Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹(1724?-1764) was born in Nanking to a family of destitute mandarins. He was to be the author of A Dream of Red Mansions, the most famous story in Chinese literature. The work consists of one hundred and twenty chapters (it was completed by Gao E 高鶚 ) with around one million characters of prose and some poetry. The plot centres on the complex relations between four families, the Jia 賈, the Shi 史, the Wang 王 and the Xue 薛. The hero is the young Jia Baoyu 賈寶玉, a rebellious, passionate youth who will end his days as a Buddhist monk. A Dream of Red Mansions, (Hong Lou Meng 紅樓夢) has been read and loved by generations of Chinese. In the following pages we offer our readers an excerpt from the second chapter.
Pao-yu realized that the voice was a girl's and before the song had ended he saw the singer come round the hill and approach him. With her graceful gait and air she was truly no mortal being. Here is as proof her description:
Leaving the willow bank, she comes just now through the flowers. Her approach startles birds in the trees in the court, and soon her shadow falls across the verandah. Her fairy sleeves, fluttering, give off a heady fragrance of musk and orchid. With each rustle of her lotus garments, her jade pendants tinkle.
Her dimpled smile is peach-blossom in spring, her blue-black hair a cluster of clouds. Her lips are cherries and sweet the breath from her pomegranate teeth.
The curve of her slender waist is snow whirled by the wind. Dazzling her pearls and emeralds and gosling-gold the painted design on her forehead.
She slips in and out of the flowers, now vexed, now radiant, and floats over the lake as if on wings.
Her mothlike eyebrows are knit yet there lurks a smile, and no sound issues from her lips parted as if to speak as she glides swiftly on lotus feet and, pausing, seems poised for flight.
Her flawless complexion is pure as ice, smooth as jade. Magnificent her costume with splendid designs. Sweet her face, compact of fragrance, carved in jade; and she bears herself like a phoenix or dragon in flight.
Her whiteness? Spring plum-blossom glimpsed through snow. Her purity? Autumn orchids coated with frost. Her tranquillity? A pine in a lonely valley. Her beauty? Sunset mirrored in a limpid pool. Her grace? A dragon breasting a winding stream. Her spirit? Moonlight on a frosty river.
She would put Hsi Shih to shame and make Wang Chiang1 blush. Where was this wonder born, whence does she come?
Verily she has no peer in fairyland, no equal in the purple courts of heaven.
Who can she be, this beauty?
Overjoyed by the apparition of this fairy, Pao-yu made haste to greet her with a bow.
"Sister Fairy," he begged with a smile, "do tell me where you are from and whither you are going. I have lost my way. May I beg you to be my guide?"
"My home is above the Sphere of Parting Sorrow in the Sea of Brimming Grief," she answered with a smile. "I am the Goddess of Disenchantment from the Grotto of Emanating Fragrance on the Mountain of Expanding Spring in the Illusory Land of Great Void. I preside over romances and unrequited love on earth, the grief of women and the passion of men in the mundane world. The reincarnations of some former lovers have recently gathered here, and so I have come to look for a chance to mete out love and longing. It is no accident that we have met.
"My realm is not far from here. All I can offer you is a cup of fairy tea plucked by my own hands, a pitcher of fine wine of my own brewing, some accomplished singers and dancers, and twelve new fairy songs called A Dream of Red Mansions'. But won't you come with me?"
Forgetting Ko-ching in his delight, Pao-yu followed the goddess to a stone archway inscribed:
ILLUSORY LAND OF GREAT VOID
On either pillar was this couplet:
When false is taken for true, true becomes false;
If non-being turns into being, being becomes non-being.
1 A famous beauty of the Han Dynasty
* A graduate of Lisbon University; was lecturer of Portuguese in the Department of Foreign Languages of Peking University for four years; Orientalist, with various works published.
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