Dream of the Red Chamber (Chapters 1–80)

Introduction

'Pages full of preposterous words, a handful of bitter tears. All call the author a fool; who understands the taste within?' Set against the rise and fall of four great families, Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue, Dream of the Red Chamber follows the tragic love of Jia Baoyu, heir of the Jia household, for Lin Daiyu and his marriage to Xue Baochai. In the exquisite Prospect Garden it portrays all the talent, laughter and tears of a group of young women, and the slow decline of a great house from splendour to ruin. With more than four hundred characters, and everything from food and dress to poetry, medicine and garden design, it has been called an encyclopaedia of traditional Chinese society, and is the summit of the classical Chinese novel. Cao Xueqin completed only the first eighty chapters, and it is these eighty that we translate.