Dream of the Red Chamber

"The Story of the Stone" redirects here. For the 1988 novel, see The Story of the Stone (Hughart novel).

For other uses, see Dream of the Red Chamber (disambiguation).

Dream of the Red Chamber

A scene from the novel, painted by Xu Baozhuan (1810–1873)
Author	Cao Xueqin
Original title	紅樓夢
Language	Chinese
Genre	Family saga
Publication date	Mid-18th century (manuscripts) 1791 (first printed edition)
Publication place	China
Published in English	1868, 1892; 1973–1980 (first complete English translation)
Dewey Decimal	895.1348

Honglou meng is a book about enlightenment [or awakening]. ... A man in his life experiences several decades of winter and summer. The most sagacious and wise is certainly not submerged in considerations of loss and gain. However, the experiences of prosperity and decline, coming together and dispersing [of family members and friends] are too common; how can his mind be like wood and stone, without being moved by all this? In the beginning there is a profusion of intimate feelings, which is followed by tears and lamentations. Finally, there is a time when one feels that everything he does is futile. At this moment, how can he not be enlightened?

— A commentary on the novel by writer Jiang Shunyi, dated 1869 ^[25]

The opening chapter of the novel describes a great stone archway and on either side a couplet is inscribed:

假作真時真亦假，
無為有處有還無。

Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.

This couplet is later reiterated, however this time as:

假去真來真勝假，
無原有是有非無。

When Fiction departs and Truth appears, Truth prevails;
Though Not-real was once Real, the Real is never unreal. ^[26]

As one critic points out, the couplet signifies "not a hard and fast division between truth and falsity, reality and illusion, but the impossibility of making such distinctions in any world, fictional or actual." ^[27] It also symbolizes the peculiar Taoist religious tradition prevalent in Northern China since the Yuan dynasty as practiced in Cao's time, as well as Taoism's alternate roles in society such as doctrines for philosophical and intellectual rather than religious guidance and one of the schools of thought Buddhist sects in China syncretized with their own. ^[28] This theme is further reflected in the name of the main family, Jia (賈, pronounced jiǎ), which is a homophone with the character jiǎ 假, meaning false or fictitious; this is mirrored the surname of the other main family, Zhen (甄, pronounced zhēn), a homophone for the word "real" (真). It is suggested that the novel is both a realistic reflection and a fictional or "dream" version of Cao's own family.

Early Chinese critics identified its two major themes as those of the nature of love, and of the transitoriness of earthly material values, as outlined in Buddhist and Taoist philosophies. ^[29] Later scholars echoed the philosophical aspects of love and its transcendent power as depicted in the novel. ^[30] One remarked that the novel is a remarkable example of the "dialectic of dream and reality, art and life, passion and enlightenment, nostalgia and knowledge." ^[31]

The novel also vividly depicts Chinese material culture, such as medicine, cuisine, tea culture, festivities, proverbs, mythology, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, filial piety, opera, music, architecture, funeral rites, painting, classic literature and the Four Books. Among these, the novel is particularly notable for its grand use of poetry. ^[32]

Since the establishment of Cao Xueqin as the novel's author, its autobiographical aspects have come to the fore. Cao Xueqin's clan was similarly raided in real life, and suffered a steep decline. Marxist interpretation starting in the New Culture Movement saw the novel as exposing feudal society's corruption and emphasized the clashes between the classes. Since the 1980s, critics have embraced the novel's richness and aesthetics in a more multicultural context. ^[33]

In the title Hóng lóu Mèng (紅樓夢, literally "Red Chamber Dream"), "red chamber" can refer to the sheltered chambers where the daughters of a prominent family reside. ^[34] It also refers to Baoyu's dream in chapter five, set in a "red chamber", a dream where the fates of many of the characters are foreshadowed. "Mansion" is one of the definitions of the Chinese character "樓" (lóu), but the scholar Zhou Ruchang writes that in the phrase hónglóu it is more accurately translated as "chamber". ^[35]

