Red Mansion: Bastards rule the roost

After writing the three words “the book is finished”, I felt relaxed. I felt the relief of having unloaded a heavy burden, and the satisfaction of having completed the book.

Only then did I begin to understand the meaning of Cao Xueqin's words, "Every word seems to be written in blood, the ten years of hard work are extraordinary." I have had a hard time in the past year and a half, let alone ten years?

Since the beginning of my failed career, I have never thought about writing about the Dream of the Red Chamber, because I had not felt the charm of the novel at that time. It was not until I read "Struggle in the Red Chamber" by Jiuwu and the Red Chamber trilogy by Wuwai that I was deeply attracted to the novel.

The two great writers used a more easy-to-understand way to show readers the unique charm of A Dream of Red Mansions, allowing the various characters in the original work to be accepted by readers in a more straightforward way.

But unfortunately, the two great writers no longer wrote works on the subject of Dream of the Red Chamber, which left me in a book famine. Although there are many works on the subject of Dream of the Red Chamber on the Internet, few can be compared with them.

So I began to read the original novel and its annotations carefully, and watched the 87 TV series repeatedly, trying to figure out Cao Xueqin's motivations when he was conceiving the characters and plots.

As my understanding of the Dream of the Red Chamber deepened and I felt empty because I had no books to read, I decided to do it myself and write a story that is different from the original novel and based on the worldview of the Dream of the Red Chamber.

The first idea is that we must abandon the settings involving gods, monsters and magic in the original work.

Because if supernatural gods exist, the fate of the characters in the main volume, the secondary volume, and the secondary volume of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling would have already been determined in the Department of Misfortune.

As a mortal, the protagonist's struggle will become meaningless in the face of divine power and magic. The so-called helping Jinchai to change her fate will become ridiculous. Then it will become me, the author, who is helping, not the protagonist.

The second idea is that there must not be any systems, panels, cultivation, or other cheats that are incompatible with the world of Red Mansions.

I hope to write a strong protagonist who can inject a sense of masculinity into the world of Red Mansions, rather than a poor creature who can only hide under the system and panel, doing evil deeds and relying on the power of others, and who is nothing once he is free from the golden finger.

The third idea is to seriously study the writing essence of the two pioneers, Jiuwu and Wuwai.

Starting from the details, we build a solid foundation for the novel, try our best to create an authentic world of the Dream of the Red Chamber, and try our best to restore the personality traits and language characteristics of the characters in the Dream of the Red Chamber.

Book lovers who have read the original novel may feel that this is indeed what happened in the world of Red Mansions, and that Feng Jieer, Daiyu, Baochai, and Qingwen may indeed say such words and do such things.

Let book lovers who have not read the original novel feel the charm of the characters in Dream of the Red Chamber.

Of the three ideas above, the first two are simple, and the third is the most difficult. I don’t know if I can do it, but I will just try my best. I believe that writing online articles is just like making movies or TV series. Whether the producers are attentive or not, the audience’s eyes are sharp.

There are a thousand Dream of the Red Chamber in the eyes of a thousand people. The understanding of Dream of the Red Chamber by Redology experts and ordinary readers is different, and they may even have completely opposite evaluations on the same thing or the same person.

This interesting phenomenon is very common in popular literary works. It may be that the opinions are truly different, or it may be for the purpose of sensationalism.

For example, now a large number of people in Tieba forums are whitewashing Yue Buqun, thinking that it is very difficult for him to endure humiliation and compromise, yet still not be understood by others.

Some people even madly criticized Linghu Chong and Yang Guo, thinking that they were extremely evil and that killing them would not be enough to appease the public anger.

These are in stark contrast to the definitive evaluations of the past few decades and may reflect changes in readers' values.

Based on my shallow understanding of the Dream of the Red Chamber, I would first discard conspiracy theory interpretations.

It is obviously wrong to think that everyone in the original work is secretly scheming and intrigue, that every word they say and every thing they do is an act of intrigue, that they are trying to frame and harm others, and that they are alienated into fighting machines, losing their normal humanity and violating the normal state of life and common sense.

Second, avoid over-interpretation.

I think that in the original novel, even the farts of people are full of deep meaning, and the author is hinting at something or making metaphors about something. It seems that if you can't talk about the deep meaning, you haven't understood the author's intention.

