"Chinese architecture provides for the mass of the population low, one-story buildings. A mansion with a second story is called lou—and Hung Lou stands for "Red Two-Story Building." According to Buddhist usage, it is also a metaphor for such concepts as worldly glory, luxury, wealth, and honors—similar to the Buddhist interpretation of "red dust" as "worldly strivings," "the material world.""
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Franz Kuhn, The Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), Introduction, p. xiii
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Dream of the Red Chamber
Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦 Honglou Meng), also called The Story of the Stone (石头记 Shitou Ji), composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was written sometime in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. Long considered a masterpiece of Chinese literature, the novel is generally acknowledged to be the pinnacle of Chinese fiction.
160 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Dream of the Red Chamber →
Related Quotes
"It is a tale about a gifted and sensitive young man who, through contemplation of the twelve registers of the passion…"
"In the Dream of the Red Chamber is drawn a vast panorama of Chinese family life, represented by the great house of Ch…"
"One of the great monuments of the world's literature."
"The Dream of the Red Chamber and the Japanese Tale of Genji are the two greatest works of prose fiction in all the hi…"
"The Dream of the Red Chamber is a good book and should be recommended. We don't read the Dream of the Red Chamber for…"
"I have read Dream of the Red Chamber five times, but haven't been influenced by it because I regarded it as history. …"
"It is the metaphysical modesty of Taoism that gives The Dream of the Red Chamber its style, that modesty which is the…"
"The Dream of the Red Chamber, the fascinating eighteenth-century Chinese novel...is to its native literature very muc…"
"This Chinese author of the eighteenth century is saying, with the same technique and with the same voice, what the gr…"
"For social realism and psychological insight, Dream of the Red Chamber is a work to be placed alongside the greatest …"