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The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

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Language Notes

Text: English, Chinese (translation)

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About the Author

Cao Xueqin (1715-63) was born into a family which for three generations held the office of Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in Nanking, a family so wealthy they were able to entertain the Emperor four times. However, calamity overtook them and their property was consfiscated. Cao Xueqin was living in poverty when he wrote his famous novel The Story of the Stone.

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Product details

Series: The Story of the Stone (Book 1)

Paperback: 540 pages

Publisher: Penguin Classics; Trade Paperback Edition edition (March 30, 1974)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0140442936

ISBN-13: 978-0140442939

Product Dimensions:

5.1 x 1 x 7.8 inches

Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.2 out of 5 stars

54 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#76,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Not to be a complete cornball, but I knew I was dizzy with love for this 18th century Chinese masterpiece when I stumbled over a passage where the incorrigible servant Tealeaf goes off on a bully with a wonderful verbal takedown, adding "Be glad we haven't [naughty word]ed your dad."...ah! I love learning about other cultures!But really, 'dizzying' is the best word for this wonderful book. The central family tree is bursting into an entire forest, the narrator shifts in and out of plotlines willy-nilly ("Who the heck is this person again?" I said way too often), the Rongguo estate is described in extremely intimate detail, there are poems on every other page, and there is some proto-magic realism going on the whole time with demons, immortals, and fairies existing in dreams and maybe real life. It's all so...fascinating. It made me genuinely excited for reading in a way I haven't been in a long, long, long time.Just like with any love, time for me to fess up there are some...issues. First of all, this is just 1 of 5 volumes, so it ends kinda abruptly and with 0 resolution. In fact, there is almost never any resolution ever. Or a plot period, to be honest. The story just saunters and putters around. Even the central love triangle between Dai-yu, Bao-chai, and Bao-yu hasn't really budged much so far (and by the way, Bao-yu is an incorrigible little brat. It aggravates me how much I like him).But I cannot emphasize enough how much I enjoyed all of this. My tip is to not fret so much about trying to figure out what's going on or how everyone relates to everyone. Once I just relaxed, I surprised myself how invested I got in Bao-yu, Xi-feng, Grandmother Jia, Aroma, Tealeaf, and all the big and petty going-ons at the mansion. I can absolutely see why scholars dedicate their lives and livelihoods to Cao's sprawling, funny, and heartbreaking work.......I reckon I'll need a cigarette bad by the time I'm finished with this whole thing.

This--the whole 5-volume set--remains China's greatest novel, and possibly the greatest novel in any language. It is the subject of a whole field of studies in China ("Red Studies," from the more usual Chinese title of the book, HUNG LOU MENG, "A Dream of Red Mansions"). It really should be read by every educated person. The other reviews on Amazon summarize the book well. Some of them comment on the translation's accuracy, which I cannot do, being too feeble in my Chinese to follow its difficult prose. There are several things to add, however. I'm currently reading it for the 3rd time (I have also read the abridged translations), with an eye to studying the ways emotion is represented, for some work on emotions across cultures that I am involved in. The interesting thing here is that the whole incredibly diverse, elaborate, and minutely described emotional landscape of the novel is instantly and totally accessible and comprehensible to a sensitive western reader (at least, to with some knowledge of Chinese conventions). There is nothing remotely like the utterly alien, incomprehensible emotional and personal landscape that stereotypes and superficial western accounts ascribe to the Chinese. There is also nothing like the utterly socialized Chinese, incapable of individuality, seen in most western accounts of cross-cultural psychology. In fact, Cao's characters are sometimes quirky, sometimes downright eccentric, and always individuals and characters. This is (of course) a much more accurate portrayal of Chinese persons than the stereotyping western literature. The western reader is even apt to do as Chinese readers often do, and identify Cao's characters with people they know. Cultural psychologists take note. First is the stunning level of social commentary here, focused tightly and relentlessly on the plight of women in a traditional elite North Chinese household, but also on the plight of the servant and commoner classes in that elitist situation. Cao Xueqin explores every possible misfortune that can befall good women (including being corrupted into not-so-good women). Cao was humorous and gently ironic. The brilliant but feckless and unpredictable hero Bao-yu survives largely because of his infinitely caring, sensible, always-there maid and lover Aroma. Several of the other characters also depend on servants who are conspicuously more sane and competent than their masters and mistresses. Nobody in the English-language literature seems to point out that this was part of a movement. The great poets Zheng Xie and Yuan Mei were exact contemporaries of Cao Xueqin. Cao would probably have known their work. They had the same socially critical stance. They had the same highly empathetic attitudes toward women, including women of the servant class. If the latter phrase sounds very feudal and hierarchic, reflect, American readers: our poets and novelists are very often elite New Englanders and New Yorkers; you know they have servants; yet it will be a cold day in Hell before you find a sympathetic portrait of a maid in any of their stuff. Cao is way ahead. Zheng and Yuan were also capable of the same sort of intensely personal, intimate, open writing about love that Cao managed so well. There is a wonderful translation of one of Zheng's more painful and personal love poems in V. McHugh and C. Kwock, WHY I LIVE ON THE MOUNTAIN, a booklet that should be more widely known--alas rare and obscure. Moreover, this humanistic attitude--toward women, or just toward everybody--spread to Japan; think of Rai Sanyo and Ryokan. I doubt if they ever heard of Cao, but they surely had read Yuan Mei and very likely had read Zheng and others. There were a good number of women writers at the time. Some were proteges of Yuan Mei. No one seems to know what happened to the women in Cao's own personal life. Chinese society in the early Qing Dynasty was horribly hierarchic and oppressive, not least to women, but the countercurrents represented by Cao and others were powerful and important. They lie behind modern women's movements in East Asia.

For people that are accustomed to the cultures of the West (Americas, Europe) it might be a chore to get interested in this book. The pace seems to be a little slow but that is because the details of daily life in China days past are different and they might just slip right past you. If you're interested in how life was lived in that part of the world, this book will be a masterpiece, as it has been in China itself.

Rank and privilege in 18th century China. The family compound. Relation between relatives and the pecking order. The state loses meaning at extended family level which tend to have their own laws and customs. Subjection of women is rife, but not without protest. This book about customs is worth more than a history book in order to understand how people lived. This is not a history book, it is a novel of customs, more about what people thought, about respect, subservience and privilege and mores.

One of the masterpieces of Chinese literature. Five volumes and hundreds of characters. Has a modern feel, despite being more than two hundred years old. Fascinating book.

The book looks very aged/old with yellow pages. Disappointed

This book is one of the celebrated classics in Chinese literature. The English translation here is very good. Even the poetry is well done

Lots and lots of pages and every one of them worth it! I first read a more abbreviated translation of this story for an anthropology class back in the early 70s.

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