Best of Passion Blogs:

Michael’s blog on the Supreme Court is pretty informative since I think it’s a topic not many people know about. I like this post especially because I hadn’t known about Chief Justice Warren’s influence previously. He headed several landmark cases that make him a well-respected figure now, but apparently he wasn’t so popular in his own time. Michael’s post is good food for thought and gives some interesting historical perspective.

Ben’s posts are always funny, but I have to say my favorite is this one. Though it’s still a draft, I think there’s a lot of potential for Rate My Students, and the comments already handle it in a really smart and funny way. I like how the teachers’ comments conflict with their subject (the atheism professor saying “thank god,” the disability and stigma professor calling a student “retarted,” etc.) But I think the funniest is the math professor who got angry at a student for going to his office hours. Good use of an f-bomb if I ever saw it.

Karthik’s blog has a really good concept behind it, though it can clearly come with some risks. I think this post is a really fun read. The writing style is interesting, the content of what happened in the philosophy class is thought-provoking, and reading about how Karthik got kicked out is pretty funny.

I think I enjoyed my own passion posts more last semester, not because I was any less passionate this semester but because Dream is far more esoteric than Disney. Anyway, I had a lot of fun writing this post because I was able to vent about all my frustrations in relation to the princess redesign, which has bothered me for years. I also received a lot of thoughtful feedback from my classmates, which I will cherish forever.

Best of Civic Issues:

Michael’s civic issue post provides a good overview of affirmative action, a very controversial and relevant topic for us college students. I definitely got some new perspective from it.

For Ben, I liked this post and the related article about beauty. I’ve always found this topic interesting because it works so differently than other issues of social justice. Unlike race, gender, and sexuality, beauty is not something that we are sure even exists outside of a subjective opinion. This makes it even harder to address the problems that are faced because of it. Definitely a good read; I’d recommend it. But the footbinding quote still pisses me off.

My own favorite CI post was probably this one, since it’s something different that most people don’t consider when they think of racial representation. I think context is always an important thing to keep in mind for any issue, so I’m glad I was able to talk about.

For this last post, I think I’ll just talk about any resources or fun facts for anyone interested in Dream. Even if you found this blog dry (or didn’t read it), give the book a chance. I don’t know if I stressed this enough in the beginning, but Dream is literally seen as the pinnacle of Chinese fiction. This is a country with over 4000 years of history, so I’d say that’s impressive. It’s a very well-known and respected book in East Asia, so you’ll definitely be able to impress some people with your knowledge.

Anyway, if any of you do decide to pick the book up, I highly recommend the Hawkes and Minford translation. Other translations can be too literal to the point that the book doesn’t make sense. That or they’re abridged, which is obviously a deal-breaker as well. What’s nice about Hawkes and Minford is that they preserved the poetry so it still rhymes, and they kept most of the style of the original as well. For example, each chapter ends with something along the lines of “if you want to know what happened next, read the next chapter!” I thought it sounded like a bad soap opera cliffhanger when I first saw that, but my mom assured me that it was common practice to end chapters that way. It really is a good translation, but I think my only complaint would be the liberties they took with the characters’ names. The main characters’ names are mostly preserved, but a lot of the minor characters have weird half-translated names. Hence Patience, Aroma, Golden, Nightingale, etc. Some of these names don’t even make any sense. Adamantina’s name originally meant jade, but her new name is a reference to diamond. Why? No idea.

In case anyone is interested in the story but just doesn’t have time to read a 2500 page book, I’d also like to mention the TV adaptations. All of these are in dialects of Chinese, naturally, but English subs should be a possibility. The most popular adaptation of The Dream of the Red Chamber came around in the ’80s, and to my knowledge it’s still considered the canon version of the story. My parents have the whole thing in Cantonese, my almost-second language, but I just don’t think I could get into it. I’ve always had this aversion to older films because they look so ridiculous. I mean, look at Baoyu and Daiyu here.

This is actually a pretty good picture. In other ones, everything looks way too old.

I mean, if you’re more open-minded than me and like that old-school charm, I recommend you check it out. It’s a really popular series that became a classic in its own right, apart from the fame already achieved by the novel.

In 2010, two other versions of Dream were released. One was generally criticized while the other passed more or less under the radar. The criticized one apparently cast people who were too young (which is funny because Baoyu should’ve been about 13 for most of the story) and made weird stylistic choices. They used opera hairstyles instead of actual historical ones. I gotta say, it does look kinda silly.

They look like they’re wearing helmets.

