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I’ve been studying Chinese from a variety of approaches since the summer of 2004. I’ve been through some ups and downs in my linguistic journey.

While I’m certainly not the world’s foremost expert on language learning, I’ve learned a thing or two over time. In fact, most of my actual learning has come from unfortunate mistakes I’ve made over the years.

One key lesson I learned a few years back is to always use software like Anki. And here are a few reasons why:

Now, if you’re interested in reading something like Dream of the Red Chamber, or the Confucian classics, or Tang poetry, or even just trying to learn enough cursive script to decipher Chinese calligraphy, you still should use something like Anki.

Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years for using Anki to study classical (or “old”) Chinese:

Characters change depending on the context.

With tens of thousands of characters to choose from, you’d think that classical authors would refrain from using somewhat unusual characters to write.

You’d be wrong.

In fact, you’ll run into a problem as early as the first sentence of the Confucian Analects:

子曰：「學而時習之，不亦說乎？」

The Master said, “Isn’t learning and applying what you learned at the right time a wonderful thing?”

The problem here is 說, of course. If you’ve learned modern Chinese, you’ll instantly think shuō when you see that character, which means “to say.”

If your Chinese is a bit more advanced, you might think it reads shuì, which means “to persuade.”

The truth, however, is that it reads yuè in this circumstance, and is basically a character that stands in for the character 悅, “to be happy.”

The problem that you’ll have is that this sort of thing happens all the time. It happens with tons of different characters, and it always happens in a way that surprises you.

The best way to deal with it in Anki, in my opinion, is to focus on learning things in context as best as possible. If you run into an unusual reading for a character, you want to learn that reading within its context.

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The problem, of course, is that 說 becomes yuè in only a few instances. You don’t want to create a card specifically to teach yourself an unusual reading that only comes up once in a blue moon. The secret is to create cards that require you to read and understand things in the proper context, instead of trying to learn unusual things completely removed from their context.

Break the hard stuff up.

Of course, the exact opposite theory also applies.

While you do want to learn the unusual stuff in the context of the phrase or sentence that you saw it, you also want to stay away from trying to learn extremely long phrases or sentences.

The reason you want to avoid this temptation is because it will make your Anki study sessions unbearable. And, yes, I say this because I’ve got experience doing it the wrong way.

Take the first sentence of Dream of the Red Chamber for example:

作者自云曾歷過一番夢幻之後，故將真事隱去，而借「通靈」說此《石頭記》一書也，故曰「甄士隱」云云。

The author says that, after having had a kind of dreamlike experience, he decided to hide the truth, relying instead on “spiritual communication” to write this book, The Story of the Stone. This is why he used names such as Zhen Shiyin.

Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that there’s a lot of stuff going on here. Phrases like 一番夢幻 (a kind of dreamlike experience), 通靈 (spiritual communication, though this translation is debatable), and the connection between 將真事隱去 and the name 甄士隱 will take you a lot of time to think through.

Because there’s a lot going on here, I strongly recommend against sticking this sentence into your Anki deck.

There are things here you can learn, of course. 云 means “to say” when it’s on its own, for example. 自云 therefore means either to say to oneself or to personally say something. 云云, meanwhile, is a set two character phrase that means “and so on.”

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I recommend learning the individual words on their own and leaving it at that. You want to save learning phrases and sentences for instances where there is a certain grammatical usage that you’re interested in learning for whatever reason, or for cases where a sentence or phrase is particularly meaningful for you. Remember that the nice thing about Anki is that you’ll wind up keeping whatever it is you’ve learned in your head over the long term - and it’s kind of funny to see how stuff you’ve memorized tends to spill out at odd times and in odd places.

Learn before you memorize.

This is the part that everybody gets wrong with Anki.

There’s a major temptation out there to try to use Anki to replace your own learning instead of supplementing it. This is what they call incremental reading, and it can work if you do it the right way.

But the last thing you want to do is stick stuff in your Anki deck that you haven’t actually learned before.

Let’s say you’re interested in learning something like this Su Dongpo poem called “Flowering Crabapple” (海棠) that I quoted a few weeks back:

東風裊裊泛崇光， 香霧空濛月轉廊。

只恐夜深花睡去， 故燒高燭照紅妝。

The gentle east wind wafts, casting a radiant light;

A fragrant, misty haze hangs soft as the moon shifts around the veranda.

Fearing only that deep in the night, the blossoms will fall asleep,

I light tall candles to illuminate their rosy beauty.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here - and, if you like the poem, you might be tempted to stick the entire thing into your Anki deck.

Before you do something like that, though, you might want to take a few minutes to actually think about what is going on here.

