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When I was first planning out this publication, I thought to myself that I might create and sell Anki decks made up of passages from Dream of the Red Chamber.

In my defense, I know that other language focused content creators have done similar things in the past. Some offer really good Anki decks that feature native speaker audio. Others offer decks that are a bit less helpful - and I know this because I’ve spent more money than I care to admit on products that don’t help out all that much.

However, the truth is that you really shouldn’t buy somebody else’s deck, no matter how good it seems.

The truth, as uncomfortable as it may be, is that there’s no real shortcut to learning a language. You’ve got to put in the time and effort to learn it yourself, and programs like Anki are really designed to reinforce things you have already learned, not to teach you something new.

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I’ve tried a few tricks here and there over the years, thinking that they would help me get a special edge on learning this language or that language.

For example, as I mentioned in a previous video, I once used the sub2srs program to automatically convert a number of television shows with subtitles into Anki cards.

That plan worked in the sense that the program chose the right audio clips and created presentable cards. I did find myself frustrated at first by all the cards that weren’t actually sentences, but I was able to delete those on my own.

However, what I learned is that I had absolutely no connection to the content, since I didn’t bother to watch the television shows beforehand. All I had were clips taken completely out of context from a show that sounded somewhat interesting, but that was utterly confusing.

You see, effective language learning requires at least some sort of context. And when you try to take the context out of language learning and turn it into a simple memorization problem, the whole thing loses its flavor.

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This is why you should stay away from downloading precreated Anki decks. The problem isn’t just that the decks are likely inaccurate. The real problem, rather, is that you didn’t go through the learning process required to actually create them.

You see, when you take the time to look up something you don’t know, or to focus for long enough to at least attempt to learn a difficult grammatical concept from a textbook, your brain has to work at actually making sense of the language.

When you strain your ears to figure out what somebody just said in your target language, your brain is working to try to understand just what is going on.

However, if everything is completely spoonfed for you, or if you just mine a ton of sentences without context and throw them into your deck, you’ll find the process boring and ultimately not very useful.

I have thousands of notes in my Anki deck that I honestly should clean out. It’s not a great position to be in, to be honest. I keep committing the sunk cost fallacy, convincing myself that the fact that I spent time copying a bunch of sentences from a grammar book a few years ago means that there’s got to be some value there somewhere.

Don’t be like me. Take your time, learn the language the right way, and keep your deck clean.

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It’s time, once again, to ask one of those pesky literary questions that we honestly do not have an answer for.

In yesterday’s translation post, we saw Wang Xifeng intervene to stop Jia Baoyu from riding horseback with the other men:

鳳姐因惦記著寶玉，怕他在郊外縱性，不服家人的話，賈政管不著，惟恐有閃失，因此，命小廝來喚他。

But Wang Xifeng was worried about Jia Baoyu. She was worried that he would do whatever he wanted if he was outside, that he wouldn’t listen to what he was told, and that Jia Zheng would be unable to control him. Since she was worried that something might go wrong, she had a young servant call him over.

But is Wang Xifeng really concerned about Jia Baoyu out of some sort of familial affection? Or is something else going on here?

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There’s a reason why I really wanted to dive deep into Dream of the Red Chamber. And there’s a reason why I keep complaining about the other English translations.

You see, the problem is that most people who translate this book skip over the literary references. And that’s like trying to eat your ice cream cone without any ice cream.

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When I started this project a little over a year ago, I was tempted to create a full empire of Dream of the Red Chamber related media.

I thought I could put a little bit of everything together. Maybe some sort of merchandise, maybe some downloadable files, and maybe even some Anki decks.

Well, I haven’t given up on the dream of throwing together some merchandise (after all, wearing Chinese characters on your shirt is pretty cool). But I’ve given up entirely by now on the idea of putting together a downloadable Anki deck, even if it means leaving precious money on the table.

