Links to stuff mentioned:
Wikipedia article on Classic Chinese Novels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels
I mentioned in a previous video that I was going to stop doing "Starting Videos": https://youtu.be/cmaIdb3Mn2w
...but I make an exception for big reading projects. And this is definitely a big reading project.
Started Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x6iMcM85L9dcWvKxN6kGZKg
A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin and Gao E Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBl7dpw5Awdc&si=CcZVBsrHS-0VjFxj
4 comments:
What a surprise to see this video review! I thought you wouldn't want to read Hongloumeng [1] and may have had enough after finished those other Chinese classics.
In terms of practical effects, I just don't see how important this novel is given that most people I have encountered barely mentioned it - and I must have made comments (deleted) about some amusing exchanges I have seen online: some girl talked about how the novel is so dry to read compared to Chinese romance novels [2] and another exercised their (superficial) elitism by retorting something like 'of course it has to be dry, it's a classic'. To sum up (repeat) the point: if people want to read Hongloumeng for the sake of cultural understanding [3], HLM perhaps could be deprioritized compared to some other like 3 Kingdoms or Journey West, as HLM isn't really influential in even one of the ways 3K/JW are influential (if it's at all impactful at some distant point somehow, I think very few people would know). My guess is that people outside the culture could find the novel more fascinating than people here do - but of course there's nothing wrong if one finds it dull, which is just normal.
I have nothing to say but cheers, I haven't finished the novel and likely wouldn't soon (if I will keep reading literature in general at all). Bonus song version of one of the poems in the book, if you find interesting at all - randomly recommended to my Youtube some years ago.
[1] Hongloumeng/HLM = transliteration of the Chinese name of 'Dream of Red Chamber'. I'm just used to using the transliteration because it's identical to the Vietnamese translation 'Hồng Lâu Mộng'.
[2] Yunqing/Ngôn Tình. A peculiar genre of romance novels in Mainland China + Taiwan and maybe where else. It spans enough amusing tropes your very distant FB friend could be making fun of its readers as females-who-have-unrealistic-expectations-about-males somewhere now (there's a VN term for them I won't say what it is, but there's even one). A more relevant cultural note would be that despite being a Chinese genre of novels, it's really popular in Vietnam (just like anything Chinese in Vietnam, which is hardly even an exaggeration).
[3] Speaking narrowly in terms of impact or how influential HLM is though. I guess people who care more about the culture itself or simply how entertaining the novel is should just ignore my yaps.
楼 [written as 樓 for HK/TW Chinese] is basically the name for those traditional Chinese buildings with multiple floors - places that are exuberant, say a certain tower, or even a brothel. It's a word easier to get from contexts.
Jing Ping Mei [The Plum in the Golden Vase] and The Scholars wouldn't really be considered on the same level of status like the 4 others. For 'The Scholars' you can bring up its name in any language and I don't think most people in Sinic countries, and maybe even China itself, would even know if it's a thing. I did try to read some first paragraphs and my impression of 'The Scholars' is just that it seems familiar somehow, but perhaps due to the didactic cliches people in Sinic countries must have been way too familiar with. As for Jin Ping Mei, simply because... people say so. [1]
[1] I asked my elder sister: "Why is JPM not considered a classic on the same level of status as the other Four Classics?"
She answered: "What is JPM? A Chinese classic? Maybe you can try to Google why? AFAIK it's not as good as the other Chinese Classics. Besides it's only known for having 18+ stuff, no?"
So well, I don't think people are even aware JPM is even considered a classic (whatever the sense of the word Wiki means, and however or for whatever reason Wiki says so).
...point of talking about 楼 was simply to say it's easy to see why the word has multiple English translations.
Why do I forgot to mention this: Due to the very word 楼 of the novel itself, people (or at least myself) had the impression that the novel was supposed to be something obscene - simply because the word 楼 to my mind was more associated with those brothels in Chinese TV shows with medieval setting. Having the word 'dream' and 'pink' [1] alongside surely didn't help.
Ahistorical consumers of Chinese fictions over here (me = one of them, at least used to be) wouldn't even care in which century does a Chinese fictional work occur in. We just conflate it all into "medieval China", "China but now they have weird hairs ('queue', or so Wiki says)" [2], and "modern China". I guess the joke (I first found on some Asian subreddit, made by people who are likely Chinese themselves) about Chinese history "4000 years of history? More like 50 years that repeats itself for 80 times." really has a point after all!
If the TV adaptation of HLM was that popular then I must have missed it. But few in my family, or those I know even mentioned the TV adaptation, let alone watched. Even online forums suggested as much (one asking another what the TV adaptation was about - which is to say the content or plot isn't something online netizens can already bring up out of vacuum to make memes or generate random chats out of whim). I think your wife mistook popularity of the other 3 classics' adaptations for HLM somehow (a guess).
My internet sleuthing ironically suggested Western scholars or somebody seems to care about HLM more than (at least) Vietnamese do.
HLM = realist novel maybe simply just because it depicts reality nearer to what it is (banal, not fantastical)? I can go on and on about my speculations of whether people in China/Asia who put the 'realist' label on the novel only as an adjective more so than the Western connotation of having a literal movement associated with it. Or maybe those people do imitate labeling the novels as how the West does it while having misunderstandings about those. Blah blah... If the one who put the label is from the West then IDK what to say.
[1] Sino-Vietnamese rendition of 紅 is "hồng" which has the primary and more common meaning = "pink". You can imagine what it's like for many Vietnamese who are oblivious about the Sino-Vietnamese meaning of the word, and so when they keep hearing names in Chinese shows like "Red Boy" or "Red Ox", they have to wonder "What is supposed to be Pink about these things?".
[2] This one can even be conflated with 'medieval China' if the people (me back then) who watch shows with Qing setting is clueless about how this is the period when they are going to get and use Western guns rather than swords soon.
This note itself deserves yet another (gossipy) subnote as well. As I have been writing all this as a Vietnamese who doesn't really have a broad interest in Chinese stuff, compared to many other countrymen of mine who may have had exposure to Chinese stuff much more than I do. A lot of these rest on the assumptions that the average Vietnamese is on the same level of cluelessness as I am towards Chinese stuff - but then again this discounts how previous generations, despite their claimed hate for China, used to be under perhaps way much less Western/Japanese/etc influences than my generations - or so I speculate. When I consumed all these stuff back then I couldn't even distinguish a Manchu from a Han, meanwhile a tad bit elder people namedropped Liu Bang Xiang Yu Diaochan and all that jazz.
Personal storytime: Speaking of library, I first tried to borrow these Chinese classics in my high school but the teacher outright told me "You aren't allowed to borrow them?", "Why?", "Because they are only meant for other teachers to read. You students keep making the pages tored whenever you borrow them." Ironies [1] are easy to pick, but now come to think of which I just realized it was perfectly fitting given the very hierarchical/exclusive nature of the culture these Chinese Classics represent themselves!
[1] Given the love of the principal or who else to preach about 'if you are bored just go to library, problem solved, that's better than playing video games or doing frivolous stuff (that distracts from studies)'.
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