Those that liked this version said it was very artistic, so I guess there are some good things to be said. But this last version is the one I’d be most inclined to watch. This drama, which is called The Legend of Daiyu, has graced my header all semester. As you can guess from the title, the focus is on the heroine rather than on Baoyu himself. But since she dies somewhere down the road, I guess they had to edit. Anyway, I’ve heard this version does a good job telling the story but follows the ’87 version too closely and doesn’t really have anything extra to make it stand out. Other than Ma Tian Yu’s acting and striking resemblance to a real-life Baoyu, which is why I’d be inclined to watch it. It’s definitely the most modern to look at, but it’s probably not the best from a literary scholar’s point of view.

And that’s about it! I hope I’ve encouraged some of you guys to check this thing out, and I hope you’ve learned something from reading my blog. It’s really crazy that this is our last passion post of the whole year. That sounds kinda sad, but don’t worry:

“When grief for fiction’s idle words
More real than human life appears
Reflect that life itself’s a dream
And do not mock the reader’s tears.”
-Cao Xueqin (The Dream of the Red Chamber)

We’ve finally gotten to Dream‘s most important theme, namely that life on earth is an illusion, just a dream. This idea is scattered throughout the book in myriad ways. Disenchantment’s home is called the Land of Illusion, but she says that, by comparison, life on Earth is “doubly an illusion.” In fact, the color red (featured prominently in the title of the book) is often associated with falseness in Buddhist teachings because the Earth is said to be made of red dust. Also, Baoyu’s family name (Jia) translates to fake. There’s another family named the Zhens, Zhen meaning real. The Zhens and Jias are pretty close, and there is actually a Zhen Baoyu who looks exactly like our protagonist and behaves much like him at first. Jia Baoyu has a dream at one point where he meets Zhen Baoyu and starts calling out to him. Upon waking up, he sits up and looks right into a mirror, so his maid thinks he’s calling to his own reflection.

Though his own life is so tangled up in these contrasts, Baoyu’s pretty slow to catch on to how fake his earthly existence is (as we all are). This is understandable because there are so many pleasant illusions. First off, since he is sentimental, Baoyu’s naturally in love with love, which is the greatest illusion there is. But in addition to love, he is moved by music, theater, poetry, and so on. These are central to all his pleasant memories from the garden and his character; could they all really be illusions? Apparently, yes. But they’re not obvious illusions. By describing these earthly things in such detail, the author is acknowledging the power of sentiment over our minds. However, in the end, he still shows that they are fake.

After Daiyu dies, Baoyu visits the Land of Illusion for a second time (in a dream again, naturally). He sees Daiyu there and calls out to her, but she doesn’t even react upon seeing him. He starts to realize then that their earthly love wasn’t real. On top of this, he reads Disenchantment’s registers again and realizes that each poem foreshadows the fate of the girls in his home. When he wakes up, Baoyu is a different person. He no longer cries when his friends are sent off on arranged marriages, because he knows that it is predestined. He is no longer the sentimental person he was and, after fulfilling his duties to his family, he leaves to become a monk. Eventually, he returns to being the stone he was before.

Maybe it’s because I’m not enlightened, but I had a big problem with this ending to the book. I think this article put it the best way:

“Bao-yu’s enlightenment and return to his original state is his greatest triumph.  Yet his slow transformation from “the most lustful” human alive to a monk devoid of feeling is still tragic.”

What endears Baoyu to us is his sensitive nature and love of life. Seeing him lose all that is inevitably upsetting, even though he becomes enlightened through the process. The best comparison I can think of is when someone dies, and we say that they’re going to a better place. Even if someone truly believes in heaven and/or an afterlife, no one’s glad when a loved one dies. To some extent, it’s a coping mechanism. Likewise, saying that everything’s just an illusion is a way of coping when things go horribly wrong. Seeing someone actually forsake their family, friends, and home over that belief is difficult, even if it’s supposedly the path to enlightenment. Baoyu’s family apparently feels the same way, as they are devastated when he leaves.

Like it or not, this is just the way enlightenment is achieved. According to the article I linked to above, it’s only by experiencing excessive desire and lust that we are able to return to the void; this is the “Buddhist paradox.” But there is an alternative reading to Baoyu’s story. Zhen Baoyu has a lust of the mind much like our protagonist, but he changes his ways after meeting Disenchantment for the first time. He becomes a career worm, like his father, and devotes himself to his studies and career. When Jia Baoyu meets Zhen Baoyu, the former is disgusted. In a way, Baoyu’s becoming a monk can be seen as his final rejection of the Confucian social hierarchy. Though he has to give up his sentimentality, Baoyu is at least able to stay true to that part of himself that hates what his father preaches. By this reading, Baoyu doesn’t lose himself as completely, and there’s some comfort in that.