And, if you don’t understand why, just watch this:

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Now, in theory some of these decks should be helpful. After all, it does take time to sit down and put together an Anki deck.

But the problem is the principle of the matter. You’re really supposed to use programs like Anki to complement your study, not to completely replace it.

The ideal way to use Anki is to study something first, and then stick it into your Anki deck once you’ve got a good understanding of it. In other words, your goal shouldn’t be to get a huge number of words and phrases and sentences in the deck. Instead, it should reflect what you’ve learned and be an echo of the work that you’ve already done.

Downloading decks does pretty much the opposite. It’s kind of like asking AI to write your blog post. There’s really no point in doing it.

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Of course, if you’ve been using downloaded decks, or if you’ve been doing Anki the “wrong” way, don’t worry too much about it. I’ve tried all of this in the past.

The best way to make up for past mistakes is to do better in the future. Make a point of slowing yourself down and understanding what you read and watch instead of flooding yourself with words and phrases and sentences.

Ideally, your Anki deck (or whatever other software you use) should reflect your personal studies. You should be able to recognize everything you put into it, and you should never have to treat any entries as an entirely new word or concept.

But, if you’ve already screwed it up, it’s okay. You can learn as you go along. It’s just that I’ve learned the hard way that it’s a much more time consuming and frustrating experience.

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I know that this is a pretty provocative question, but I’ve been wondering about it for a while.

My wife asked me if Dream of the Red Chamber was a Marxist novel shortly after I told her that I decided to go forward with this project.

Now, on the face of things, this is a ridiculous question. The Communist Manifesto wasn’t published until February 1848, over 50 years after both the first and second editions of Dream of the Red Chamber were originally published.

But that doesn’t mean that a Marxist interpretation of Dream of the Red Chamber is inappropriate.

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In fact, there was a time in China where you absolutely had to read Dream of the Red Chamber through a Marxist lens.

This helps explain parts of the introduction to A Dream of Red Mansions, the translation by Gladys Yang and Yang Hsien-yi that was published in Beijing back in 1978.

This introduction is missing in most of the subsequent editions published by Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, and the reason why is pretty obvious:

This continues, by the way:

Now, there are a few aspects of this interpretation that are correct. For example, the writer of this note is correct that Cao Xueqin was fully cognizant of the huge disparity in wealthy between the extremely wealthy families in described in this book and the plight of the common people.

This is why characters like Granny Liu are so memorable:

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Now, the truth here is that a Marxist interpretation doesn’t really fit in as nicely as the political pundits would like.

There’s no massive movement by the downtrodden masses to overthrow their oppressors and reform the society. In fact, any disillusion that Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu supposedly feel towards feudalism probably is more a mirror of the story of Siddhartha Gautama (i.e. the Buddha) than anything Marxist in nature.

Are we supposed to conclude that any commentary on economic inequality is therefore Marxist in nature? Does somebody like Wang Anshi become an honorary Marxist just because he had a few ideas about equality that might have been acceptable to later political pundits?

At the same time, though, you can’t ignore the fact that Dream of the Red Chamber is clearly filled with obvious economic commentary, including quite a bit of irony.

Take the funeral of Qin Keqing that we’re currently in the middle of, for example. She was given an extremely ostentatious funeral for suspicious reasons, though it’s almost certainly the case that her father-in-law, Jia Zhen, felt personally responsible for leading her to her death. The only way she could legally have a funeral like this was because her widower, Jia Rong, received an honorary title after her father-in-law paid off the appropriate bribe.

There’s no possible way that we could not see this as a commentary on the corruption and economic reality of the times. In fact, Cao Xueqin brings out so many of these obvious and clear comments on the times he lived in that you simply can’t ignore them. It’s a piece of stark reality that slaps you in the face every time you open up the book.

Again - I think that the anonymous Publisher’s Note is a bit over the top when it says things like this:

However, I do agree that this is far from just a conventional love story.

