Chinese Novels

"Unlike books such as The Plum in the Golden Vase that sought to take revenge and to vent anger, Dream of the Red Chamber based all of its events on the author’s personal experiences. Remorseful for what he had experienced in his life for decades, the author was preoccupied with confessing his own sins and criticizing himself."

"Honglou meng is a book about enlightenment [or awakening]. ... A man in his life experiences several decades of winter and summer. The most sagacious and wise is certainly not submerged in considerations of loss and gain. However, the experiences of prosperity and decline, coming together and dispersing [of family members and friends] are too common; how can his mind be like wood and stone, without being moved by all this? In the beginning there is a profusion of intimate feelings, which is followed by tears and lamentations. Finally, there is a time when one feels that everything he does is futile. At this moment, how can he not be enlightened?"

"HUNG-LOU-MÊNG: 紅樓夢. A famous Chinese novel in the Peking dialect, popularly known as the Dream of the Red Chamber, dealing chiefly with events of domestic life which are very graphically described, and attributed to Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in of the 17th cent. Many Chinese are said to have died for love of the heroine, Miss Lin, so exquisitely has that young lady been portrayed by the author; but the book being considered a dangerous one to fall into the hands of youth was accordingly placed in the Index Expurgatorius of China [...]. The title should properly be "The Dream of the Red-storeyed Mansion," the allusion being to the wealthy establishment at which the scene of the story is laid, and to the pomp and power of its inmates, destined by the inevitable turn of Fortune's wheel to lapse into poverty and decay."

"The Hung Lou Mêng, conveniently but erroneously known as "The Dream of the Red Chamber," is the work...touching the highest point of development reached by the Chinese novel. ... No fewer than 400 personages of more or less importance are introduced first and last into the story, the plot of which is worked out with a completeness worthy of Fielding, while the delineation of character—of so many characters—recalls the best efforts of the greatest novelists of the West. As a panorama of Chinese social life, in which almost every imaginable feature is submitted in turn to the reader, the Hung Lou Mêng is altogether without a rival. Reduced to its simplest terms, it is an original and effective love story, written for the most part in an easy, almost colloquial, style, full of humorous and pathetic episodes of everyday human life, and interspersed with short poems of high literary finish. The opening chapters, which are intended to form a link between the world of spirits and the world of mortals, belong to the supernatural; after that the story runs smoothly along upon earthly lines, always, however, overshadowed by the near presence of spiritual influences..."

"Dream of the Red Chamber may be regarded as the tragedy of tragedies."

"[W]orthy of being considered as the one great masterpiece in the realm of Chinese art."

"One of the best known, and probably the best of Chinese works of fiction. ... It abounds in humour and pathos, and is invaluable for anyone who would study the social life of the Chinese."

"It is obvious that Dream of the Red Chamber is an autobiographical work in which facts are disguised. If Cao Xueqin is indeed the author, he is the deeply remorseful "I" that makes his appearance at the beginning of the novel and also the model of Zhen (real) Baoyu and Jia (fake) Baoyu. With this in mind, we can understand that the Jia household and the Zhen household in the novel are reflections of Cao Xueqin's own household."

"The author was of a very wealthy and over-refined family that fell into poverty in a very short time. Ts'ao-chan took to drinking and died young. In his book he describes the glory of bygone days. We see how Chia Pao-yu grows up in the midst of the girls of the family, which brings about a great number of love-tangles and tragedies. The most pathetic is Pao-yu's love for Lin Tai-yu who dies of love-sickness after Pao-yu's parents have tricked him into a marriage with another girl. Pao-yu leaves home and meets his father when, many years later, he has died to the world and became a monk."

"Dream of the Red Chamber, so revolutionary in many ways, is nevertheless easily recognizable as the descendant of these [All Men Are Brothers, Monkey, and Romance of Three Kingdoms] three great popular romances. It has their inordinate length (it is certain that The Red Chamber, as planned by Tsao, ran to at least a hundred chapters), their lack of faith in the interestingness of the everyday world, leading to the conviction that a realistic story must necessarily be set in a supernatural framework. It has the story-teller's tendency to put far more art into the technique of the individual séance or chapter, than into the construction of the work as a whole. It has the same moralizing tendency; for, as I have said, Chinese fiction is always on the defensive—is always, with an eye on official Puritanism, trying to prove that, like serious and approved literature, it has a "message." In The Red Chamber indeed this message is reserved for the later chapters, which Tsao did not live to complete. But we know that the edifying final episodes (for example, Pao-Yu's entry into the Buddhist Church) were part of the author's original plan. But the Dream of the Red Chamber is unlike all previous Chinese novels in that Tsao, instead of embroidering upon existing legends or histories, describes a group of people wholly unknown to the reader; and stranger innovation still, these people (as Dr. Hu Shih has proved) are the author and his family. All realistic novels are, of course, autobiographical, the writer's knowledge of realities being drawn chiefly from his own experience. But The Red Chamber is autobiographical in a more complete sense. Indeed, one even feels that, were it not for the rigid framework imposed by tradition, Tsao might easily have fallen into the error of transcribing with too careful a fidelity the monotonies of actual life. [...] It is in his accounts of dreams that as an imaginative writer Tsao Hsueh-Chin rises to his greatest heights; and it is in these passages that we feel most clearly the symbolic or universal value of his characters—Pao-Yu, the hero, standing for Imagination and Poetry; his father, for all those sordid powers of pedantry and restriction that hamper the artist in his passage through life."