Su Dongpo turns the crabapple into a person. The personification is obvious in the third line: he describes his fear that the flower will fall asleep deep in the night (只恐夜深花睡去).

In fact, if you think about it, Su Dongpo turns all sorts of things into people. The wind, for example, is described as 裊裊, which means something slender and swaying - almost like it’s a dancer’s sleeve. The flower has a female face that is illuminated by the candle (照紅妝). And the moon turns past the corridor (月轉廊) as if it were a person wandering around outside.

There’s nothing wrong with memorizing the entire poem, of course. However, your appreciation of the art and the imagery here will be enhanced if you take the time to read deeply before you start cramming stuff like this into your Anki deck.

Remember that learning a ton of different stuff as quickly as possible won’t necessarily help you master the language faster. It’s much better to read deliberately and read for understanding and mastery than to try to get through as much as possible as quickly as possible.

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In this passage, we see the stark contrast between normal family emotions and relationships and the stilted and formal relationship that Jia Yuanchun has with her father. This is one of the most significant passages in the book, and is fascinating to read.

My Translation

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Here are a few quick thoughts about Jia Yuanchun returning home.

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Once again we have another very short but meaningful passage today. We’re on a roll with these.

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If you’re a wanna-be writer, like so many of us are, Dream of the Red Chamber probably feels really intimidating to you. Cao Xueqin not only creates an intricate world filled with overwhelming descriptions, but his world also remains internally consistent.

As we’ve seen recently, Jia Yuanchun had to go from one boat to another boat just to reach the palatial building that the family built for her:

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We’ve got two passages of poetic description today, as well as a fully descriptive poem. As usual, there’s quite a bit to talk about.

My Translation

As Jia Yuanchun entered through the archway, she saw

Torches blazing in the courtyard, encircling the sky,

Fragrant incense powder covering the entire ground,

Trees that seemed to be ablaze and flowers that looked like jade,

Golden windows and jade railings.

And there was no way to fully describe the

Fine and delicate hanging curtains, made of shrimp whiskers,

Carpets spread across the floors, made of otter fur,

The tripods emitting the scent of deer musk and expensive resin,

The screens arrayed with pheasant-tail fans.

Truly:

These were golden gates and jade doors, the dwelling place of immortals;

They were cassia halls and orchid palaces, the household of an imperial concubine.

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Translation Critique

Hawkes

David Hawkes does an excellent job with the two descriptive poetic passages:

However, the poem at the end is less than ideal:

The abode of the Princess has cassia halls and orchid chambers.

This is a direct reference to Wang Bo’s work as described in the “translation notes” section below. However, Hawkes doesn’t actually spell this out for his reader. And, of course, Hawkes misses the clear and direct reference to the fact that Jia Yuanchun is actually an imperial concubine, not a “princess.”

Yang

The Yang decide against translating the poetic passages as poems, with the exception of the final poem:

An abode with golden gates and jade doors fit for immortals,

Its cassia and orchid chambers a worthy setting for the Imperial Consort.

This is a much better translation than the brief David Hawkes attempt.

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Chinese Text

只見庭燎繞空，香屑布地，火樹琪花，金窗玉檻。說不盡簾卷蝦鬚，毯鋪魚獺，鼎飄麝腦之香，屏列雉尾之扇。真是：

金門玉戶神仙府，桂殿蘭宮妃子家。

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Translation Notes

庭燎 is a direct reference to the Book of Poetry (詩經):

夜如何其？夜未央，庭燎之光。

How goes the night? It is not yet midnight. The torch is blazing in the courtyard.

As a result, 庭燎 is clearly a politically loaded word, and gives an image of King Xuan of Zhou anxiously awaiting the dawn so he can hold court. Cao Xueqin uses this image to invoke an idea of legitimate royal ritual. However, this is a merchant family burning torches at night to welcome home their daughter – not the family holding court.

蝦鬚 literally mean the long and thin antennae of shrimp. It’s not clear if the curtains here were actually made of shrimp whiskers. This is a phrase usually used to describe curtains that are very fine. However, the other three descriptions in this miniature poem seem to refer to actual animal products.

桂殿蘭宮, or “cassia halls and orchid palaces,” is a direct allusion to a 7^th century writing by Wang Bo called Preface to the Pavillion of Prince Teng (滕王閣序). Wang Bo’s work is filled with images of the transience of glory; in fact, he wrote about talented men gathering together, many of whom would die young or go unrecognized. Cao Xueqin is subtly hinting here at the fact that the Jia family’s fate would be unfortunate, and that the talent in the family will be scattered in the end.