You can read it as a critique of the “feudal ruling class” if you like. But you can also read the book as a critique of the oppression of women, or of the emptiness of overly formal religious rituals, or of how far the national culture of Confucianism had strayed from the original words.

If you really want, you can also read the book as a great critique of the literature of the times. After all, there’s a reason the book remained popular through and after the revolutionary period of Chinese literature in the late 1910s and the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

That’s the most fascinating thing about Dream of the Red Chamber. It’s a book that invites itself to all sorts of possible interpretations - and there’s really not a single interpretation that is right.

Anyway, I’d love to know what you think about all of this. I originally thought of turning this into a video, but I’m afraid that we’re still not quite far enough in the text to make it as coherent as I’d like it to be.

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After reading this passage, you’d probably think that Cao Xueqin is actually praising Wang Xifeng:

合族中雖有許多妯娌，也有言語鈍拙的，也有舉止輕浮的，也有羞口羞腳不慣見人的，也有懼貴怯官的，越顯得鳳姐灑爽風流，典則俊雅，真是「萬綠叢中一點紅」了。那裡還把眾人放在眼裡？揮霍指示，任其所為。

Now, there were other sisters-in-law in the family. However, some were poor at speaking, some did not have proper manners, some were so shy that they weren’t able to meet with guests, and some were scared to death of officials.

This only made Wang Xifeng look better in comparison. She was poised and capable, elegantly correct and properly refined. She was truly “a single speck of red in the midst of ten thousand green leaves.”

And so how could Wang Xifeng have cared about any of those other women? She simply waved her hand and issued her commands, and let every action speak for itself.

The truth, however, is that this passage isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

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I frequently see comments on my YouTube videos asking for more “comprehensible input” in languages like Chinese.

It’s honestly taken me a little while to really understand what many of you are asking for. I have to honestly admit that I’m not fully versed on the modern trends in the language learning world.

In fact, I was so befuddled by these requests and the things I had read about “comprehensible input” that I went ahead and made a video on the subject:

I do need to clarify something here, of course. I’m not saying that the Comprehensible Input method is one of the “worst” ways to learn a language.

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I’m pretty sure you know I’m going to have to stick in a qualifier after that last sentence - a “but” or a “and yet” or something similar. And, yeah, it’s true. It depends on precisely what we mean by “Comprehensible Input.”

Based on my experience learning languages and making mistakes, I can assure you that the best thing to immerse yourself in your target language is to simply immerse yourself in it.

That actually means you should be watching television and movies at a level far more advanced than your current spoken level. And, yeah, I know a lot of people will tell you that you should take a more gradual approach, that you need to find TV shows that are at the A2 level or B1 level or whatever level it is that the European system uses. But I’m going to tell you right now that you’re more likely to give up on the language if you severely limit what you can watch and read.

My teenage daughter always teases me about my stories of the past. Back when I was in college, back when I was first learning Chinese and when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I spent quite a bit of time watching classic Chinese cinema. I think I watched every movie I could get my hands on, from well known classics like Farewell My Concubine and To Live to extremely obscure classics like the 1948 version of Springtime In A Small Town.

I’ll be blunt. I didn’t understand everything. I didn’t even understand half of what was going on.

But, you know what? It didn’t matter. You see, part of learning a language means exposing yourself to the natural rhythms and sounds of the language. And you’re not going to get that if you listen to a bunch of audio that is deliberately slowed down for foreign consumption.

Is that slowed down audio actually “Comprehensible Input?” Honestly, it seems that there is a group of language teachers out there that has claimed the term for their own, a group that sells access to specially produced videos that are slowed down and designed to appeal to a certain level of language learner.

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The truth, though, is that you’ll never find a text or show or podcast episode or anything that is designed for your particular level. This is because you need to take ownership of your own language learning plan.

You don’t need to learn something in a certain way just because a certain guide told you to do so. In fact, if you’re following a certain procedure to learn whatever language it is that you’re learning, you’re more likely to give up out of frustration or exhaustion. You need to find something that you’re actually interested in, and you should never take some random person’s plan as the gospel truth.

