Chinese Novels

"Written (and rewritten) by a great artist with his very lifeblood."

"The variety of individual character portraits reveals a psychological depth not previously approached in Chinese literature."

"Pao-yü]'s secret wish is not unlike that of a much-admired adolescent hero in recent American fiction: to be a catcher in the rye and rescue all lovely maidens from the brink of custom and sensuality. Pao-yü enjoys the trust and friendship of all the girls around him, therefore, not because they look upon him as a lover but because, almost alone among their menfolk, he sympathizes with their condition and shares their thoughts."

"For social realism and psychological insight, Dream of the Red Chamber is a work to be placed alongside the greatest novels in the Western tradition."

"What Pao-yü is determined to give up is not only his sensual self but his active sympathy and compassion so that he may be released from his long obsession with suffering. The tragic dilemma posed in the drama of Pao-yü's spiritual awakening is surely this: Is insensibility the price of one's liberation? Is it better to suffer and sympathize, knowing one's complete impotence to redeem the human order, or is it better to seek personal salvation, knowing that, in achieving this, one becomes a mere stone, impervious to the cries of distress around one?"

"It is a tale about a gifted and sensitive young man who, through contemplation of the twelve registers of the passions, represented by the twelve categories of female characters in the Registers of Beauty, and through the experience of disillusionment, attains a state of mystic contemplation and of liberating peace. The Passionate Monk, whose spiritual odyssey is sketched out in the first chapter, is Baoyu himself."

"The Dream of the Red Chamber, the fascinating eighteenth-century Chinese novel...is to its native literature very much what The Brothers Karamazov is to Russian and Remembrance of Things Past is to French literature."

"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.""

"One of the great monuments of the world's literature."

"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 its story but for the history it recorded. It's an historical novel, and the author's language is the best of all classical novels. You read Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in's vivid description of Sister Feng. Sister Feng was really well portrayed. You couldn't write so well. If you hadn't read anything from the Dream of the Red Chamber, you wouldn't know anything about feudal society."

"Ostensibly, therefore, he [Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in] has written a Taoist or Zen Buddhist comedy, showing mankind's hopeless involvement in desire and pain and the liberation of at least a few select individuals besides the hero. But only ostensibly, because the reader cannot but feel that the reality of suffering as depicted in the novel stirs far deeper layers of his being than the reality of Taoist wisdom; he cannot but respond to the author's vast sympathy for young and old, innocent and scheming, self-denying and self-indulgent. [...] In devoting his creative career to tracing the history of Pao-yü and the Chia clan, Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in is therefore the tragic artist caught between nostalgia for, and tormented determination to seek liberation from, the world of red dust."

"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."

"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'."

"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."

"The acknowledgement that the text seeks to exact from its reader is...not only that fiction betokens a systematic reinforcement of illusion, but also that it focalizes, ironically, both the need and danger of that reinforcement. ... The profound paradox emerging from Cao Xueqin's masterpiece seems to be that the illusion of life, itself a painful avowal of the non-reality and untruth of reality, can only be grasped through the illusion of art, which is an affirmation of the truth of insubstantiality."

"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."

"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."

"我所居兮青埂之峰，我所游兮鴻蒙太空。 誰與我逝兮吾誰與從？渺渺茫茫兮歸彼大荒！"

"祸福无门，惟人自招；披麻救火，惹焰烧身。"

"公人见钱，如蝇子见血。"

"假去真來真勝假，無原有是有非無。"

"說到辛酸處，荒唐愈可悲。由來衕一夢，休笑世人痴！"

"水来土掩，兵到将迎。"

"人无千日好，花无摘下红。"

"送君千里，终须一别。"

"[Song Jiang] helped anyone, high or low, who sought his aid. [...] He was always making things easy for people, solving their difficulties, settling differences, saving lives. He provided the indigent with funds for coffins and medicines, gave charity to the poor, assisted in emergencies, helped in cases of hardship. And so he was famed throughout the provinces of Shandong and Hebei, and was known to all as the Timely Rain, for like the rain from the heavens he brought succor to every living thing."

"“林妹妹，林妹妹！好好兒的，是我害了你了！你別怨我，只是父母作主，并不是我負心！”"

"[Lu Zhishen] bent and grasped the lower part of the trunk with his right hand, while his left hand seized it higher up, then gave a tremendous wrench—and pulled the tree from the ground, roots and all!"

