Talk:Dream of the Red Chamber

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Contents 1 A Question for the Experts 2 Answering Some Questions 3 Name of article 4 Relationship of people 5 Duplicated article 6 Book Title 7 Version issues

[edit] A Question for the Experts

In chapter 6 of the Hawkes translation Bao-yu initiates sexual relations with his maid Aroma shortly after the red chamber dream. For much of the remainder of the novel Bao-yu's relations with Aroma and all the other girls appears to be chaste. Do Bao-yu's sexual relations really stop for a number of years? Does this make sense, as sex never seemed like a genie that could be put back into a bottle? Is this something that I am simply missing due to an inattentive reading of a translated work? What is going on?

Regards, mleahy@sonic.net

Very good question. Indeed, there are no apparent accounts of his sexual relations after that. But there are some hints, quite elusive hints. In one occasion, Baoyu is taking a bath with one of his maidservants (Bihen I believe) in attendence, and it takes unusually long. After they come out, his other maidservants see the water splashed all over the place, and they all laugh about it. Later, it is hinted that Xiren has been sleeping on Baoyu's bed. Maybe that was a common practice. It seems that Baoyu and Xiren did not just have sex that one time. When Qingwen is about to die right before chapter 80, it is hinted that she is chaste but everyone knows Xiren is not. That's all I can think of right off the top of my head. Indeed, compared to the author's description of other people's sex life (some also very elusive), Baoyu seems to be behaving quite well. By the way, couple of occasions when sex is openly talked about (even to the point of eroticism) are thought to be excerpts from the author's earlier book. Oh, one more thing. Baoyu probably has had a homosexual relationship with Qin Zhong. It's not said whether they had sex or not (but Qin Zhong definitely had sex with a nun). But from the words of their schoolmates, and from other places in the book, homosexual relationships are not that uncommon back then. -Liuyao 16:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

At the very beginning, right after their first intercourse, the author states that their relationship continued, but he would not write about it again. Moreover, in the very end of the story, after seeing the who her husband (the actor) was, Aroma "tells him about her relationship with Baoyu". I personally think it's all clear, they did have sex many times. Next, there's nothing explicitly stated about Baoyu having sex with other maids, but if you read between the lines (or the logograms), e.g someone badmouthing him or worrying about him, it also quite clear that he had. Jancikotuc 16:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Answering Some Questions

I can see below that there are some disputes...I hope I can add something to the conversation. First, what is arguably the widest circulating translation still in publication of Hong Lou Meng was done by David Hawkes (the last two volumes by John Minford, same publisher - Penguin), and it is translated as The Story of the Stone, with a subtitle, also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber. So it's a perfectly valid title.

Secondly, I read something almost immediately that made me take a double-look. The opening states that "...is one of the greatest masterpieces of Chinese fiction and of the four Classics, written in the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty." My problems include the following (let me just say in advance that I am sorry, I sound like a total jerk) Anyway:

Stating that it is one of the greatest masterpieces of Chinese fiction...I personally believe that this is the greatest novel ever written. But that's an opinion, as is the previous statement. Furthermore, the concept of a "great Chinese novel" (read NOVEL) didn't mean anything until after the May 4th movement. Also, there is a link to something called the "four classics". This could be easily be confused with the Four Books of Neo-Confucianism (Mencius, Doctrine of the Mean, Analects, and the Great Learning). The idea that these four books constitute a sort of fictional canon is, in my opinion, anachronistic. The whole idea of looking to fiction as a means of expressing a theme or idea (as the West has been doing for many years) is a relatively modern phenomenon, probably started when Hu Shi began to praise these works for their use of vernacular. Ironically, the only novel that did pass the scrutiny of sinologists like C.T. Hsia (see The Great Chinese Novel), was this one. This is probably the only novel from pre-1917 China that is not cliche, with flat characters and predicitable plot lines. I've reworded the intro paragraph, and I hope the editors will find it satisfactory.Iluvchineselit 01:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name of article

Sorry buds, but the pinyin form is very uncommon: [1] --Jiang

I've moved this article to "The Chronicles of the Stone" as ji4 (yanzi) refers to records, notes, and the like. -Taoster

While I do understand what the above wikipedian mean, I wonder whether we are taking it too far for the non-Chinese readers. The Story of the Stone makes good sense as well - the book has been translated as such. Are we are getting a bit pedatic here? - Mandel

The Story of the Stone is another book entirely, though a story from this text is mentioned in it. Auric The Rad 04:07, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

I moved the page to The Dream of the Red Chamber, which is the more common name by which this work is known and also a name which has a clearer, less disputed translation than Chronicles of the Stone. --Lowellian 14:30, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I'm moving the page to Dream of the Red Chamber, omitting the initial article "the," for two reasons: first, this makes the title consistent with most of the other Chinese classic texts in Wikipedia (for example, see Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West) and because sometimes the initial article is unclear, as sometimes the title of the book is translated as The Dream and sometimes as A Dream; also, it's not like there is an article in the actual Chinese title anyway. --Lowellian 14:40, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)

When originally titling this article "Honglou Meng" I was following the consensus of Western scholars. I suspect the academic community has settled on Honglou Meng not for its closeness to Mandarin but because none of the many alternatives has gained prominence above the others. The classics that Lowellian refers to (Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms) are not beset with this problem -- they have a single well-accepted English title which Western scholars are not reluctant to use. I probably should have mentioned this when the article was first created as this would have precluded some of this discussion. Fortunately with Wikipedia redirects we don't have to get this precisely right and we can use any of the names as long as we maintain a healthy redirect list so I'm fine with stopping here at "Dream of the Red Chamber". 67.121.92.243 22:02, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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I thought Gao E's contribution to the book was debated, anyone could validate this? --Cylauj 15:01, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

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Linking to Soap opera with the adjective "riveting"? Maybe replace with "A riveting chronicle of a family's decline" or something of the like. 61.51.66.110 14:47, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Relationship of people

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Red_dream.png

[edit] Duplicated article

There was a duplicated article (edit history). — Instantnood 08:39, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Book Title

I think the translated title Dreams of Red Chamber captures the essense of the story best. Sorry I didn't see the above discussion section "Name of article," so I started a new one.--Ryz05 03:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Translating the title yourself would count as original research, so it isn't appropriate here. The article heading should contain only the commonly used titles in English, and what you give isn't among them. It isn't even natural-sounding English. CRCulver 03:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I didn't translate the title myself. This website http://www.china-on-site.com/pages/comic/comiccatalog4.php provides the translated name. --Ryz05 04:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It's still not used by English-language publishers. The name appears limited to a single publisher located in China whose staff are not native speakers. It's not notable enough to put in the article header. And it's dreadful English, worthy of just being ignored. CRCulver 04:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Version issues

The article states The book, is, thus, normally published and read in Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E's 120-chapter completed version.

However this article on the authorship states Cheng and Gao published their first 120 chapter version of Hong Lou Meng in 1791. [...] This was the so called Cheng Jia Ben (程甲本)edition, published almost thirty years after Cao Xueqin passed away. It was also the first printed version of Hong Lou Meng.

Less than three months later, in 1792, Cheng and Gao published another version, still with 120 chapters. [...] This was the so called Cheng Yi Ben (程乙本)edition, which later became the most popular edition of HLM known by millions of Chinese readers today.

A clarification might be in order. --18:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)