The Latin subreddit offers this guide to Lingua Latina for new learners. I actually started following this method several years ago, back when I restarted my Latin learning. However, the proscriptions against memorization, translation, and all the rest are honestly a bunch of nonsense.

I know you guys want to activate some sort of magical language learning power in your brain, as if you could go back to how things were when you were 3 or 4 years old. But the truth is that you don’t actually need to do that.

It’s great to have a study method that teaches you things one step at a time. Lingua Latina is very well done and is fascinating. But, seriously, if you’re going to restrict yourself to only learning through a single textbook (or, in this case, a series of textbooks) for a year or more, you’re going to lose steam and lose interest.

Take a break now and then. Go find something really hard. Find one of those strange people that gives news reports entirely in Latin. Go read a psalm from the Vulgate, or go find a naughty ancient poem and try to figure it out, or read some Julius Caesar, or whatever.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my long language learning journey (and you should watch that video if you don’t believe me). However, I also occasionally did the right thing. One of the best things I did was reading James Legge’s translations of the Confucian classics at the very beginning of my Chinese study. I didn’t understand a word of the Chinese and, honestly, struggled with Legge’s archaic English. But the most important part is that it made the language feel alive and fascinating to me.

That’s the feeling you want. So get rid of the rules and restrictions and just have fun with the language, no matter which language it is.

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A lot of chapter 14 is going to feel boring and unimportant if you don’t know what Cao Xueqin is actually telling us.

The focus here isn’t on whether Jia Baoyu is going to have his study built on time, or on whether Wang Xifeng was justified in punishing a maid for showing up a minute late to a morning meeting.

Rather, the focus here is on the incredible amount of power and authority that Wang Xifeng wields.

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The nice thing about writing this as a blog is that I can take the time to try to figure out exactly what’s going on.

Posts like this don’t necessarily get a ton of views. However, if you’re reading Dream of the Red Chamber along with me, you’re probably really confused about what just happened. And the original Chinese text here is really ambiguous.

However, I’m quite certain that Jia Baoyu and Qin Zhong are actually at the Rongguo Mansion, not the Ningguo Mansion. Let’s look at why.

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If you’re interested in learning Chinese, or if you’re already learning, I strongly recommend that you learn how to write Chinese characters.

And by writing, I mean writing by hand.

My wife works part time as a Chinese instructor. She tells me that she has her students write by hand.

She’s from Taiwan, and has told me that she learned Chinese characters by hand when she grew up. Everybody does this in Taiwan, as well as mainland China and Hong Kong.

I learned Chinese characters largely through writing them by hand, and I continue to practice every day.

I know there are some people online who claim that they can learn to read Chinese without praticing writing. I hate to say that I don’t believe you, but, honestly, I have never met anybody in real life who could read Chinese who did not practice writing by hand.

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Now, the best way to practice writing Chinese characters by hand is to use some sort of graph paper or paper with boxes to practice writing.

You technically don’t need specialized paper, though I really recommend it. Characters are supposed to be square, and it’s a lot easier to see the square if you use paper with squares.

I routinely print out dozens of copies of this scan from a Chinese practice notebook intended for children:

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In fact, I’ll give you a PDF copy of the exact paper I use for free. Click here to download it.

Anyway, I strongly recommend starting a habit of writing Chinese characters every day. The video above can help you, especially if you decide to use Anki.

It takes a little while, but if you seriously practice and truly test yourself, you’ll find that progress is much faster than if you just try to remember the characters. You want to do everything you can to help the process be as easy and smooth as it can possibly be.

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If you read things that people say about Dream of the Red Chamber, you’ll read a lot of generic language about how beautifully the book was written.

What we saw in yesterday’s translation post is our first evidence of just how good Cao Xueqin’s prose really is.