"No mere summary can be just to the extraordinary content of such a realistic and diversified story of Chinese family life as "The Dream of the Red Chamber" presents within its strange setting. This is a great novel. With "The Three Kingdoms" it ranks foremost among the novels of the old Chinese literature. ... The effort to read "The Dream of the Red Chamber" is eminently worth making."

"In my view, Baoyu, having seen so many deaths, is convinced that most of the people he loves are confronted with all kinds of troubles and that most of the people in the world are unfortunate. Only monks can stay out of trouble and have few worries and a modicum of happiness in life."

"The Hung Lou Mêng is in every way a unique book. No Chinese novel can compare with it, either for the grace and refinement of the language...or for the subtle characterisation and artistic integrity of the plot."

"The book contains 120 chapters, 235 male and 213 female characters. According to the Chinese critics it is unique of its kind. The plot is perfect, the style is finished. It is written in the language of the better classes of Peking at the time of its appearance. Also in this novel, according to the same critics, love is expressed in the most perfect way. Who knows how many readers, men as well as women, have been moved to tears by the death of Ch'ing Wen and Tai Yu. Every feeling, every gesture in the book is natural."

"[At the beginning of the Red Chamber Dream], a Taoist monk found the story inscribed on a huge rock, which was the extra one left behind by the legendary goddess Nüwo when she was using 36,500 rocks to mend a huge crack in the sky, caused by a terrific fight of "Olympian" giants. This rock was one hundred and twenty feet high and two hundred and forty feet wide. The Taoist monk copied the story from the rock inscriptions, and when it came to Ts'ao Hsüehch'in's hands he worked at it for ten years and revised it five times, dividing it into chapters, and he wrote a verse on it:These pages tell of babbling nonsense, A string of sad tears they conceal. They all laugh at the author's folly; But who could know its magic appeal?At the end of the story, when one of the most tragic and deeply human dramas was enacted, and the hero had become a monk and the soul which had given him intelligence and capacity for love and suffering had returned to the rock as Nüwo left it thousands of years ago, the same Taoist monk reappeared. This monk is said to have copied the story again and one day he came to the author's study and put the manuscripts in his care. Ts'ao Hsüehch'in replied, laughingly: "This is only babbling nonsense. It is good for killing time with a few good friends after a wine-feast or while chatting under the lamp-light. If you ask me how I happen to know the hero of the story, and want all the details, you are taking it too seriously." Hearing what he said, the monk threw the manuscripts down on his table and went away laughing, tossing his head and mumbling as he went: "Really it contains only babbling nonsense. Both the author himself and the man who copies it, as well as its readers, do not know what is behind it all. This is only a literary pastime, written for pleasure and self-satisfaction.""