The novel's mythological elements were also inspired by the services Cao was involved in at the Dongyue Temple. ^[28] The temple's most venerated gods came from Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and shamanic traditions from various regions within and outside of China, and the book's spiritual themes, prose stylization, and portrayals of mythical figures were inspired by the traditional stories told about these deities and other oral temple traditions from Beijing. ^[28] Much of this folklore was already popular during the Yuan dynasty and was retold in various ways in Cao's era in the Qing dynasty. ^[28]

Reception and influence in modern era

The cover of a 1912 printed edition of the Youzheng version

In the late 19th century, Hong Lou Meng's influence was so pervasive that the reformer Liang Qichao attacked it along with another classic novel Water Margin as "incitement to robbery and lust", and for smothering the introduction of Western style novels, which he regarded as more socially responsible. ^[36] The eminent scholar Wang Guowei, however, achieved a new method of literary interpretation in an innovative and path-breaking 1904 essay which invoked the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Wang called the novel "the tragedy of tragedies", in contrast to the prosperous endings in most earlier drama and fiction. ^[37] Wang further proclaims the novel as "worthy of being considered as the one great masterpiece in the realm of Chinese art." ^[38]

In the early 20th century, although the New Culture Movement took a critical view of the Confucian classics, the scholar Hu Shih used the tools of textual criticism to put the novel in an entirely different light, as a foundation for national culture. Hu and his students, Gu Jiegang and Yu Pingbo, first established that Cao Xueqin was the work's author. Taking the question of authorship seriously reflected a new respect for fiction, since the lesser forms of literature had not been traditionally ascribed to particular individuals. ^[39] Hu next built on Cai Yuanpei's investigations of the printing history of the early editions to prepare reliable reading texts. The final, and in some respects most important task, was to study the vocabulary and usage of Cao's Beijing dialect as a basis for Modern Mandarin.

In the 1920s, scholars and devoted readers developed Hongxue, or Redology into both a scholarly field and a popular avocation. Among the avid readers was the young Mao Zedong, who later claimed to have read the novel five times and praised it as one of China's greatest works of literature. ^[40] The influence of the novel's themes and style are evident in many modern Chinese prose works. The early 1950s was a rich period for Redology with publication of major studies by Yu Pingbo. Zhou Ruchang, who as a young scholar had come to the attention of Hu Shih in the late 1940s, published his first study in 1953, which became a best seller. ^[41] But in 1954 Mao personally criticized Yu Pingbo for his "bourgeois idealism" in failing to emphasize that the novel exposed the decadence of "feudal" society and the theme of class struggle. In the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Yu came under heavy criticism but the attacks were so extensive and full of quotations from his work that they spread Yu's ideas to many people who would not otherwise have known of their existence. ^[42]

During the Cultural Revolution, the novel initially came under fire, though it quickly regained its prestige in the following years. Zhou Ruchang resumed his lifework, eventually publishing more than sixty biographical and critical studies. ^[41] In 2006, Zhou, who had long distrusted Gao E's editions, and the novelist Liu Xinwu, author of popular studies of the novel, joined to produce a new 80 chapter version which Zhou had edited to eliminate the Cheng-Gao emendations. Liu completed an ending that was supposedly more true to Cao's original intent. ^[43] The novel continues to be influential on contemporary Chinese poets such as Middle Generation's An Qi, who paid homage to it in her poem To Cao Xueqin. ^[44]

Translations and reception in the West

... one of the great monuments of the world's literature ...

— Review of the Dream of the Red Chamber by Anthony West, The New Yorker ^[45]

Cao utilizes many levels of colloquial and literary language and incorporates forms of classic poetry that are integral to the novel, making it a major challenge to translate. ^[46] A 2014 study of fourteen translations of the novel concluded that the work is a "challenge even to the most resourceful of translators, and the process of rendering it into another language is bound to involve more translation problems, techniques, and principles than the process of rendering any other literary work." Accordingly, the aims and achievements of the translators differ widely. ^[47]

The first recorded translation into English was in 1812 by the Protestant missionary and sinologist Robert Morrison (1782–1834), who translated part of chapter four for the second volume of his unpublished 1812 book Horae Sinicae. In 1816, Morrison did publish a translation of a conversation from chapter 31 in his Chinese language textbook Dialogues and Detached Sentences in the Chinese Language. In 1819, the British diplomat and sinologist John Francis Davis (1795–1890) published a short excerpt in the London Journal Quarterly Review. Davis also published a poem from chapter 3 in the 1830 Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. ^[48] In 1842, Karl Gützlaff's article, "Hung Lau Mung, or Dreams in the Red Chamber", in the sixth volume of the "Chinese Repository", included translation and criticism of some passages.