It’s not just that he uses attractive language here, of course. He also gets the timing down just right. The entire segment we saw yesterday, from Wang Xifeng waking up early in the morning to prepare to her explosion of emotion on her sitting chair, is timed in a way that rivals the best of Hollywood.

Let’s take a closer look.

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You might not have noticed this, but there’s a huge contrast between the strictness of Wang Xifeng’s approach to Qin Keqing’s funeral and the way the monks and priests approach it.

I think this is part of the reason why this section of chapter 14 is arranged this way. We first see Wang Xifeng demanding that her staff do everything at appropriate time, after which we read about tons of rituals.

The rituals are a bit over the top, as I’ve said before. And that’s where the contrast is sharpest.

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There are a lot of issues with translating Dream of the Red Chamber into English. And a lot of these come because of the nature of the book itself.

You see, Dream of the Red Chamber isn’t a normal love story or romance novel or anything like that. Actually, it’s a psychological story wrapped in the clothing of a romance novel.

This is what I mean when I say that Dream of the Red Chamber is a “subversive” novel. It’s subversive in the sense that it completely defies the expectations of its readers, and because it does so deliberately. When the characters in this book do something that strikes you as strange, you really should stop and ask yourself what is going on.

Anyway, here are the 5 major general translation problems I’ve seen so far in this project.

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Character Names. The names of characters in this novel are naturally going to be difficult if you’re not a native speaker of Chinese, or if you don’t have at least some familiarity with Chinese names.

However, in Dream of the Red Chamber, the names of certain characters actually have additional meaning attached to them. And this can be pretty difficult to figure out unless somebody tells you about it.

That’s why I’ve written posts like this one:

However, it’s not always easy to understand this stuff at first glance. And there’s a lot of hidden and cryptic stuff in this novel.

Cultural differences. Naturally, cultural differences are going to play a major role when you’re dealing with a novel set in imperial China.

However, things like the ostentatious funeral arranged for Qin Keqing might not strike you as unusual unless you know the normal way the wives of lower ranking members of the household were usually buried.

All the characters. There are well over 400 supporting characters in this book, not to mention the 40+ main characters that keep showing up.

It’s actually not all that difficult to tell them apart, however. The thing about Cao Xueqin’s composition style is that he only introduces and uses characters when they serve a specific purpose. Or, in other words, you really don’t need to remember all 400+ characters that are introduced in this novel.

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Poetry. Yeah, there’s a lot of poetry here, though we haven’t encountered as much as I expected in the first 13 chapters.

The thing is, though, that the poetry in Dream of the Red Chamber actually means something. You can’t skip it without losing the whole point of the book. And you also can’t just briefly gloss over the meaning. You’ve got to actually translate the poems and interpret them, and that’s where it takes time and effort.

Emotion. The hardest part about this book is the character 情 (qing), which comes up over and over again in all sorts of different places and with all sorts of connotations.

Again, the hardest thing about Dream of the Red Chamber is the fact that it’s really not a love story. Not only is this book not the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet, but it really isn’t actually a book about a love triangle. There’s a love triangle there, sure - but this is more a book about characters fighting against the society that keeps trying to drag them down than a book about people falling in love with each other.

Anyway, hopefully this helps give you an idea of just how deep and intricate this novel really is. There’s a reason some scholars have devoted a lifetime to studying it.

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One of the fascinating things about Dream of the Red Chamber is the way that its characters create a stark contrast with each other.

Chapter 13, like many of the other chapters in this book, feels more like it is two separate chapters than a single whole. It started off with the untimely death of Qin Keqing, and ended with Wang Xifeng rising to a high level of power and authority.

And I think there’s something interesting going on here from a literary standpoint.