"I regard the Red Chamber Dream as one of the world's masterpieces. Its character-drawing, its deep and rich humanity, its perfect finish of style and its story entitle it to that. Its characters live, more real and more familiar to us than our living friends, and each speaks an accent which we can recognize. Above all, it has what we call a great story: a fabulously beautiful Chinese house-garden; a great official family, with four daughters and a son growing up and some beautiful female cousins of the same age, living a life of continual raillery and bantering laughter; a number of extremely charming and clever maid-servants, some of the plotting, intriguing type and some quick-tempered but true, and some secretly in love with the master; a few faithless servants' wives involved in little family jealousies and scandals; a father for ever absent from home on official service and two or three daughters-in-law managing the complicated routine of the whole household with order and precision [...]; the "hero," Paoyü, a boy in puberty, with a fair intelligence and a great love of female company, sent, as we are made to understand, by God to go through this phantasmagoria of love and suffering, overprotected like the sole heir of all great families in China, doted on by his grandmother, the highest authority of the household, but extremely afraid of his father, completely admired by all his female cousins and catered for by his maid-servants, who attended to his bath and sat in watch over him at night; his love for Taiyü, his orphan cousin staying in their house, who was suffering from consumption and was fed on bird's nest soup, easily outshining the rest in beauty and poetry, but a little too clever to be happy like the more stupid ones, opening her love to Paoyü with the purity and intensity of a young maiden's heart; another female cousin, Paots'a, also in love with Paoyü, but plumper and more practical-minded and considered a better wife by the elders; the final deception, arrangements for the wedding to Paots'a by the mothers without Paoyü's or Taiyü's knowledge, Taiyü not hearing of it until shortly before the wedding, which made her laugh hysterically and sent her to her death, and Paoyü not hearing of it till the wedding night; Paoyü's discovery of the deception by his own parents, his becoming half-idiotic and losing his mind, and finally his becoming a monk. All of this is depicted against the rise and fall of a great family, the crescendo of piling family misfortunes extending over the last third of the story, taking one's breath away like the Fall of the House of Usher."

"The easiest way to find out a Chinaman's temperament is to ask him whether he likes Taiyü more or Paots'a more. If he prefers Taiyü, he is an idealist, and if he prefers Paots'a, he is a realist."

"The Chinese, men and women, have most of them read the novel seven or eight times over, and a science has developed which is called "redology" (hunghsüeh, from Red Chamber Dream), comparable in dignity and volume to the Shakespeare or Goethe commentaries. The Red Chamber Dream represents probably the height of the art of writing novels in China, all things considered."

"In the Chinese novel Red Chamber Dream, the boy hero, a sentimental mollycoddle very fond of female company and admiring his beautiful female cousins intensely and all but sorry for himself for being a boy, says that, "Woman is made of water and man is made of clay," the reason being that he thinks his female cousins are sweet and pure and clever, while he himself and his boy companions are ugly and muddle-headed and bad-tempered. If the writer of the Genesis story had been a Paoyü and knew what he was talking about, he would have written a different story. God took a handful of mud, molded it into human shape and breathed into its nostrils a breath, and there was Adam. But Adam began to crack and fall to pieces, and so He took some water, and with the water He molded the clay, and this water which entered into Adam's being was called Eve, and only in having Eve in his being was Adam's life complete. At least that seems to me to be the symbolic significance of marriage. Woman is water and man is clay, and water permeates and molds the clay, and the clay holds the water and gives its substance, in which water moves and lives and has its full being."

"Hung Lou Meng, or The Dream of the Red Chamber...was written originally as an autobiographical novel by Ts'ao Hsüeh Ching, an official highly in favor during the Manchu regime and indeed considered by the Manchus as one of themselves. ... He never finished his novel, and the last forty chapters were added by another man, probably named Kao O. The thesis that Ts'ao Hsüeh Ching was telling the story of his own life has been in modern times elaborated by Hu Shih, and in earlier times by Yuan Mei. Be this as it may, the original title of the book was Shih T'ou Chi [The Story of the Stone], and it came out of Peking about 1765 of the Western era, and in five or six years, an incredibly short time in China, it was famous everywhere. Printing was still expensive when it appeared, and the book became known by the method that is called in China, «You-lend-me-a-book-and-I-lend-you-a-book». The story is simple in its theme but complex in implication, in character study and in its portrayal of human emotions. It is almost a pathological study, this story of a great house, once wealthy and high in imperial favor, so that indeed one of its members was an imperial concubine. But the great days are over when the book begins. The family is already declining. Its wealth is being dissipated and the last and only son, Chia Pao Yü, is being corrupted by the decadent influences within his own home, although the fact that he was a youth of exceptional quality at birth is established by the symbolism of a piece of jade found in his mouth. The preface begins, «Heaven was once broken and when it was mended, a bit was left unused, and this became the famous jade of Chia Pao Yü.» Thus does the interest in the supernatural persist in the Chinese people; it persists even today as a part of Chinese life. This novel seized hold of the people primarily because it portrayed the problems of their own family system, the absolute power of women in the home, the too great power of the matriarchy, the grandmother, the mother, and even the bondmaids, so often young and beautiful and fatally dependent, who became too frequently the playthings of the sons of the house and ruined them and were ruined by them. Women reigned supreme in the Chinese house, and because they were wholly confined in its walls and often illiterate, they ruled to the hurt of all. They kept men children, and protected them from hardship and effort when they should not have been so protected. Such a one was Chia Pao Yü, and we follow him to his tragic end in Hung Lou Meng. I cannot tell you to what lengths of allegory scholars went to explain away this novel when they found that again even the emperor was reading it and that its influence was so great everywhere among the people. I do not doubt that they were probably reading it themselves in secret. A great many popular jokes in China have to do with scholars reading novels privately and publicly pretending never to have heard of them. At any rate, scholars wrote treatises to prove that Hung Lou Meng was not a novel but a political allegory depicting the decline of China under the foreign rule of the Manchus, the word Red in the title signifying Manchu, and Ling Tai Yü, the young girl who dies, although she was the one destined to marry Pao Yü, signifying China, and Pao Ts'ai, her successful rival, who secures the jade in her place, standing for the foreigner, and so forth. The very name Chia signified, they said, falseness. But this was a farfetched explanation of what was written as a novel and stands as a novel and as such a powerful delineation, in the characteristic Chinese mixture of realism and romance, of a proud and powerful family in decline. Crowded with men and women of the several generations accustomed to living under one roof in China, it stands alone as an intimate description of that life."

