"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."