Notice that 神仙府, the “mansion for divine immortals,” is matched directly by 妃子家, or “the household of an imperial concubine.” This is a reminder of the actual state of the Jia family. As impressive as the building and garden might have seemed, the truth is that the family is in decline, and that it’s hanging on only because Jia Yuanchun happens to be an imperial concubine.

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Now that we’re really going through the novel slowly, we can take a little bit of time out to think about a couple of things.

Jia Yuanchun clearly wants to go home again. But, as Thomas Wolfe reminds us, you really can’t go back home.

I know how Jia Yuanchun feels, by the way.

We were living and working in Beijing, China back in 2017. I was working for the State Depatment as a Foreign Service Officer. And, as is usually the case, we wound up faced with “home leave,” a U.S. government requirement that we return to the United States for a certain period of time every couple of years to reacquaint ourselves with American culture and life.

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I’m serious when I say that, by the way. It’s not a benefit of having the job. Home leave is a requirement, and it can be difficult on those who do not have an actual set residence in the United States.

Anyway, we went back to my parents house. And, just like Jia Yuanchun feels in chapter 18 of Dream of the Red Chamber, I felt frustration when I realized that I really couldn’t go back home again.

Going home isn’t just going back to a place or meeting with certain people, of course. Going home means going back to the way things once were. It’s about going back to the feelings and thoughts that you once had, your ideals and frustrations and hopes and dreams and disappointments. It’s very much about trying to live your life again in reverse, about going back over your own footsteps again and making a better decision the second time around.

And it’s impossible. Not only can you not travel backwards in time, but you literally cannot go home again.

That’s why Jia Yuanchun changed the name of her exquisite mansion in this passage:

石牌坊上寫著「天仙寶境」四大字。賈妃命換了「省親別墅」四字，於是進入行宮。

On the stone archway was a four character inscription that read “Treasure Realm of the Celestial Immortals.”

Jia Yuanchun saw this inscription and ordered that it be replaced with “Villa for a Family Visit.” And then she entered.

The talk about celestial immortals probably made Jia Yuanchun feel uncomfortable. She wanted to go back home to her family, and wanted all the pomp and circumstance to be gone.

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This is a very natural human desire. It’s a feeling and emotion that transcends manmade culture. But, of course, you just can’t go back home again.

I don’t think anybody expressed this desire better than Goethe:

Gib ungebändigt jene Triebe,
Das tiefe schmerzenvolle Glück,
Des Hasses Kraft, die Macht der Liebe,
Gib meine Jugend mir zurück!

Give back, untamed, those impulses,
That deep, pain-filled happiness,
The strength of hatred, the power of love,
Give me back my youth!

And, yeah, it sounds better in German. Trust me.

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My apologies, but today’s passage is another short one. I got part way through a longer translation segment and realized that I really needed to stop here. More tomorrow.

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I’d love to know what you guys think about this one. Are we digging in too deep when we read this book?

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Against my best judgment and my initial intentions, I’m going to make this passage really short. That’s because we’ve got a lot to talk about. Check out the translation notes.

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I’ve found myself in a somewhat awkward position this morning. I’ve got only a little bit of time before I have to go to work, and don’t have the ability to write as much as I wanted to.

Anyway, I know I’ve talked about this before, but I do want to reiterate a few things about the future plan for this blog.

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These are the projects I currently have in mind (and, theoretically, am working on):

Character Database: My goal is to create a comprehensive database of all characters in 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber). I know that some can be found on Wikipedia, though the Wikipedia entries are often incomplete, and sometimes incorrect. My hope is that this blog will eventually become the destination for serious students of this book. My plan is to make this free for everybody.

Full Chapter Translation Pages: In addition to links to posts that contain the translations of each chapter, I am planning on making pages that contain full chapter translations to help those of you who just want to read the book. This might take a while, as this will require me to go over my translation and make a few corrections to make sure things read smoothly. I’ll likely make this available only to paying subscribers. I will add on another benefit: you can also make your own recommended changes to the translation, and we can work together to find a suitable solution.

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Symbolism: Similar to the Character Database, I’m hoping to eventually create a series of essays regarding symbolism and certain motifs that occur frequently in this novel. Many of these are difficult to understand even if you grew up in China.

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions or thoughts!

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This is an interesting parenthetical statement in the middle of the chapter. I originally wanted to combine this with the previous and next translation post, but realized pretty early on that there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here, and so I split them up.

My Translation

Dear reader, you will certainly remember that names like “Smartweed Sandbar and Flower Riverbank,” “The Phoenix Arrives in Ritual Splendor,” and so on were created on the day in the last chapter when Jia Zheng tested Jia Baoyu’s literary gifts. So how is it that these names could be put to serious use?