A literal translation of selected passages was published for foreigners learning Chinese by the Presbyterian Mission Press of Ningbo in 1846. ^[49] Edward Charles Bowra of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs published a translation of the first eight chapters in 1868 ^[50] and H. Bencraft Joly of the first fifty-six chapters in 1892. ^[51] The Reverend E.J. Eitel reviewed Joly's translation and condemned the novel, saying that Chinese read it "because of its wickedness." Herbert Giles, whom John Minford called "one of the more free-thinking British consular officers," took a more favorable view in a twenty-five page synopsis in 1885 that Minford calls still a "useful guide." ^[52] Giles further highlighted it in his A History of Chinese Literature in 1901. ^[53]

In 1928, Elfrida Hudson published a short introduction to the novel titled "An old, old story". ^[54] An abridged translation by Wang Chi-Chen which emphasized the central love story was published in 1929, with a preface by Arthur Waley. Waley said that "we feel most clearly the symbolic or universal value" of the characters in the passages which recount dreams. "Pao Yu", Waley continued, stands for "imagination and poetry" and his father for "all those sordid powers of pedantry and restriction which hamper the artist". ^[55] In a 1930 review of Wang's translation, Harry Clemons of The Virginia Quarterly Review wrote "This is a great novel", and along with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms , it "ranks foremost" among the novels of classic Chinese literature. ^[56] Although Clemons felt "meaning was only fragmentarily revealed" in the English translated prose and that "many of the incidents" and "much of the poetry" were omitted, he nevertheless thought "at any rate the effort to read The Dream of the Red Chamber is eminently worth making." ^[56] In 1958 Wang published an expansion on his earlier abridgement, though it was still truncated at 60 chapters.

The stream of translations and literary studies in the West grew steadily, building on Chinese language scholarship. The 1932 German translation by Franz Kuhn ^[57] was the basis of an abridged version, The Dream of the Red Chamber, by Florence and Isabel McHugh published in 1958, ^[58] and a later French version. Critic Anthony West wrote in The New Yorker in 1958 that the novel is to the Chinese "very much what The Brothers Karamazov is to Russian and Remembrance of Things Past is to French literature" and "it is beyond question one of the great novels of all literature." ^[45] Kenneth Rexroth in a 1958 review of the McHugh translation, describes the novel as among the "greatest works of prose fiction in all the history of literature", for it is "profoundly humane". ^[59] Bramwell Seaton Bonsall finished what is probably the first complete 120 chapter translation in the 1950s, Red Chamber Dream, but publication was abandoned when Penguin announced the Hawkes project. A typescript is available on the web. ^[60]

The respected and prolific Yang Hsien-yi was commissioned to translate the first complete English version. Though he confessed that this was his least favorite of the classic novels, Yang began work in 1961 and had finished roughly 100 chapters in 1964, when he was ordered to stop. He and his wife, Gladys Yang, were imprisoned on suspicion of espionage during the Cultural Revolution, but they finished the translation as a team after their release in 1974. It was published by Beijing Foreign Language Press as A Dream of Red Mansions, in three volumes, 1978–1980. ^[61] The second complete English translation to be published was by David Hawkes some century and a half after the first English translation. Hawkes was already a recognised redologist and had previously translated Chu Ci when Penguin Classics approached him in 1970 to make a translation which could appeal to English readers. After resigning from his professorial position, Hawkes published the first eighty chapters in three volumes (1973, 1977, 1980). ^[62] The Story of the Stone (1973–1980), the first eighty chapters translated by Hawkes and last forty by his son-in-law John Minford consists of five volumes and 2,339 pages of actual core text (not including Prefaces, Introductions and Appendices) and over 2,800 pages in total. ^[63] The word count of the Penguin Classics English translation is estimated at 845,000 words. In a 1980 review of the Hawkes and Minford translation in The New York Review of Books , Frederic Wakeman, Jr. described the novel as a "masterpiece" and the work of a "literary genius". ^[64] Cynthia L. Chennault of the University of Florida stated that "The Dream is acclaimed as one of the most psychologically penetrating novels of world literature." ^[65] The novel and its author have been described as among the most significant works of literature and literary figures of the past millennium. ^{[66] [67]}

