Dream of the red chamber
by Tsʻao, Hsüeh-chʻin. · first published 1958
15% recommend85% neutral
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The "Four Great Classic Novels" from 14th-18th century China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels Specifically: Water Margin Romance of the Three Kingdoms Journey to the West Dream of the Red Chamber They are referenced in everything in asian media and there a bajillion tv/movie adaptations of them but they are relatively unknown in the west.
on “Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?” ↗The title is a reference to Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the greatest novels ever written. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber
on “Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping” ↗Also see: https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-c... With comments from Coppola about Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, but also Cao Xueqin's The Dream of the Red Chamber, William Bolitho's Twelve Against the Gods, Cole and Chinoy's project Directors on Directing, and Goethe's Elective Affinities
on “Megalopolis is baffling and plainly nuts but worth it” ↗…more modern ideological one. Six novels are thought to have sold over 100 million copies: A Tale of Two Cities, The Little Prince, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, And Then There Were None, Dream of the Red Chamber, and The Hobbit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books A friend who'd dropped out of a maths PhD programme once described the culture as "studying some specialised field in which…
on “Could the greatest works of literature be undiscovered?” ↗In most of the best-known classic Chinese novels, like "Journey to the West", "Water Margin" and "Dream of the Red Chamber", there is usually a character that feels very important in the first few chapters, then nowhere to be found in the rest of the book. When people reading these novels, most of them wouldn't think of…
on “Chekhov's Gun” ↗You're missing something... sort of. Yes, these authors are aware of Apuleus. They might even be aware of day the Tale of Genji, or Dream of the Red Chamber, or Njall's Saga, or even say the book of Samuel in the Bible, all of which are earlier examples of novel like things! If you define the novel as a long prose story then obviously there are many examples…
on “Romance versus Realism: The Origins of the Novel” ↗…selection of manually annotated short stories. If you're accustomed to standard mandarin as actually spoken (with the neutral tone, proper erhua-ization, etc.), or are good enough to try your hand at Dream of the Red Chamber or Journey to the West, I think you'll see and hear the difference right away.
on “Character Amnesia: Negative Impact of Computers Upon Writing Chinese by Hand” ↗…contextualized (i.e. not dictionary) definitions and accompanying audio recordings: http://popupchinese.com/lessons/short-stories Selections cover a range of material including classical texts like Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as more contemporary and foreign fiction in translation. Materials can be access without signing up, but creating a free account enables click-to-add vocab lists, SRS study tools, and more.
on “Show HN: Learn Chinese Through Novels” ↗…The 20th century vernacular revolution didn't mean that written Chinese was exclusively Classical Chinese previously. All the famous novels of China (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, etc) are all written in the vernacular of their time. It is nonetheless true that the overwhelming majority of writing that was not literature was written in Classical Chinese. As a side…
on “Translating and Interpreting Chinese Philosophy” ↗…you have learn not only the language, but also the country's history, and have some familiarity with canonical Chinese texts such as the "Four Books and Five Classics" (Confucius, Mencius, etc.), "The Dream of the Red Chamber", etc., to understand idioms such as "四面楚歌" (four sides of Chu song = facing insurmountable difficulty, defeat [1]). As another example, Hong Kong has its own lingo (a variety of Cantonese) that evolves…
on “Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO” ↗Nice. How come, there was a German classic laying around and not the Dream of the Red Chamber?
on “The writers who translated Goethe became some of the best writers in English” ↗And Dream of the Red Chamber to round up the four great Chinese classical novels
on “I taught the Iliad to Chinese teenagers (2021)” ↗I kinda have this idea that while psychedelics like LSD are the easiest to catch a ride with, it is specifically tea that can get you furthest. When I was reading "Dream of the Red Chamber" some of the descriptions of tea drinking were really psychedelic, like being transported into a different realm of heavenly purity that permeates everything with effortless perfection, etc. Certainly…
on “Reviving an 800-Year-Old Japanese Tea Farm” ↗…could also say that the origins of Standard Chinese date back hundreds of years, to the language spoken by the imperial bureaucracy, or to massively popular works written in vernacular Chinese, like the Dream of the Red Chamber (late 1700s). There are always ancient antecedents that you can trace, but they become less and less directly related to the development of the modern language. Yes, the Luther Bible was an important…
on “If English was written like Chinese (1999)” ↗