjoys a unique status, comparable to the plays of Shakespeare. Apart from its literary merits, Chinese readers recommend it as the best starting point for any understanding of Chinese psychology, culture and society."

"David Hawkes (trans.), The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days (Volume I) (Penguin UK, 2012),"

"The most valuable treasure in Chinese literature or even Chinese culture lies in Dream of the Red Chamber."

"With one book, the genius of Cao Xueqin proves to have the universality of Shakespeare. Its combination of intellectual scope and immediate human drama has no counterpart in Western fiction. To appreciate its position in Chinese culture, we must imagine a work with the critical cachet of James Joyce's Ulysses and the popular appeal of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind—and twice as long as the two combined."

"If life is illusory like a dream or fiction, what are we to do with so engaging an illusion as fiction? ... The trajectory of the plot, since it follows Bao-yu's quest for deliverance from his sufferings, may tempt the reader to think that the novel supplies but a mimetic enactment of the Buddhist vision. If the analysis in the present study thus far is not far off the mark, however, then I believe that the "flavor" or "secret message" of the work lies in the differentiation between the Buddhist "reading" of the world and our reading of literary fiction. ... Whereas Buddhism draws from its "reading" the conclusion that detachment is the ultimate wisdom, the experience of reading fiction, at least according to our author, is nothing if not the deepest engagement. In Hongloumeng, therefore, the medium subverts the message, the discourse its language."

"The nostalgia for and idealization of a lost world in Stone capture the modern Chinese reader's feelings about the entire traditional Chinese culture; at the same time, its ironic, critical self-reflexivity intimates the burden of modernity."

"I'd like to think that in another generation the heroine of "The Dream of the Red Chamber," Lin Daiyu, could be as recognizable to English-speaking readers as Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina, but I'm not wildly optimistic."

"Of all the world's novels perhaps only Don Quixote rivals The Story of the Stone as the embodiment of a nation's cultural identity in recent times, much as the epic once embodied cultural identity in the ancient world."

"Scholars and readers alike have agreed that The Story of the Stone is the greatest Chinese novel, but about the nature of its greatness lively differences of opinion have swirled from its first appearance."

"This book is believed by many to be the greatest Chinese novel ever written. For me it is like a bible for everything to do with Chinese culture. ... Books like this remind Chinese people what the true Chinese culture is all about and how to preserve it, which is why I call it the 'Bible of Chinese Culture'."

"Dream of the Red Chamber revolutionized the novel in China, turning it away from a previous reliance on well-known myths and legends and stereotypical, idealized characters... No other Chinese novel...approaches it in depth and scope. Simultaneously a deeply personal exploration of love and passion, a family saga, and a philosophical, moral, and spiritual critique of an entire culture's values, Dream of the Red Chamber in its range, seriousness of purpose, and comprehensive vision is one of the touchstones of literary history, one of a handful of novels that radically redefined the resources and capabilities of the form."

"The book transcends time and class, and has a universal value. That's one of the main features of this masterwork, and a trademark of practically all the greatest literary works in the world. Like life itself, this intricate masterpiece is remarkably rich and of great artistic appeal. The fiction is extraordinary not only for its vivid and accurate observation of life and social conflicts, but also for its epic scope, the diversity and depth of its characters and delivery, as well as its colorfulness and artistic quality."

"I was about eight or nine when I first read it – that's a very young age to be reading Dream of the Red Chamber. [...] Of course, when I first read it, with my limited understanding of the world, I treated Dream of the Red Chamber mainly as a very interesting story; just like everyone at entry level, I was focused on the romance of the two main protagonists. What's great about the book is that it can be read by the masses but it's also a great literary classic that people can spend their entire lives studying. I remember being fascinated, even at that age, by what I found to be the really beautiful poetry throughout. It's a book I've read and reread many times. It's so complex, so full of details and values that are so universal yet every time you read it, you end up with a different interpretation. How you interpret it depends on what stage you are at in life. All these years, I've been fascinated by the world described by the author, which is so completely different from mine. It's about the downfall of a family in a feudal society. It opened my eyes to a whole world I never knew existed. It's also a case study in how not to run an organisation. The family has a lot of money and a lot of guanxi, but there's a lot of mismanagement. We all have weaknesses and we all want better lives for ourselves. In this book, when people are trapped in some kind of fate, they still struggle and try their best to go against it. The characters are more three-dimensional than you'd expect – and that applies to so many of them. The book says so much about what it means to be human."