The sinologist Oldřich Král also undertook a Czech translation of the entire novel, Sen v červeném domě (Prague: Odeon, three volumes, 1986–1988). Slovak sinologist and philosopher Marina Čarnogurská translated into Slovak whole four volumes of the novel, Sen o Červenom pavilóne (Bratislava: Petrus, 2001–2003. ISBN   80-88939-25-9).

In 2014, an abridged English translation of Dream by writer Lin Yutang resurfaced in a Japanese library. Lin's translation, about half the length of the original, is reportedly not a literal one. ^[68]

In a study of fourteen translations into English, German, French, Spanish, Laurence K.P. Wong finds that some challenges to translation are "surmountable", some "insurmountable," though translators sometimes hit on "surprisingly happy versions that come very close to the original," Hawkes, however, normally came up with versions that are "accurate, ingenious, and delightful...." Hawkes recreates the meanings and sounds of the original with "remarkable precision, achieving much greater success than any one of his fellow translators in surmounting the limits of literary translation...." ^[69] Another scholar agreed that the Yang's translation is "literal" in the sense of rendering word for word, but argued that the Hawkes translation achieved what should be called a "higher level of literalness: in the sense of "text for text." That is, Hawkes tries to maintain the range and contrasting levels of usage of the original while the Yangs smooth out the language with a "plain international English" and add explanations in footnotes. ^[70]

Other scholars examined particular aspects of the Yangs' translation and the Hawkes and Minford translation. The names of some characters sound like the words for their personality traits, and some names serve as allusions. Hawkes conveys the communicative function of the names rather than lexical equivalence; for example, Huo Qi is homonymous with "the beginning of catastrophe", and Hawkes makes the English name "Calamity". Hawkes sometimes uses Italian/Sanskrit terms when Western Christian culture lacks a term for a concept. ^[71] Gladys Yang and Yang Hsien-yi prefer literal translation, informing readers of names' meanings through annotations. Zhu Jian-chun argued that Hawkes’ choice to simply translate certain names that are puns makes the author's intentions clearer, and that the Yangs' choice of transliteration leaves the meaning more elusive, even if the transliterated names are more believable as character names. Zhu questioned the Yangs' translation of "Dao Ren" as "reverend". ^[71] According to Barry Lee Reynolds and Chao-Chih Liao, the Yangs' version contains more faithful translations of religious expressions but is also less readable to English language readers. ^[72] Xuxiang Suo argued, “Hawkes successfully conveyed the original textual information to foreign readers with smooth and beautiful English, but the loss of Chinese culture-loaded information is inevitable. Mr. Yang mostly adopted the way of literal translation, trying his best to keep the true and idiomatic Chinese style and national tint." ^[73]

Sequels and continuations

Owing to its immense popularity, numerous sequels and continuations to the novel have been published, even during the Qing era. There are currently more than thirty recorded sequels or continuations to the novel, including modern ones. ^[74] Modern (post-1949) continuations tend to follow after the eightieth chapter, and include those by Zhang Zhi, ^[75] Zhou Yuqing, ^[76] Hu Nan ^[77] and Liu Xinwu. ^[78]

Adaptations

A scene from Dream of the Red Chamber as depicted in Chinese opera

At least fourteen cinematic adaptations of the Dream of the Red Chamber have been made, including the 1944 film directed by Bu Wancang, the 1977 Shaw Brothers adaptation starring Sylvia Chang and Brigitte Lin, and the 1988 film directed by Xie Tieli (谢铁骊) and Zhao Yuan (赵元). This last film took two years to prepare and three years to shoot, and remains, at 735 minutes, the longest Chinese film ever made. ^[79]

In 1981, Jiangsu Song and Dance Ensemble premiered a dance drama version of Dream of the Red Chamber. A reworked version was performed in 1982 in Beijing by China Opera and Dance Drama Theatre featuring lead dancer Chen Ailian. ^[80]