Think about this. The Jia family had been a literate family for generations. Surely they had one or two accomplished writers who could compose a few inscriptions. How could they allow a child to put forth a feeble effort just to get the task finished?

Here’s the explanation. Before the Imperial Consort Jia Yuanchun entered the palace, she also had been raised by Grandmother Jia. Later, when Jia Baoyu was born, Yuanchun was the older sister, and Baoyu was the younger brother. Yuanchun knew that their mother was older when she had this baby boy, and so Yuanchun doted on him and loved him more than anyone. The two of them would attend to the elders together, and were rarely apart.

Before Baoyu had started to attend school, back when he was three or four years old, Yuanchun had already taught him several books by recitation, and so he carried a few thousand characters in his head before he could even read.

Though they were brother and sister, their relationship was more like mother and child. In fact, after she entered the palace, she often sent messages to her father and brother telling them to “please raise him well in every well. If there’s too little discipline he’ll never amount to anything, and some major misfortune will surely follow. That would only cause Grandmother Jia to worry.” There was not a moment when she didn’t remember him with tenderness.

And so, when Jia Zheng heard Jia Baoyu’s tutor praise his considerable talents a few days earlier, Jia Zheng decided to test him during their tour of the garden. While the results were certainly no match for the works of a famous scholar, they certainly did carry the Jia family flavor with them. Plus, if Jia Yuanchun saw them, she would know that they were the creations of her beloved little brother, which certainly would help her not feel disappointed in his development. And this is why Jia Zheng decidd to use Jia Baoyu’s titles for the inscriptions. The spots that were not filled in during their tour were filled in afterwards with other names.

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Translation Critique

Hawkes

David Hawkes marks this section off with the title Stone’s Note To Reader. There’s a question here as to whether the narrator of this book is the stone mentioned in chapter 1 (which is actually Jia Baoyu), or whether the actual narrator is completely disconnected from the book. The book itself never makes this clear. Hawkes also writes the name “Stone” at the end of this passage.

Hawkes credits Jia Baoyu with inventing the inscriptions for the places that remained without inscription. This is not clear in the original; the original merely says that somebody came up with the missing names.

Yang

The Yangs use kind of an odd phrase in their translation: “Why then make shift with phrases tossed off by a boy?” Make shift is a phrase that means “to manage with difficulty,” and is a phrase I honestly don’t remember ever hearing or seeing before. It’s related to makeshift, a much more common noun that means a crude expedient or substitute.

The Yangs add in an odd comment by the unnamed narrator: “Let me, stupid as I am, explain this to you.” This does not exist in the 1792 edition, though I wonder if it might be a translation of some other manuscript version.

The Yangs also credit Jia Baoyu with creating the later inscriptions. Again, this is not clear in the original, which is ambiguous: 那日未題完之處，後來又補題了許多 (there were many places that had no inscriptions after that day, but many of them were created after the fact).

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Chinese Text

看官聽說：這「蓼汀花漵」四字及「有鳳來儀」等字，皆繫上回賈政偶試寶玉之才，何至便認真用了？想賈府世代詩書，自有一二名手題詠，豈似暴富之家，竟以小兒語搪塞了事呢？只因當日這賈妃未入宮時，自幼亦系賈母教養。後來添了寶玉，賈妃乃長姊，寶玉為幼弟，賈妃念母年將邁，始得此弟，是以獨愛憐之。且同侍賈母，刻不相離。那寶玉未入學之先，三四歲時，已得元妃口傳教授了幾本書，識了數千字在腹中，雖為姊弟，有如母子。自入宮後，時時帶信出來與父兄，說：「千萬好生扶養：不嚴不能成器，過嚴恐生不虞，且致祖母之憂。」眷念之心刻刻不忘。前日賈政聞塾師贊他盡有才情，故於遊園時聊一試之。雖非名公大筆，卻是本家風味。且使賈妃見之，知愛弟所為，亦不負其平日切望之意，因此，故將寶玉所題用了。那日未題完之處，後來又補題了許多。

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Translation Notes

搪塞 means to do a perfunctory job or to go through the motions.

Jia Yuanchun is referred to as 賈妃, or The Imperial Consort Jia throughout this passage. However, this leads to some pretty awkward sentences in English, which is why I’ve chosen to use her personal name instead. She is also referred to as 元妃 in this paragraph, or The Imperial Consort Yuan.