"David Hawkes (trans.), The Story of the Stone: The Crab-Flower Club (Volume II) (Penguin UK, 2012),"

"The story of Pao-yü is tested against three ideals of Chinese culture: the Confucian path of dutiful service urged upon him by his father and the Goddess of Disillusionment, the Taoist-Buddhist path of self-liberation, and the romantic path of individualist nonconformity sanctioned by the literary tradition. Pao-yü is naturally inclined to take the third path, but his spiritual nature (symbolized by his stone) complicates matters because it actively involves him in the world of suffering even while it prepares him for enlightenment. After a period of idiocy during which he is literally numbed by suffering, Pao-yü decides to follow the religious path, but, ironically, this decision also marks the tragic extinction of the most endearing component of his spiritual nature, his active sympathy and compassion."

"The Manchu epoch has left to us what is by general consent the finest novel in Chinese literature, 'Hung-lou-meng' ('The Dream of the Red Chamber'), by Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in, who died in 1763. It describes the downfall of a rich and powerful family from the highest rank of the gentry, and the decadent son's love of a young and emotional lady of the highest circles. The story is clothed in a mystical garb that does something to soften its tragic ending. Western readers appreciate this novel mainly because it is the only classical novel in which individual characters are clearly depicted, and in which emotions are openly expressed. This was and remained unusual, because to the present time, Chinese do not like to express their emotions openly. Down to the nineteenth century, the novel was from time to time forbidden, and parents were warned not to let their children read it."

"Of all the classic Chinese novels, The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji) is indisputably the greatest masterpiece."

"A unique feature of the novel is the space given to the chambermaids. In no other novel that I know is such extended treatment given to adolescent maidservants. ... It is this rich humanity of all characters, high and low, that compels me to recognize Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in as a "great" novelist, and his work, in spite of the natural remoteness of its language and customs to the Western reader, a masterpiece to rank probably with the world's ten greatest novels."

""The Dream of the Red Chamber" should be read five times before one can rightfully talk about it. It should be read five times. ... Among Chinese classical novels, "The Dream of the Red Chamber" is the best."

"The Dream of the Red Chamber provides in one volume a summation of the three-thousand-year span of Chinese literary civilization. ... As a result, the work stands in its own cultural milieu as the major works of Homer, Virgil, Murasaki, Dante, Milton, Cervantes, Goethe, and more recently Proust and Joyce, do in theirs: as an encyclopedic compendium of an entire tradition in a form that itself serves as a model against which to judge works of less imposing stature."

"In the original eighty chapters of Dream, there is no single important event. [...] All the important events happen in the last forty chapters. [...] What the first eighty chapters provide is the vivid and close texture of life."

"The Story of the Stone is an amazing achievement and the psychological insight and sophisticated humour with which it is written can often delude a reader into judging it as if it were a modern novel."

"However great, Genji does seem a little hysterical in comparison with the vastly humane Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber."

"The idea that the worldling's 'reality' is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqin's hands it becomes a poetical means of demonstrating that his characters are both creatures of his imagination and at the same time the real companions of his golden youth. To that extent it can be thought of as a literary device rather than as a deeply held philosophy, though it is really both."

"It is the metaphysical modesty of Taoism that gives The Dream of the Red Chamber its style, that modesty which is the necessary ingredient of the very greatest style in any art. The most profound human relationships; the deepest psychological insights; the most intense drama; the revelation of the moral universe in trivial human action, in the simple narrative of ordinary happenings—greatness of heart, magnanimity...is the substance from which the narrative is carved."

"The Chinese The Dream of the Red Chamber may well be as great a book as the Japanese The Tale of Genji."

"When you first read about all these people with strange names doing curious things in an exotic setting, you get lost. Then gradually the sheer human mass of Chinese fiction, a mass whose components are all highly individuated, envelops and entrances you. You realize yourself as part of a universe of human beings endless as the dust of nebulae visible in the Mount Palomar telescope, and you are left with the significance of a human kinship powerful as flowing water and standing stone."