At least ten television adaptations have been produced (excluding numerous Chinese opera adaptations), and they include the renowned 1987 television series, which is regarded by many within China as being a near-definitive adaptation of the novel. It was initially somewhat controversial as few Redologists believed a television adaptation could do the novel full justice. Producer and director Wang Fulin's decision in employing non-professional young actors was vindicated as the television series gained enormous popularity in China. The series' success owes much to composer Wang Liping (王立平). He set many of the novel's classical verses to music, taking as long as four years to deliberate and complete his compositions. Other television versions include a 1996 Taiwanese series and a 2010 version directed by Fifth Generation director Li Shaohong.

Unlike the other great Chinese novels, particularly Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West , the Dream of the Red Chamber has received little attention in the gaming world, with only two Chinese language visual novels having been released as of 2017. Hong Lou Meng and Hong Lou Meng: Lin Daiyu yu Bei Jingwang (红楼梦：林黛玉与北静王) were both released by Beijing Entertainment All Technology (北京娱乐通). The latter one was released on 8 January 2010, and it is an extended version of the first game, with the main heroines of the game fully voiced and additional CG+endings.

An English-language opera based on the novel in two acts was composed by Chinese American composer Bright Sheng, with libretto by Sheng and David Henry Hwang. The three-hour opera had its world premiere on 10 September 2016, by the San Francisco Opera. For their 2020 album, Transience of Life, the American art-rock band Elysian Fields set several poems from the novel to music.

In the 2023 video game Limbus Company created by South Korean studio Project Moon, character Hong Lu is based on Dream of the Red Chamber. He is one of the 12 playable sinners in the game, and wields a guandao.

See also

• Novelsportal

References

Citations

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71. Zhu, Jian-chun (April 2021). "The Impact of Chinese and Western Cultural Differences on Pun Translation: The Case Study of A Dream of Red Mansion" (PDF). US-China Foreign Language. 19: 80–83 – via David Publishing Company.
72. Reynolds, Barry Lee; Chao-Chih, Liao (August 2014). "Translating Religion in The Dream of the Red Chamber". 3L the Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies. 20 (2): 101–116. doi: 10.17576/3L-2014-2002-09 .
73. Xuxiang, Suo (June 2015). "A Comparative Analysis of Two English Versions of Some Poems in A Dream of Red Mansions" (PDF). Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 5 (6): 1179–1180. doi:10.17507/tpls.0506.08.
74. 《明清小说研究概论》 by 党月异、张廷兴 (中央编译出版社, 2015), ISBN   978-7511708779, lists 15 alone printed during the Qing dynasty and 17 during the Republican era (1912–1949).
75. 张之, 《红楼梦新补》, 1984.
76. 周玉清, 《红楼梦新续》, 1990.
77. 胡楠, 《梦续红楼》, 2007.
78. 《刘心武续红楼梦》, 2011.
79. 导演谢铁骊病逝享年89 曾导六部《红楼梦》. People (in Chinese). 20 June 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
80. 金秋 (1955) (2010). Wu dao xin shang. Jin, Qiu., 金秋. (Di 2 ban ed.). Beijing: Gao deng jiao yu chu ban she. ISBN   9787040287240. OCLC   885593885.

