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Yet, when all's done, her Orchid was the best. The plum-tree bore her fruit after the rest,.Returning south in tears she met calamity. 'Two' makes my riddle with a man and tree:.Yourself impure, shall end up in the mud. You that look down on common flesh and blood, It is only when there is no road in front of you that you think of turning back. As long as there is a sufficiency behind you, you press greedily forward.In such commotion does the world's theatre rage:Īs each one leaves, another takes the stage.Chapter 1 Crimson Pearl Flower (later Lin Daiyu)'s debt of tears to the Stone (later Jia Baoyu).The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of a mortal lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in the world below. I have no sweet dew here that I can repay him with.Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye. What, you may ask, was the origin of this book? The first 80 chapters of the novel were written by Cao Xueqin, and the last 40 chapters were completed by Gao E. David Hawkes and John Minford (Penguin, 1973–1986). Quotations Unless otherwise noted, all quotations in English are taken from The Story of the Stone, 5 vols., trans. The novel is remarkable not only for its huge cast of characters and psychological scope, but also for its precise and detailed observation of the life and social structures typical of 18th-century Chinese society. As the author himself says in the introduction to the first chapter, it is intended to be a memorial to the damsels he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. Red Chamber is believed to be semi- autobiographical, mirroring the rise and decline of author Cao Xueqin's own family and, by extension, of the Qing Dynasty. Long considered a masterpiece of Chinese literature, the novel is generally acknowledged to be the pinnacle of Chinese fiction. It was written sometime in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real.ĭream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true