Karma is an important part of the Buddhist principles espoused in Dream. The Jia family, because of its corruption, quickly finds itself in deep trouble. First of all, recall that Xifeng has been using her role as household manager to profit off of some corrupt deals. This eventually comes back to haunt her, as the money starts to leak away through these deals. There’s a lot of signs that hint at this throughout the book; Xifeng increasingly has to downsize parties and dig into her own savings to pay for gifts. She also becomes more and more sick.

The fact that they’re losing money is bad, but the Jias’ finishing blow is when the emperor decides to raid their apartments. To be completely honest, I’m really foggy on the details here. I forget why exactly the emperor decides to do this, but basically he confiscates some of the Jia manor and the family is left fearing for their future. The head of the family, Grandmother Jia, dies from grief, and Xifeng dies from her sickness shortly after. Members of the family are stripped of their positions of power, and basically everything is horrible.

This is a really important part of the book that I wouldn’t want to sell short, but eventually everything does work out. The emperor decides to let them go, and Baoyu’s father is restored to a respectable position so the family can continue to thrive. This time of grief definitely took its toll, but some critics of the book actually think the bad fortune wasn’t extreme enough to get the point across. That may be true, but there are many subtler examples of karma that develop the message further.

A good example I can think of is the character Adamantina (whose name means jade in Chinese). She’s a beautiful nun who lives in the garden with Baoyu and company. Anyway, this girl tries very hard to become enlightened and is really harsh in judging others who are less enlightened. But she’s a hypocrite because she actually falls in love with Baoyu, which is obviously forbidden. In the words of Disenchantment’s registers:

“For all your would-be spotlessness,
And vaunted otherwordliness,
You that look down on common flesh and blood,
Yourself impure, shall end up in the mud.”

It’s unclear what the original author intended for her (since he died after chapter 80), but in the version we have now, Adamantina ends up being abducted by robbers, which either leads to her being a sex slave or killing herself (it’s vague). The title of the chapter where this happens aptly begins with “Adamantina discharges a karmic debt.”

But not all karma is bad. There are examples of when good deeds lead to good things. For example, though Xifeng is evil in many ways, her one good deed was to help Granny Liu (the country bumpkin) by giving her money when she needed it. This good deed comes back to her when Granny Liu agrees to take care of Xifeng’s daughter, Qiao Jie, after Xifeng’s passing.

Karma is a really complex idea. I’m sure there’s a lot more going on here that I didn’t touch, but that’s the basic idea as I understand it. Next time, we’ll get back to Baoyu and finally address the big idea of illusion that is riddled throughout the book. We’re almost done blogging! How crazy is that.

I just remembered that I said I would talk about greed two blog posts ago and then talked about something else last week. Whoops. Anyway, Dream has a lot of political things to say about the wealthy. The author, Cao Xueqin, grew up very rich but then became destitute when his family lost all of its fortune. His novel is, in this way, quite autobiographical.

Anyway, I mentioned before that Baoyu doesn’t like adults. Indeed, older people are often shown to be corrupt; this is especially true of the parents of the servants. Though the young maids don’t seem to care about money, their parents are always trying to scheme to make a profit or increase their power. In one instance, a woman is so obsessed with money that she hates her own niece for leeching off of them.

“This aunt of Swallow’s was a stupid old woman whose senile infatuation with money was such that beside it all human ties had long since ceased to count.”

This “senile infatuation with money” is not hers alone. There are plenty of instances that demonstrate this theme. Baoyu goes so far as to say that getting married is what ruins perfectly good girls, and that age makes them even worse than men.

But what about people who are already rich? The Jias are an old money kind of family, and the novel often mocks the excessiveness of their lives. Every time there is a party (and there are plenty), a complete list of all the gifts and preparations is shown, and it’s ridiculous. Tons of rolls of silk and other fabrics, lots of fancy food, jade and gold ornaments, and so on. Yet when she’s done reading the lists, Xifeng sometimes says they look too short. In addition to this material waste, there’s also an excess in customs and decorum. On Baoyu’s birthday, the novel describes how he has to walk all over the manor to bow to the right people in the right order. Then, because it is also the birthday of some of his friends, they have to bow to each other and get confused over the proper order, and so on.

