About This Project
What Is This?
This is a blog devoted to the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢).
Dream of the Red Chamber is my favorite work of fiction in the history of world literature. I believe it compares favorably to the best of the best. But instead of trying to find the right superlatives and adjectives to explain why I feel this way, I figure the best thing to do is to show you guys why.
I’m hoping to do two things with this project:
Come up with a better English translation of the book; and
Create a good resource of commentary and explanations for others who want to study it.
And, yes, I know all about David Hawkes’ famous The Story of the Stone, as well as A Dream of Red Mansions by the Yangs. Not only am I familiar with those and other English translations, but I plan to provide extensive commentary on those translations as well. Some things are good; some things aren’t quite so good.
How Does This Work?
I’m dividing everything into two general alternating categories of posts: translation posts and commentary posts.
I’m going to try to alternate between the two, and will do my best to post once per day.
Translation Posts
My translation posts are translations of small snippets of the novel.
We’re going to go slowly. Some posts will be somewhat lengthy, especially if we’ve run into story material that is easy to understand. Other posts will be very short, especially if we’re dealing with difficult material.
I also pay special attention to poetry. The poems of 紅樓夢 are infamous, and are a big part of the appeal of the novel. It’s worth it to take our time to dig deep.
Translation posts include a few sections:
Original Text is provided for every section. I’m using the infamous 1792 程乙本, the version of 紅樓夢 that was the standard text for well over a century. We’re going to start off with this edition and will make no changes — and I’ll provide scanned images from the original publication of every section, along with the text in Chinese.
Translation Notes includes my translation notes for each passage. I’m not going to explain every single word. This is mostly for the benefit of Chinese learners who are interested in understanding difficult phrases or words, though this is also useful for those who want to dig a little bit deeper into the translation.
Translation Critique consists of notes on the Hawkes and Yang translations of the novel. Sometimes their translations are just fine; other times, however, they either add or subtract material for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Note that I’m not going to reprint their translations; you’ll have to obtain copies on your own for their original text.
My English Translation is my translation of every section.
Commentary Posts
These are longer form posts with comments on textual issues and anything I find interesting.
I try to keep these a bit shorter than proper long form essays. This is internet writing, after all.
However, using a blog to approach this massive project offers me a number of important benefits. One is the fact that I can talk about all sorts of arcane and deep insights without worrying about adding too many footnotes or appendices.
Why Subscribe?
I’m not going to make all this material available for free.
Substack will provide you with samples of most posts to give you an idea. However, the full experience is only available to paying subscribers.
Financially supporting the blog allows me to continue to devote time and energy to this. As an added bonus, I’ll give you access to my complete Dream of the Red Chamber media archive, which continues to grow.
I will offer some posts for free, though. I’ll offer 1 translation and 1 commentary post completely free each week.
You’re Wrong!
If you discover that I’ve made a mistake, please leave a comment and let me know.
Don’t be shy. Don’t worry about being wrong. Don’t feel like you’re going to hurt my feelings.
Don’t even worry if English isn’t your first language. I’m proficient in a number of languages, and am more than happy to do whatever I need to in order to communicate with you.
Don’t be shy if you can’t speak or read Chinese, or even if you’ve never heard of this book before. Though I’m planning on going deep and including things of value to students of Chinese, I’ll also try to make this all approachable for people who have never heard of this book before. There’s too much gatekeeping in literary studies. Let’s fight against that trend.
Look — I’m far from an expert or master scholar of this work. I’m going to make mistakes, and I’m going to say silly things from time to time. However, I do ask that you please make your comments public so that others can benefit from your insights.
Also — don’t worry if the post you’re commenting on is several months or years old. The comments section is never closed.
My hope is that we can turn this project into a group discussion — something that was unimaginable before the internet era. Come join in!