"The reader's sympathy is usually with the deserving but unsuccessful one at marriage. Most readers sympathize with Taiyu in Red Chamber Dream for the same reason." At the word "marriage" Coral pricked up her ears and said, “What are you two talking about with so much interest? Talk louder and let us hear it." "I know," said Mochow. "Second Sister is talking about Red Chamber Dream, and her sympathies are with Taiyu." "Oh," said Tijen. "I know. Second Sister likes Taiyu and Third Sister likes Paotsa." "Whom do you like?" asked Sutan. "I like Paoyu," replied Tijen. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself—that effeminate young man!" said Mochow. To Sutan, she said, "Whom do you like best?" "I like the cousin Hsiangyun," said Sutan; "she is so boyish and romantic." "Bravo!" exclaimed Tijen. "Whom do you like best?" Mulan asked Lifu in her low, gentle voice. Lifu paused a moment, and said, "I don't know. Taiyu weeps too much, and Paotsa is too capable. Perhaps I like Tanchun best because she is a combination of both, with the talent of Taiyu and the character of Paotsa. But I don't like the way she treats her mother." Mulan listened silently and then said slowly, "Alas! No one is perfect in this world."

"[Dream of the Red Chamber] is an interesting social, psychological and emotional study. It is very objectionable because of the sentimental atmosphere, and must not be read by younger people."

"I remember a Chinese scholar who said: "If you wish to understand China at all, you must read her poetry and The Dream of the Red Chamber"."

"Dream of the Red Chamber or the Hung Lou Meng is the greatest of all Chinese novels and the first of its kind to break completely with the past. It is the first and only autobiographical novel in traditional Chinese literature, the first to give a true picture of the complexities of life in a large family, the first to show that love can be painful and end in tragedy. It reflects a distinctly personal point of view and has a unity of plot beyond that of mere chronology. Its characters are drawn with subtlety and truth, as its dialogue is faithful to the colloquial idiom..."

"The celebrated Dream of the Red Chamber, though set, by general and just verdict, at the head of seric fiction, and though a work of art of which no nation need be ashamed, is yet at a great disadvantage on account of its bulk. Its tremendous length, no less than twenty volumes; the vast number of persons involved in the story; and the complicatedly mysterious character of the introductory chapters, make it a book which perhaps the most heroic efforts of enthusiastic scholars will never succeed in introducing to the world of western letters."

"灵根育孕源流出，心性修持大道生。"

"Since the creation of the world, [an immortal stone] had been nourished for a long period by the seeds of Heaven and Earth and by the essences of the sun and the moon, until, quickened by divine inspiration, it became pregnant with a divine embryo. One day, it split open, giving birth to a stone egg about the size of a playing ball. Exposed to the wind, it was transformed into a stone monkey endowed with fully developed features and limbs."

"日映岚光轻锁翠，雨收黛色冷含青。"

""Can this sort of practice lead to immortality?" asked Wukong. "Impossible! Impossible!" said the Patriarch. "I won't learn it then," Wukong said."

"To obtain immortality from such activities," said the Patriarch, "is also like scooping the moon from the water." "There you go again, Master!" cried Wukong. "What do you mean by scooping the moon from the water?" The Patriarch said, "When the moon is high in the sky, its reflection is in the water. Although it is visible therein, you cannot scoop it out or catch hold of it, for it is but an illusion."

"Nothing in the world is difficult," said the Patriarch; "only the mind makes it so."