This image is even more prominent when the Jias have to deal with poor people and abuse their powers. In one case, Xue Pan gets into a bar fight and kills a guy. Luckily the guy is poor, so the Jias are able to bribe the judge to release Xue Pan, despite the lamentations of the dead boy’s mother. In another case, a member of the Jia family wants to marry a girl who’s already engaged to another man, so he bribes the judge to rule in his favor. But the best example is probably with Grannie Liu. Grannie Liu is a distant (and poor) relative of the Jias who thinks of going to visit them to ask for a favor. The Jias are charmed by her country bumpkin ways and decide to show her around; she even gets to hang out with the head of the house, Baoyu’s grandma. The Jias treat this woman to all sorts of luxuries that she’s never seen, but they think of her as a joke. Every time she says anything, they laugh at her coarse manners. This is despite the fact that sometimes she says things that they should really think about. For example, Grannie Liu sees how much crab they’re serving for one meal and exclaims that she could never afford that in years.

But I don’t think the Jias are trying to be mean; they just don’t realize how awful they’re being. They send Grannie Liu off with a lot of nice gifts, and she doesn’t even seem to realize how much they were making fun of her. Despite their corruption, there is definitely something likeable about the wealthy family. They speak in refined ways and know a lot about scholarly things, and I think we all like that in real life. In comparison, the poor people can’t even speak correctly. I don’t know how this went in the Chinese version, but in my translation one woman slurs her words so “your honor” becomes “yer’onner.”

None of this is to say that getting away with murder is ever okay, but I like how the novel presents a more realistic vision of the differences between the rich and the poor without idolizing either side. And anyway, this kind of corruption can’t go on forever; as we’ll see next time, the Jias soon get what’s coming to them.

Since we’re just coming back from spring break and midterms are still hanging over our heads (or at least mine), I think I’ll just do a really laid back, fun post today. Well I think it’s fun anyway. A lot of references are made throughout Dream to famous mythical, literary, and historical figures from China. While I don’t know who all of them are, I thought I’d share what knowledge I have.

Since Baoyu is such a philogynist, it’s no surprise that mostly famous females are referenced in the book. One of the popular ones is Chang’e, the goddess of the moon who reminds me of Pandora from Greek mythology (because she’s shown giving into curiosity and doing something stupid). There are many versions of the legend, but the premise is that there used to be ten suns, and a famous archer named Houyi shoots nine of them down so it wouldn’t be so hot. In ways that vary based on the version, this leads to Houyi getting a magic pill which can bestow eternal life only if a person takes half the pill. Houyi hides the pill, but his wife Chang’e finds it while he’s out and swallows the whole thing. Suddenly she becomes lighter and floats away to the moon, where she chokes up half of the pill. She then finds the rabbit on the moon, who agrees to grind the remaining pill for her so she can take it and return to her husband. To this day we can still see the rabbit grinding the pill on the moon, and we hold a festival every mid-autumn with cakes to honor Chang’e.

In Japan, they say the rabbit is pounding mochi, a kind of sticky rice.

Mooncakes are a popular treat for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Another leading lady who gets her own holiday is Weaver Girl. She is the youngest of the Emperor of Heaven’s seven daughters who are charged with weaving the sky. One day the sisters come down to Earth to bathe, and a cowherd sees them. He takes their clothes from the side of the lake and runs off with them. The problem is that the fairies can’t fly back to heaven without their clothes, so they tell the youngest sister to get them back. She confronts the cowherd, but he would only return the garments if she agrees to marry him. She does, and they have a surprisingly happy life together on Earth for a few years. But the Emperor gets annoyed because his youngest daughter sewed the most beatiful clouds and rainbows, so he takes her back to Heaven. The cowherd is distraught when his old cow suddenly speaks up. The cow is apparently an immortal being punished for his misdeeds; his hide would allow the cowherd to go to Heaven and get his wife back. The cowherd uses this advice, but as he approaches Weaver Girl, the Emperor’s mother uses her hairpin to draw a river in the sky (the Milky Way). The cowherd can’t possibly cross, so he and his wife watch each other from across the river. The Emperor is moved, so he decides that they can visit each other once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. On this day, all the magpies on Earth form a bridge across the Milky Way, and the two lovers are reunited.

In addition to mythical figures, Dream mentions many literary and (supposedly) historical figures. My favorites are probably the four beauties of ancient China. These ladies (Xi Shi, Wang Zhaojun, Diaochan, and Yang Guifei) are considered the most beautiful women in Chinese history, and they all have some interesting backstories.