This absurd thing still happens in modern times. In Chinese language exams, the original author of the reading comprehension text cannot answer the reading comprehension questions because he himself does not know the "deep meaning" of his words.

If every sentence in an article has a deep meaning, which writer can write normally?
The article is naturally written, and the writer's inspiration is unreasonable. At a certain moment in writing, he suddenly feels that it should be written in a certain way. This is the norm and natural law of literary creation. Cao Xueqin is no exception. Over-emphasizing "deep meaning" will only increase "traces of artificiality" and fall into inferiority.

Here I think of the stinging irony in Master Jin Yong's "The Knight-Errant". Countless martial arts masters were invited to the Knight-Errant Island to comprehend the "Tai Xuan Jing". They spent their entire lives studying the classics, quoting from classics, nitpicking on every word, and pondering over it for decades, but the result was nonsense and absurd.

One said that "Hu Ying" was the tassel of the Hu people, and the other said that "Hu Ying" was the tassel of the warriors. They both sounded very reasonable, but their cleverness backfired.

It seems that they can't express a few "deep meanings" and are too embarrassed to greet people. They all belong to those who have not comprehended the profoundness of the "Tai Xuan Jing". In the end, an illiterate "bastard" learned the magic skills. How sad, ridiculous and pitiful is it?
Finally, abandon extreme interpretations.

Some people always like to divide people into black and white, either good or evil. The good ones are flawless and perfect, and all their shortcomings are advantages; the evil ones have sores on their heads and pus on their feet, and even farting is a heinous crime. This situation is particularly evident in Baochai and Daiyu.

A large number of book lovers have taken sides and engaged in heated debates, either bashing Bao Fendai or bashing Dai Fendbao. Their arguments are all from the original novels, and at the very least they can cite the content of the TV series or the "authoritative interpretation" of some "Redology expert" to support their arguments.

Whenever I see this kind of discussion, I feel both amused and sad. It is similar to the current practice of cheering for idols. If Bao Dai knew about this, how would they feel? If Cao Xueqin knew about this, how would he feel? I am afraid that the only thing I can describe is "amusing and sad".

My understanding of Dream of the Red Chamber is, in a word, that it is a classic romance novel about wealthy families created by the author based on his own life experiences. The purpose of its creation is to record, remember, and pay tribute to the lovely girls of all kinds who have had interactions with the author, so that they can live forever in literary works.

It’s that simple, there’s nothing profound about it that’s hard to understand.

There may be some metaphors about the social reality and political ecology of the time, but these are not important for understanding the theme of the work, because the essence of "Dream of Red Mansions" is a classical vernacular popular novel.

Since it is a novel, it is a consumer product for the general public. If we insist on making it complex and obscure, like an academic paper, with politics, economics, and history, it would probably be a far-fetched word game, which of course is also the specialty of experts.

If you have read more classical novels, you will find that "Dream of Red Mansions" is both special and ordinary.

It is special because of its special subject matter. As a social novel, if it were written by an ordinary writer, no matter how talented he is, he would never be able to surpass "Jin Ping Mei".

However, Cao Xueqin, relying on his own experience of wealthy life and personal understanding, describes the life of the upper aristocracy which ordinary people simply cannot understand or access, which makes him unique.

Throughout history, many wealthy families have fallen into ruin, but how much knowledge did the last generations of these wealthy families have?
It would have taken a scholarly, experienced, novel-loving, talented and persevering last generation aristocrat like Cao Xueqin to write Dream of the Red Chamber.

The reason why it is ordinary is that no matter how highly "Dream of Red Mansions" is praised, it is just an ordinary member in the starry sky of Chinese classical novels. It may be the brightest star, but it is only "one of" it. In addition to the other three masterpieces, at least "Jin Ping Mei" and "The Scholars" are worthy of being on par with it.

Especially "Jin Ping Mei". Readers who have read both books should be able to find that Cao Xueqin has drawn a lot of nourishment from them. "Jin Ping Mei" describes the characters' food, clothing, daily necessities and daily necessities in great detail, and the same is true for "Dream of Red Mansions".

This has a huge advantage - it makes the novel world extremely realistic.