"You senseless pi-ma-wên! You are guilty of the ten evils. You first stole peaches and then wine, utterly disrupting the Grand Festival of Immortal Peaches. You also robbed Laozi of his immortal elixir, and then you had the gall to plunder the imperial winery for your personal enjoyment. Don't you realize that you have piled up sin upon sin?" "Indeed," said the Great Sage, "these several incidents did occur! But what do you intend to do now?"

"Your Majesty, what ability and what virtue does your poor monk possess that he should merit such affection from your Heavenly Grace? I shall not spare myself in this journey, but I shall proceed with all diligence until I reach the Western Heaven. If I do not attain my goal, or the true scriptures, I shall not return to our land even if I have to die. I would rather fall into eternal perdition in Hell."

"Treasure a handful of dirt from your home, But love not ten thousand taels of foreign gold."

"心生，种种魔生；心灭，种种魔灭。"

"You may proceed now, Master. Those robbers have been exterminated by old Monkey." "That's a terrible thing you have done!" said Tripitaka. "...If you have such abilities, you should have chased them away. Why did you slay them all? How can you be a monk when you take life without cause? ... You showed no mercy at all! ..." "Master," said Wukong, "if I hadn't killed them, they would have killed you!" Tripitaka said, "As a priest, I would rather die than practice violence."

"唐僧道：“悟空，你说得几时方可到？”行者道：“你自小时走到老，老了再小，老小千番也还难。只要你见性志诚，念念回首处，即是灵山。”"

"I was born with a laughing face!"

"Pilgrim said to them, "Now leave the hall and close the shutters so that the Heavenly mysteries will not be seen by profane eyes. We shall leave you some holy water." The Daoists retreated from the hall and closed the doors.... Pilgrim stood up at once and, lifting up his tiger-skin kilt, filled the flowerpot with his stinking urine. Delighted by what he saw, Zhu Eight Rules said, "Elder Brother, you and I have been brothers these few years but we have never had fun like this before. Since I gorged myself just now, I have been feeling the urge to do this." Lifting up his clothes, our Idiot...pissed till he filled the whole garden vase. Sha Monk, too, left behind half a cistern. They then straightened their clothes and resumed their seats solemnly before they called out, "Little ones, receive your holy water." Pushing open the shutters, those Daoists kowtowed repeatedly to give thanks. They carried the cistern out first, and then they poured the contents of the vase and the pot into the bigger vessel, mixing the liquids together. "Disciples," said the Tiger-Strength Immortal, "bring me a cup so that I can have a taste." A young Daoist immediately fetched a teacup and handed it to the old Daoist. After bailing out a cup of it and gulping down a huge mouthful, the old Daoist kept wiping his mouth and puckering his lips. "Elder Brother," said the Deer-Strength Immortal, "is it good?" "Not very good," said the old Daoist, his lips still pouted, "the flavor is quite potent!" "Let me try it also," said the Goat-Strength Immortal, and he, too, downed a mouthful. Immediately he said, "It smells somewhat like hog urine!""

"山高自有客行路，水深自有渡船人。"

"Seek not afar for Buddha on Spirit Mount; Mount Spirit lives only inside your mind."

"The lesson of all scriptures concerns only the cultivation of the mind."

"When the mind is pure, it shines forth as a solitary lamp, and when the mind is secure, the entire phenomenal world becomes clarified."

"To serve the ruler or to serve one's parents follows the same principle. You live by the kindness of your parents, and I do by the kindness of my ruler."

"When man has a virtuous thought, Heaven will grant him support."

"人心生一念，天地悉皆知。善恶若无报，乾坤必有私。"

"Sage Monk, having come all this distance from the Land of the East, what sort of small gifts have you brought for us? Take them out quickly! We'll be pleased to hand over the scriptures to you." On hearing this, Tripitaka said, "Because of the great distance, your disciple, Xuanzang, has not been able to make such preparation." "How nice! How nice!" said the two Honored Ones, snickering. "If we imparted the scriptures to you gratis, our posterity would starve to death!"

"When Sha Monk opened up a scroll of scripture that the other two disciples were clutching, his eyes perceived only snow-white paper without a trace of so much as half a letter on it. Hurriedly he presented it to Tripitaka, saying, "Master, this scroll is wordless!" Pilgrim also opened a scroll and it, too, was wordless. Then Eight Rules opened still another scroll, and it was also wordless. "Open all of them!" cried Tripitaka. Every scroll had only blank paper."

"What good is it to take back a wordless, empty volume like this? How could I possibly face the Tang emperor? The crime of mocking one's ruler is greater than one punishable by execution!"

"These blank texts are actually true, wordless scriptures, and they are just as good as those with words. However, those creatures in your Land of the East are so foolish and unenlightened that I have no choice but to impart to you now the texts with words."