Xi Shi is the ultimate femme fatale. She’s sent by King Goujian of Yue to King Fuchai of Wu as a gift. Fuchai becomes so enamored with her that he neglects his kingdom, going so far as to kill his best advisor and so forth. Goujian is then able to destroy Wu, and Fuchai commits suicide. Xi Shi was said to be so beautiful that, when she stood by the river to wash her clothes, the fish were so enchanted that they forgot to swim and drowned. Baoyu often compares Daiyu to Xi Shi, calling her Frowner after Xi Shi’s famous moue.

Wang Zhaojun is my favorite of the four. She was an imperial concubine, but the emperor never visited her. This is because the emperor would choose his concubines by seeing portraits of them, and the painter was usually bribed to make the girls look prettier than they actually were. Zhaojun refused to bribe the painter, so he made her look ugly. One day, one of the Shan-Yus from modern Mongolia visited the emperor to establish friendly relations, and the emperor agreed to give the Shan-Yu one of his girls in a show of good feelings. All of the girls were afraid to volunteer because the Chinese saw Mongolia as a barbaric wasteland back then. Only Zhaojun was brave enough to volunteer, for the good of her country. The emperor agreed because her portrait was so ugly, and Zhaojun was sent off. Once she was in Mongolia, Zhaojun assimilated into Xiongnu culture and convinced her husband to maintain peaceful relations with China. She even married her husband’s first son after he died. (Not her own son. He was born of another one of the Shan-Yu’s wives.) This was customary for the Xiongnu people but morally disgusting to the Chinese. That Zhaojun was willing to do that to keep the peace is seen as a great sacrifice and a testament to her character. She was also skilled at playing the pipa, and she was so beautiful that the birds who saw her forgot to fly and fell to their deaths. In Dream, Zhaojun is sometimes referred to as Lady Bright.

Of the four beauties, Diaochan is the most likely to be fictional. She’s most famous for her appearance in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the related Dynasty Warrior videogames. She had an affair with a warrior and convinces him to kill his foster father, a tyrannical warlord. It’s said that she was so beautiful that the moon hid itself behind the clouds out of shame for being unable to match her.

Finally, there’s Yang Guifei. She was the favorite concubine of the Tang emperor, and through her influence, a young general named An Lushan was able to rise through the ranks. This general later led a rebellion against the emperor, capturing the capital. As the imperial court fled, they blamed the rebellion on Yang and had her executed. She was said to be so beautiful that the flowers would close out of shame when she was near. Baoyu compares Baochai to Yang Guifei pretty often, since both are plus-sized beauties.

And that’s it from me. There are obviously other figures mentioned in Dream like Mulan, Nuwa, Confucius, and so on, but I’m sure you all agree that this post is long enough already. Anyway, I hope you guys liked some of the stories you’ve read here. 🙂

Baoyu’s father, Jia Zheng, is a hard worker who takes his job very seriously (his son thinks of him as a “career worm”). As such, Jia Zheng wishes his eldest (living) son would do better in his studies instead of hanging out with his friends all the time. Unfortunately, one of our protagonist’s defining characteristics is his aversion to doing work. Since he is so sentimental, Baoyu thinks that school, careers, and all the politics involved with both just distract from the important things in life (love, beauty, music, etc.) We might not agree now, but school for us is very different than school in 18th century China.

Back in the day, writing poetry was a very important scholarly skill. Baoyu’s actually pretty good at it, considering how rarely he practices. In one instance, Baoyu’s father takes him to their new garden and challenges him to compose some verses on the spot as they walk around; when he does, Jia Zheng is impressed. This is one activity that Baoyu seems to actually like, since he and all his female friends make a poetry club for fun. They hold occasional competitions, and this is one of the highlights of their time together. (Poetry competitions. Fun.)

Anyway, some of Baoyu’s other responsibilities are unfortunately less enjoyable. He has to study the Four Books on Confucianism, which are ancient to us but still pretty old to him. The English translation I have shows Baoyu reading Latin when he recites a passage from the books, to convey just how old the writing seems to him. What’s more, this kind of schooling is very much in line with Option 2 from our deliberation; it teaches him how to think, and he obviously doesn’t like that because his own worldview is so contrary to Confucian principles. I don’t know much about Confucius myself, but I gleaned from essays like this one that it establishes a sort of “social hierarchy” by placing emphasis on passing exams, material success, etc. In fact, the goal of Baoyu’s education is for him to pass the imperial examination and get a high-ranking position this way.