For example, Ximen Qing must "wear a tasseled hat, a gold hairpin, and a gold and jade railing ring. He must have a long waist and wear green pleated clothes. He must wear Chenqiao shoes with fine soles and clear cloth socks. He must wear two black silk knee pads on his legs and wave a gold-sprinkled Sichuan fan in his hand, which makes him look like Zhang Sheng and Pan An." Only when he is dressed like this can he be Ximen Qing.

Wang Xifeng must "wear a gold-threaded bun with eight treasures and pearls on her head, a hairpin with five phoenixes and pearls in the shape of the morning sun, a red gold coiled dragon necklace on her neck, a bean green palace belt on the edge of her skirt, a double-horned rose pendant, a narrow red satin jacket with gold-thread butterflies on it, a colorful carved silk, stone blue and silver mouse jacket on the outside, and a foreign crepe skirt with jadeite flowers on it." Only by dressing like this can she be the powerful Second Wife of Rongguo Mansion.

Mrs. Wang's room must be furnished with "a red gold python backrest, an azure gold python pillow, and a Autumn-scented gold python mattress" to make it look noble and make people feel as if they were there. If there were only "backrest", "pillow" and "mattress", it would be a big disappointment, which is exactly what many online novels about the Red Mansion do not pay attention to.

For example, the book "Jin" quoted a lot of proverbs, dialects, and two-part allegorical sayings, and Dream of the Red Chamber also learned this trick. In the book "Jin", Chunmei cursed people, "Mother Wang sold the millstone - it can't be pushed", and in the book "Hong", Fangguan cursed people, "Meixiang and her sworn brother - they are all slaves."

It is obvious that the same writing technique is used, using these slangs to vividly portray the characters' personalities.

Even the servants in Ximen Qing's family in the book "Jin" include: Laiwang, Laixing, Chunyan, and Yingchun.

Cao Xueqin used it directly, probably to save brain cells.

It can be seen that Cao Xueqin is not a god, he is also a human being. He was also influenced by the popular masterpieces of the time and learned the successful routines of others.

The reason why "Dream of Red Mansions" is loved by a large number of readers is mainly because of its likable subject matter and characters.

A large part of "Jin Ping Mei" is about Ximen Qing doing all kinds of bad things, which makes people hate him;
The Scholars satirizes the sour Confucian scholars and hypocrites under the imperial examination system, and has a high threshold for reading. If you don't have a special understanding of the shortcomings of the imperial examination system and the life of ancient scholars, you will hardly be able to appreciate the subtleties in it.

In comparison, the book "Red Star" is so lovable. After all, love is an eternal theme in literary works and there is no threshold, because it is an emotion that everyone can understand.

What's more, the subject matter is a love story in a wealthy aristocratic mansion, which is extremely rare for ordinary people to see. In addition, there is a handsome man with a group of beauties, and they are at the purest and most beautiful age in their lives.

Everyday events such as jealousy, flirting, competing with each other, quarreling, being petty and having a fight all become extremely interesting under the author's meticulous and incisive writing style.

In my opinion, if Red Mansions fan fiction wants to be interesting, cheat codes and plot arrangements are secondary. Since readers come for the word "Red Mansions", they naturally want to read different stories of the characters in the novel. In other words, it must have the "Red Mansions flavor".

Therefore, there is almost only one criterion to measure the quality of Dream of the Red Chamber - the degree of restoration of the original characters.

In other words, if the author writes about Wang Xifeng, she has to be like Wang Xifeng, and if he writes about Xue Baochai, she has to be like Xue Baochai. However, in a large number of Dream of the Red Chamber texts, only the names of the characters are related to the Dream of the Red Chamber.

According to my experience of reading novels, a good novel is like letting readers experience a wonderful life. I don’t know if this book can provide readers with such an experience. This is what I am trying to do.

The Dream of the Red Chamber has ended, but my imagination is still running wild. I hope to join hands with my fellow book lovers to embark on another completely different and bizarre life!

Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to book friends such as "Xihe Yu Ri", "Dream Awakening", "Meeting by Chance is Fate", "A Hairy Dog at Home", "Han Chen 8410", "Qian Qian Fighting", "Zu Longtou", "Flowers Scatter Weiyang", "He Gui Bi'an", "Wuyouwuyou K Shu", "Prince007" and so on who have voted for this book from beginning to end.

See you in the next book.

Lin Yule

December 2024, 7 (End of this chapter)