"饥不择食，寒不择衣，惶不择路，贫不择妻。"

"香魂一缕随风散，愁绪三更入梦遥！"

"宝玉的事，明知他病中不能明白，所以众人弄鬼弄神的办成了；后来宝玉明白了，旧病复发，时常哭想，并非忘情负义之徒。今日这种柔情，一发叫人难受。只可怜我们林姑娘真真是无福消受他。如此看来，人生缘分，都有一定，在那未到头时，大家都是痴心妄想，及至无可如何，那糊涂的也就不理会了，那情深义重的也不过临风对月，洒泪悲啼。可怜那死的倒未必知道，这活的真真是苦恼伤心，无休无了。算来竟不如草木石头，无知无觉，倒也心中干净。"

"The memorial to my beloved girls could at one and the same time serve as a source of harmless entertainment and as a warning to those who were in the same predicament as myself but who were still in need of awakening."

"闻名不如见面，见面胜似闻名。"

"It was time to talk about choosing the plays and Grandmother Jia called on Bao-chai to begin. Bao-chai made a show of declining; but it was her birthday, and in the end she gave in and selected a piece about Monkey from The Journey to the West. Grandmother Jia was pleased."

"忽然听着黛玉说道：“宝玉，你为什么病了？”宝玉笑道：“我为林姑娘病了。”"

"As regards the allegory, it is clear that Tripitaka stands for the ordinary man, blundering anxiously through the difficulties of life, while Monkey stands for the restless instability of genius. Pigsy, again, obviously symbolizes the physical appetites, brute strength, and a kind of cumbrous patience. Sandy is more mysterious. The commentators say that he represents ch'êng, which is usually translated 'sincerity', but means something more like 'whole-heartedness'."

"Monkey is unique in its combination of beauty with absurdity, of profundity with nonsense. Folk-lore, allegory, religion, history, anti-bureaucratic satire and pure poetry—such are the singularly diverse elements out of which the book is compounded."

"任凭弱水三千，我只取一瓢饮。"

"见案上红灯，窗前皓月，依然锦绣丛中，繁华世界。定神一想，原来竟是一场大梦。浑身冷汗，觉得心内清爽。仔细一想，真正无可奈何，不过长叹数声。"

"Although Wu Cheng-en was a Confucian scholar, he wrote this book for entertainment. ... If we insist on seeking some hidden meaning, the following comment by Hsieh Chao-chih is quite adequate: "The Pilgrimage to the West is purely imaginary, belonging to the realm of fantasy and miraculous transformations. Monkey symbolizes man's intelligence, Pigsy man's physical desires. Thus Monkey first runs wild in heaven and on earth, proving quite irrepressible; but once he is kept in check he steadies down. So this is an allegory of the human mind, not simply a fantasy.""

"So then, instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey."

"但凡家庭之事，不是东风压了西风，就是西风压了东风。"

"This Monkey, which is an image of ourselves, is an extremely lovable creature, in spite of his conceit and his mischief. So should we, too, be able to love humanity in spite of all its weaknesses and shortcomings."

"[Monkey] had to learn the lesson of humility by an ultimate bet with Buddha or God Himself. He made a bet that with his magical powers he could go as far as the end of the earth, and the stake was the title of "The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven," or else complete submission. Then he leaped into the air, and traveled with lightning speed across the continents until he came to a mountain with five peaks, which he thought must be as far as mortal beings had ever set foot. In order to leave a record of his having reached the place, he passed some monkey urine at the foot of the middle peak, and having satisfied himself with this feat, he came back and told Buddha about his journey. Buddha then opened one hand and asked him to smell his own urine at the base of the middle finger, and told him how all this time he had never left the palm."

"茜纱窗下，我本无缘；黄土陇中，卿何薄命！"

"又想梦中光景，无倚无靠，再真把宝玉死了，那可怎么样好！一时痛定思痛，神魂俱乱。"

"“宝玉！宝玉！你好——”"

"The Story of the Stone is a book of the deepest feelings and the truest words."

"The Monkey was clever, but he was also conceited; he had enough monkey magic to push his way into Heaven, but he had not enough sanity and balance and temperance of spirit to live peacefully there. ... [He] set up a banner of rebellion against Heaven, writing on it the words "The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven." There followed then terrific combats between this Monkey and the heavenly warriors, in which the Monkey was not captured until the Goddess of Mercy knocked him down with a gentle sprig of flowers from the clouds. So, like the Monkey, forever we rebel and there will be no peace and humility in us until we are vanquished by the Goddess of Mercy, whose gentle flowers dropped from Heaven will knock us off our feet."