But Baoyu just doesn’t care about any of that stuff, even when his father beats him half to death for his laziness. Luckily, Baoyu is able to ignore his duties for the beginning of the story because he’s still young. He lives in a youthful paradise symbolized by a garden. (Gardens symbolizing paradise seem to be popular in all parts of the world.) When Baoyu’s sister, an imperial concubine, comes home for a visit, the Jia family builds a huge garden to welcome her, called Prospect Garden. After the imperial concubine leaves again, it’s decided that Baoyu and some of his female relatives should live there. It’s during their time here that they form their poetry club, called the Crab Flower Club, and they have lots of fun times.

But everyone grows up, and this is reflected by the garden too. Baoyu’s sisters and friends start moving out because they have to get married (this naturally distresses Baoyu a great deal). Also, Baoyu has to start getting more serious about school. These events coincide with some changes in the management of the garden, which leads to the previously beautiful area to become overgrown and ugly. Eventually it’s decided that everyone should evacuate Prospect Garden, and it’s sealed off. Rumors start circulating about it being haunted, and Xifeng even sees a ghost there. (It’s Qin Shi’s ghost, incidentally.)

I really liked this bit of symbolism. Anyway, Baoyu dislikes old people because he thinks their priorities aren’t in the right place, but there are certainly other reasons for him to think so. Older people are often shown being corrupt, especially in a rich family like the Jia family. Next time, we’ll see how money can do that to people.

Disenchantment’s little sister with whom Baoyu has his intimate tête-à-tête is named Ke-qing. She is sent to Earth as Baoyu’s nephew’s wife, Qin Shi, the sister of best friend Qin Zhong. (I just realized I never posted a family tree. Here are some, if you’re interested in keeping all the characters straight.)

Qin Shi, or rather Ke-qing, occupies an important part of Disenchantment’s court, and she basically starts the events that later plague the Jia family. Or she was supposed to. Due to censorship issues, Qin Shi’s role isn’t what it was originally intended to be. Originally, she has an affair with her father-in-law and, upon being found out, hangs herself. Apparently that was a bit too extreme for the times, so the author had to change the cause of her death to a mysterious illness. Due to this edit, Qin Shi’s role is more directly tied to the message dealing with greed (which I’ll talk about in another post) than love.

But she still has a lot to say about the topic. After her death, Qin Shi’s spirit returns periodically to warn the living members of the Jia family about the consequences of their actions. In one such exchange, she states that true love can only be found before other emotions are felt:

“Before the emotions of pleasure, anger, grief and joy stir within the human breast, there exists the “natural state” of love; the stirring of these emotions causes passion… [Love] is like a bud. Once open, it ceases to be true love.”

It’s kind of counterintuitive that love is devoid of passion, but that’s what Qin Shi is basically saying. As such, most Earthly beings do not feel true love; what we call love is really lust. This comes in two forms: lust of the flesh (we all know what that is) and lust of the mind (which Baoyu “suffers” from). Let’s talk about the first type first.

Cao Xueqin, the author, originally intended to write a separate book called A Mirror for the Romantic. The ideas for this book were eventualy merged with Dream, leading to some slightly out-of-place scenarios. Mirror is the reason for many supernatural happenings that break up the domestic going-ons of Baoyu’s everyday life. These happenings often involve the limping Taoist and scabby-headed monk who find Baoyu back when he was a stone. (Told you they were important.) In one case, the Taoist gives a sick man a mirror that can cure him, if he only looks in the back. The guy instead looks in the front, where he sees the girl he loves. The guy is so enamored that he keeps looking at her and eventually dies. Baoyu’s best friend Qin Zhong falls for a priestess, but his father doesn’t approve and casts him out. Qin Zhong gets sick and eventually dies as a result. A couple that wasn’t allowed to be together because of the parents commits suicide, Romeo and Juliet style. One girl who finds out that her fiance changed his mind kills herself, and the fiance, feeling guilty, renounces the world and becomes a monk.  In most of these scenarios, the limping Taoist and scabby-headed monk run some interference to help people towards their disillusionment with love. They consider this an “act of merit.”

But perhaps the most dramatic instance of love ending tragically is when Baoyu is engaged to Baochai, and Daiyu literally dies from grief. Her love for Baoyu has already caused her to shed many tears (because of this, the word “Daiyu” is synonymous with “crybaby” in Chinese). Because her debt of tears is repaid, she goes back to Heaven as the flower and Baoyu is left behind, heartbroken.

Though love certainly led to sad consequences here, this is not exactly the same as the other lustful stories. This is because, though he’s certainly not a virgin, Baoyu is not really prone to this lust of the flesh. What Baoyu has is a “lust of the mind”, a deep sentimentality that’s unique to him (and possibly Daiyu). He is so easily moved by beauty and feelings and has such extreme reactions that outsiders think him silly and strange. This is on display several times: he doesn’t want boys even using the word “girl” because it would soil it, he stops a maid from giving his used teacup to a pretty girl because it’s too dirty for her, and he stands out of place during a funeral in order to shield the girls behind him from the monk’s body odor. All of this really endears him to the girls and readers, but most people in the novel find him ridiculous.