Works cited and further reading

• Chen Weizhao (陈维昭), Hongxue Tongshi (红学通史, "A History of Redology"). Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2005. ISBN   7208057885.
• Egan, Susan Chan; Bai, Xianyong, eds. (2021). A Companion to the Story of the Stone: A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN   9780231199445.
• Edwards, Louise P. (1994). Men and Women in Qing China : Gender in the Red Chamber Dream. Leiden: Brill. ISBN   9004101233.
• Eifring, Halvor (2016). Dream of the Red Chamber. Oxford Online Bibliographies (Chinese Studies). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 7 April 2017. Annotated bibliography of Western and Chinese language books and articles (subscription required).
• C.T. Hsia, Ch VII, "The Dream of the Red Chamber," in The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (1968; rpr. Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, Cornell East Asia Series, 1996. ISBN   1885445741), pp. 245–297.
• Levy, Dore J. (1999). Ideal and Actual in the Story of the Stone. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN   0231114060.
• Zaifu Liu, Yunzhong Shu, Reflections on Dream of the Red Chamber (Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2008).
• Minford, John; Hegel, Robert E. (1986). "Hung-lou meng 紅樓夢". In Nienhauser, William H. (ed.). The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp.  452–56. ISBN   0-253-32983-3.
• Andrew H. Plaks, Archetype and Allegory in the "Dream of the Red Chamber" (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1976). Reprinted: (Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Books on Demand, Reprint, 1993).
• Schonebaum, Andrew; Lu, Tina (2012). Approaches to Teaching the Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber). New York: Modern Language Association of America. ISBN   9781603291101. Articles on the nature, content, and history of the novel.
• Shang, Wei (2010). "The Literati Era and Its Demise (1723–1840)". In Chang, Kang-i Sun (ed.). The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume II: From 1375. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 245–342. ISBN   978-0-521-85559-4.
• Wang, Dylan K. (2023). "Translating Heteroglossia: Comparing Two English Translations of Honglou Meng". Archiv orientální. 91 (2): 307–326. doi:10.47979/aror.j.91.2.307-326. S2CID   264901884.
• Wilkinson, Endymion (2018). Chinese History: A New Manual. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN   9780998888309..
• Wong, Laurence Kwok Pun (2014). Dreaming Across Languages and Cultures: A Study of the Literary Translations of the Hong Lou Meng. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN   978-1-4438-6828-0.
• Shih-Ch'ang Wu, On the Red Chamber Dream: A Critical Study of Two Annotated Manuscripts of the 18th Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1961).
• Chi Xiao, The Chinese Garden as Lyric Enclave: A Generic Study of the Story of the Stone (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies Publications 2001).
• Yu, Anthony (1994), "Cao Xueqin'a Hongloumeng", in Stoler-Miller, Barbara (ed.), Masterworks of Asian literature in comparative perspective: a guide for teaching, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 285–299, ISBN   1563242575
• ——— (1997). Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN   0691015619.
• Yů, Ying-shih (1974). "The Two Worlds of 'Hung-Lou Meng'". Renditions. 2 (Spring). Shatin, New Territories: Chinese University of Kong Kong Press: 5–21.; reprinted in Ying-shih Yü, with the editorial assistance of Josephine Chiu Duke and Michael S. Duke, Chinese History and Culture Volume 2 Seventeenth Century Through Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 134–151.
• Zhang, Xinzhi (1990), "How to Read the Hong Lou Meng", in Rolston, David (ed.), How to Read the Chinese Novel, translated by Andrew Plaks, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press Translation of a Qing dynasty commentary showing a traditional interpretation.
• Ruchang Zhou, Edited by Ronald R. Gray, Mark S. Ferrara, Between Noble and Humble: Cao Xueqin and the Dream of the Red Chamber (New York: Peter Lang, 2009). Translated by Liangmei Bao and Kyongsook Park. ISBN   978-1-4331-0407-7.

External links

• Bryan Van Norden, Guide to Reading Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber.
• Zhang Xiugui, CliffsNotes. Summary and notes.
• Richard Smith (Rice University) Dream of the Red Chamber Outline of Vol I of Story of the Stone, with comments.
• Article on China Central Television Program about Red Chamber – China Daily . Raymond Zhou. 12 November 2005.
• Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 Chinese text with embedded Chinese-English dictionary
• The Dream of the Red Chamber public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Dream of the Red Chamber: Afterlives, University of Minnesota. Eight sections of an on-line course, including "The Text of the Novel; "Nineteenth Century Responses"; "Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Responses"; "The Social World of the Dream";
• Marshall, Heather. "From West to East: Conservation of the Chinese novel 'Dream of the Red Chamber'". British Library. Describes the book conservation work.

Dream of the Red Chamber
"Dream of the Red Chamber" in traditional (top) and simplified (bottom) Chinese characters

v t e Classic Chinese Novels
Four Classic Novels	Water Margin (mid-14th century) Romance of the Three Kingdoms (late 14th century) Journey to the West (c. 1592) Dream of the Red Chamber (mid-18th century)
Additional classics	The Plum in the Golden Vase (c. 1610) The Scholars (1750)