Preface to new edition

Pride of place

'Dream of the Red Chamber' judged 'Best Asian novel'

Thus, Red Chamber Dream tells the "essence" of the great novel in a typical way of classical Chinese literary wording.

Hong Lou Meng actually denotes that the aim of the work is to write the "biographies " of a series of young women, all of whom are characters in this great "dream" (tragedy). And this decides the grand stock and scope of the novel: There are more than 900 characters altogether and 108 is the number of the young women the author described.

The original structure of this great masterpiece was very complicated and complex, wherein hundreds of men and women's stories interweave a long scroll of their "silk" of life. In this abridged version, however, the "threads" are mainly limited within the scope of the tale of two characters: Baoyu (hero) and Daiyu (heroine).

The result of this arrangement leads naturally to a kind of misunderstanding: that Hong Lou Meng is merely a love-story in its narrowest and commonest sense. But this is quite far from the author's intent. Up to now, people have failed to find a better way than the present form of abridgment. But we feel a responsibility and necessity to remind the reader that this is quite unfair to our author Cao Xueqin.

 Cao Xueqin had a very uncommon ancestry and family history. The Cao family began to see their glorious days from the year when emperor Kangxi ascended the throne, since Cao's great grandmother was the dry-nurse of the young emperor, who loved and respected his "actual mother " very much and bestowed fortunes to her husband, sons and grandsons.

Thus their family held a very special and rich post for more than a half century. Cao Xueqin's grandfather, Cao Yin, became an outstanding writer, scholar and collector of precious classics.

So Cao Yin's sons and grandsons were brought up in a most cultured environment. But Cao's days came to an end with the death of emperor Kangxi. One of Kangxi's sons seized the throne unlawfully and punished the Cao family for subtle political reasons. Cao Xueqin lived most part of his life in extreme poverty and misfortune.

His novel was actually written in those miserable days, when he had a broken heart but still a great mind. We must not forget to mention that Cao Xueqin in the eyes and descriptions of his best friends was a great poet and charming personality. He was full of jokes and fun when he liked to talk. He was also an artist in many fields such as painting, music and drama. For students of Chinese culture, a perusal of Hong Lou Meng is the best way or “shortcut”, because of its vividness and realistic content.

Students of Chinese language will also find this novel to be a most interesting and standard “textbook”. We hope that with the help of this abridged version as a stepping stone, they could come to read the complete works of Cao Xueqin and learn much more from it than from other sources.