This is largely the cause of Baoyu’s internal struggle. He is happy just hanging out with the girls, while Heaven is telling him that it’s all an illusion that needs to be transcended, while his father is telling him to study and honor the family. The last of these options is one that I haven’t talked about yet, but it’s a very important idea that should make a good topic for next week.

If anyone wants to read a much more intelligent analysis of Dream‘s ideas on lust and love (in addition to its ideas on some other things), here’s an article I found. 🙂

This would’ve been a good post for Valentine’s Day, but now works just as well. I mentioned before that Dream is part love story and part growing up story. As with most growing up stories, there is some detail of the protagonist’s sexual awakening; in this case, Baoyu has a dream where he returns to heaven and meets the fairy Disenchantment again (who he doesn’t remember). At the end of this dream, Baoyu is taught firsthand about the birds and the bees by the fairy’s little sister. Recall that Disenchantment sends souls down from heaven to realize the follies of human life. The biggest of these follies is love. It’s an illusion, just like joy and sadness and music and beauty. (This is a really important idea that I’ll talk about more in another post.) Teaching Baoyu about sex is Disenchantment’s way of starting him down the road to disillusionment with earthly vices. However, just because love’s an illusion doesn’t mean it’s unimportant or simple. Dream’s narrative deals with many types of love and shows just how powerful it can be.

Before meeting Disenchantment’s sister, Baoyu finds three lists of the beautiful girls living in his house, each represented by a painting and a short poem that foreshadow their fate. He doesn’t understand any of this, but we readers do. The girls are apparently listed in a certain order, denoting the different types of love. The author of the book unfortunately died before he finished it, with the rest being pieced together from his notes. Because of this, the original list of loves was lost. However, some readers have tried to recreate it since. Here’s a list that I found:

Each type of love links to an explanation. This might not mean much if you don’t know who all the characters are, but the most important distinction doesn’t take too much knowledge of the book to understand. According to the author, the difference between true love and conscientious love is that the latter imposes certain conditions on one’s lover. Baochai cares for Baoyu, but she’s always berating him for not studying enough. Similarly, Aroma threatens to stop being Baoyu’s maid unless he meets three conditions. In contrast, Daiyu and Skybright never try to make Baoyu change; they love him unconditionally. It turns out that Baoyu and Daiyu are very much in love, but Baoyu gets engaged to Baochai by the family. This leads to all sorts of heartbreak and makes up the bulk of the love story that people know this book for. When comparing the love between Baoyu and Baochai versus that between Baoyu and Daiyu, I think some interesting arguments can be made. On the one hand, it’s not wrong to want someone to be better (reach their full potential, be healthier, etc.) On the other hand, that entails determining what “better” means for someone else, which can be touchy.

With all these distinctions between this kind of love and that kind of love, I find it really interesting that the one distinction which has become so important in modern times is hardly an issue in this book from a few centuries ago. That distinction is, of course, between homosexual love and heterosexual love. If you read my post last week, you might have thought that Baoyu was gay. (Lots of literary analysts certainly have.) Baoyu’s admiration of all things feminine is sometimes more reminiscent of a boy who wishes he was a girl instead of a boy who is in love with girls. And his relationships with some of his male friends are ambiguous in nature. Here’s a quote from when Baoyu meets Qin Zhong for the first time:

“When Bao-yu first set eyes on Qin Zhong it had been as though part of his soul had left him. For a while he stared blankly, oblivious to all around him, while a stream of idle fancies passed through his mind.

‘How perfect he is! Who would have believed there could be such perfection? … Why couldn’t I have been born in the family of some poor scholar or low-grade clerk? Then I could have been near him and got to know him, and my life would have been worth living.'”

Qin Zhong and Bao Yu become best friends. They go to the family’s all boys school later, and rumors that they’re a couple spread quickly. They also seem to be interested in two other boys in the school, nicknamed Precious and Darling. These two were the favorites of Xue Pan, Bao Chai’s brother and one of Bao Yu’s character foils. Where Bao Yu is sensitive and kind, Xue Pan is crude and selfish. He enrolled in the all boys’ school just to hook up with his classmates. He also tries to hit on several other guys throughout the novel, usually with hilarious results. In one instance, he follows one of Bao Yu’s friends out of a party and ends up beaten up and bloody in a ditch. This happens not because the other guy is grossed out at the thought of being with another man, but because Xue Pan is a terrible person. Homosexuality between girls is also pretty accepted; a pair of actresses who work for the Jia family fall in love because they are always acting out romantic scenes in their plays. Someone tells Baoyu about this, and he thinks it’s sweet.