Remember that Jia Yuanchun is Jia Baoyu’s biological older sister. This comes from this somewhat boring post way back in chapter 2:

第二胎生了一位小姐，生在大年初一，就奇了。不想隔了十幾年又生了一位公子，說來更奇：一落胞胎，嘴裡便銜下一塊五彩晶瑩的玉來，還有許多字跡。你道是新聞不是？

Lady Wang’s second child was a daughter who was born on New Year’s Day, which was certainly a strange omen. And yet, a decade later she gave birth to a boy whose birth defied all reason. When he left the womb, he held in his mouth a lustrous, five-colored jade stone which was inscribed with cryptic characters. Isn’t that incredible news?

This passage is difficult because the identity of 賈母 is ambiguous. Usually this refers to Grandmother Jia in this book. However, it’s clear from the context that Jia Yuanchun decides to dote on Jia Baoyu because her mother (i.e. Lady Wang) is advanced in age, not because Grandmother Jia is advanced in age. I’ve tried to straighten things out in the translation, though I’m still not entirely sure I’ve got it right.

口傳教授 means to teach through one’s mouth, or to teach orally. I’ve translated this as “teaching by recitation,” and the image I get in my mind is of the end of Fahrenheit 451 where books are completely banned and where the learning of the past has survived only as an oral tradition.

才情 means ability, talent, or skill. Note that the word used here is 情, not something like 才能 (which means the same thing).

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One of the most interesting things about Jia Yuanchun’s initial visit to the Grand View Garden is the way the garden itself is described.

Remember that we’ve seen a few times in this novel where the dichotomy between what is “false” (假) and what is “true” (真) shows up. For example:

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This is another short but significant passage. Jia Yuanchun gets her first glimpse of the garden, and her reaction is quite interesting.

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A little over a hundred years ago, there was a movement to try to push the Chinese language away from the Chinese characters.

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Honestly, when you think about it, you can understand the sentiment. The Chinese written language can be daunting to learn even if you are a native speaker. If you want to achieve full fluency and a complete mastery of every possible character, you’ll be studying for a very long time.

But the problem that the anti-character movement has always had is that Chinese characters are actually a good way to transmit subtle information. And besides, Chinese characters have also historically been the linguistic glue that kept the vast country together.

You can see the influence of those characters to this day, actually - especially if you study dialects. For example, take the Taiwanese Hokkien word siáng, which means “who.” Despite the fact that the word is clearly only a single syllable, the most common way to write it per Taiwan’s Ministry of Education is two characters: 啥人, which literally means “what person.”

You’ll see the same thing if you try to say “yesterday” in Taiwanese Hokkien. The word is pronounced tsa̋ng and is clearly one word; yet the characters are written with two syllables, 昨昏, or literally “yesterday evening.”

You also see the same thing in the 訓讀字 (kunyomi) phenomenon in Japanese. This is where Japanese uses Chinese characters to write native Japanese words. It’s a pretty obvious example of places where the characters themselves contain meaning independent of their sound.

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So, for example, 心 (heart) is pronounced こころ (kokoro) in Japanese, which is a native Japanese pronunication. And yet a compound word such as 心配 (anxiety) is pronounced しんぱい (shinpai), which is clearly a reading that comes from Chinese.

Of course, this becomes even more fun when you have the phrase 心を配る, which means to pay attention to something. Here 心 is prounounced こころ, and 配 is pronounced くば - both native Japanese pronounciations despite the fact that both characters use the Chinese pronunication when paired together.

Anyway, this phenomenon only happens because the Chinese characters themselves do indeed convey meaning. In fact, if you think about it for a little while, you’ll realize that the ability of Chinese characters to convey meaning on their own independent of pronunication makes them quite a bit more interesting than the relatively flat Latin alphabet.

And, of course, this also helps explain why characters themselves can be a form of art independent of their meaning - something we see frequently in Chinese calligraphy:

Anyway, the long story short here is that you really should take the time to study Chinese characters if you’re going to learn the language anyway. It’s very rewarding, and is a lot more insightful and interesting than it seems at first.

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Jia Yuanchun finally arrives to the Jia household in today’s passage. This is an interesting combination of beautiful poetry and an almost boring inventory of specific items.

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My Translation

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Here are a few scattered thoughts on the latest translation post.

I hope you are having a great week!

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The wait and anticipation for Jia Yuanchun’s return must have been excruciating for the Jia family. This passage gives you a little glimpse at what things must have felt like.

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You’ve probably never had a family reunion quite like this one.

Cao Xueqin makes it absolutely clear that Jia Yuanchun’s return home is nothing like a normal family reunion:

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Chapter 18 begins with the return home of Jia Yuanchun, the Imperial Consort. Today’s post is filled with descriptions of their extensive preparations for her return.

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My Translation

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