I wouldn’t say that ancient China was completely progressive on the issue. The translation I read does refer to homosexuality as a vice at one point, though I don’t know if this negative word was chosen by the translator or if it was in the original text. Also, I believe gay marriage wasn’t considered because having children and continuing one’s family was really important.  However, since it was normal back then for men to have several partners, being in a homosexual relationship didn’t seem out of the ordinary in more personal settings.

As much as it is an illusion, love is clearly an important thing. Next week, I’ll discuss how it can ruin your life.

So last post was just kind of an exposition and sweeping summary of the book. I think from here, I’ll alternate between themes and more plot/cultural stuff, which is also really interesting. (By the way, I realized that I didn’t establish any historical context last post; Dream takes place somewhere in the 1700s, in case anyone was wondering.)

You’ll notice that my title says the number two is important. This is because Dream deals largely with contrasts between two things. Its chapter titles are always in the format of “something something, and something else.” That’s why my own post titles are modelled after this pattern. Thematically, Dream sets up interesting dichotomies between illusion and reality, young and old, rich and poor, and male and female. This last one is explained very well through its characters, which is why I think it’s a good place to start.

Baoyu, our formerly stone protagonist, loves girls. And not just in that way. He believes that girls (young ones at least) are smarter, more wholesome, more attractive, and just better than boys in every way:

“Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I’m with girls I feel fresh and clean but when I’m with boys I feel stupid and nasty.”

And (at least in the book) he’s not wrong. Our female protagonists Daiyu and Baochai are undeniably better than Baoyu at poetry writing, even though they have less schooling; the maids Aroma and Patience are shown to be extremely loyal, hardworking, and self-sacrificing; and so on. In contrast, many male characters are shown cheating on their wives, gambling, drinking irresponsibly, getting into fights, and generally being assholes. In fact, the book concerns itself with many of the problems faced by women because of men. One guy wants to take a girl as his concubine, and she’s miserable. One girl is arranged into an abusive marriage and eventually dies because of her husband. The emperor himself is even responsible for taking one of the Jia girls away from home (to be a concubine in his palace). Their suffering often paints men as the bad guys and girls as the victims.

But that’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions. There are many male characters that exhibit more traditionally feminine characteristics and are therefore redeemed by the author. Baoyu himself is very feminine; he’s sometimes mistaken for a girl based on his looks, and he seems much more interested in traditionally feminine tasks (like doing makeup, matching colors, etc.) than traditionally masculine tasks. Baoyu also has several male friends that are similar to him (Qin Zhong, the Prince of Beijing, etc.) These friends all look and act more traditionally feminine than the guys mentioned last paragraph, and they are therefore shown in a more positive light.

On the flip side, Baoyu’s cousin Xifeng is a girl who demonstrates traditionally masculine characteristics and is shown in a more negative light. First of all, the narrator comments that Xifeng is usually a boy’s name, so that might be a hint that there’s something going on with her. We later learn that she takes on a lot of the financial and managerial responsibilities for the Jia house, which is usually a man’s job. She’s very good at it. Unfortunately, doing the tasks men usually do corrupts Xifeng in a way. She starts abusing her powers for money (even profiting off of someone’s death at one point) and often becomes ill from stress. In this way, I think the author is showing that a girl acting traditionally masculine can become bad just as a boy showing traditionally feminine characteristics can be good.

You’ve probably realized by now that this whole theme is pretty controversial. I wouldn’t say Dream is a feminist book by modern standards, but it still does some good things. Obviously it doesn’t promote gender equality, but given the context that it was written in (when men were seen as vastly superior) it compensates well for the prevailing attitudes at the time. It also kind of breaks down gender roles because it praises guys who don’t act traditionally manly while also proving that, at the very least, girls can do men’s jobs very effectively. (Xifeng may be evil, but she’s very good at running the house for most of the book.)

On the other hand, the whole message could be overbearing. Personally, I thought it was okay while I was actually reading the book. There are many moments when girls are shown being lazy, difficult, rude, etc. (One even tries to rape Baoyu at some point.) Though the overall theme is clearly in favor of one gender, it’s not done in a way that seems too preachy. At least not in a girl’s opinion.