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If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering why in the world Jia Baoyu decided to recommend his sister-in-law Wang Xifeng to help Jia Zhen take care of business:

當下正憂慮時，因寶玉在側，便問道：「事事都算妥貼了，大哥哥還愁什麼？」賈珍便將裡面無人的話告訴了他。寶玉聽說，笑道：「這有何難？我薦一個人與你，權理這一個月的事，管保妥當！」賈珍忙問是誰。寶玉見座間還有許多親友，不便明言，走向賈珍耳邊說了兩句。賈珍聽了，喜不自勝。

Baoyu happened to be at his side as Jia Zhen was worried about this. “Everything seems to be working perfectly,” said Baoyu. “What is there to worry about?”

Jia Zhen explained to him that there was nobody at home to handle the visitors. “What’s so hard about that?” laughed Baoyu. “Let me recommend somebody to you that can take care of those visitors for a month. I guarantee that it will be well managed!”

Jia Zhen asked eagerly who it was. Since there were a lot of relatives and guests present, Baoyu thought it would be best for him to not speak openly. And so he went close to Jia Zhen’s ear and whispered a few words.

Jia Zhen was ecstatic when he heard this.

Anyway, there’s more going on here than you might think.

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For those of you who are curious about improving your own Chinese language skills, I’ve got a few tips that have helped me in my own language journey.

And the secret is that this applies to all languages, not just Chinese. Regardless of the language you’re learning, these five tips will help you advance more quickly from the beginning level to more advanced and interesting levels of the language.

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• Talk with normal people. This means somebody other than your teacher. Languages are living things, and were created to be spoken. This is even true of “dead” languages like Latin; your best bet with that language is to use a series like Lingua Latina and find a community to speak with.

  There’s no reason to worry about speaking with highly educated people for this step. In fact, you’ll make a lot more progress if you speak with ordinary people who don’t feel the need to lecture you or try to teach you at every step.

• Learn how to write. Most Chinese students don’t want to do this step, but it’s absolutely important that you do. Chinese simply is not the sort of language you can learn just by looking at the characters and guessing. Many of the characters look very similar, and the approach that works best is to make the characters an integral part of you. The easiest way to do that is to simply write the characters out.

  I still do this every day, even though I’ve been learning Chinese for 20 years now. I doubt I’ll ever stop. The more you write, the more affection you develop for Chinese characters.

• Read stuff you’re interested in. Stop limiting yourself to the textbook. You want to start reading things that are actually interesting to you. Trust me; when you get to a certain point with these languages, you’d rather poke your eyes out than read another article from some stuffy textbook.

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  At some point in time you’ll want to broaden your horizons. I recommend trying to find literary anthologies and similar books to expose yourself to a wide variety of written texts. The more widely you read, the more interesting the language will become.

• Watch television and movies. If you grew up in a house like mine, you probably stay away from popular entertainment as a sort of natural reaction. However, when it comes to language study, watching TV and checking out hit movies will actually do wonders for your linguistic skills.

  In all honesty, watching television is like a cheat code, especially if you get soap operas or shows with a “slice of life” aspect to them. It’s a cheat code because you can hear how actual native speakers speak in authentic situations, almost as if you were sitting in the living room observing.

  Remember that books cannot speak to you. Television shows and movies can.

• Use Anki. Use Anki or similar spatial memory software.

  If you set up Anki correctly, you can create a system that will effectively manage your language memory skills with extremely little input. This really comes in handy when you try to learn rarely used language or try to figure out the right way to remember important and unusual poetic characters.

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You might be wondering why in the world Dai Quan had so much power in the last translation post.

It’s pretty obvious when you look at the text itself:

可巧這日正是首七第四日，早有大明宮掌宮內監戴權，先備了祭禮遣人來，次後坐了大轎，打道鳴鑼，親來上祭。

It just so happened that this was the fourth day of the first seven day mourning period. Early that morning, Dai Quan, the Chief Imperial Eunuch of the highest level of the palace, sent someone ahead with sacrificial offerings. He then arrived in a large sedan chair, preceded by people who beat a gong to clear the way, and presented his sacrifice personally.

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As I mentioned yesterday, there’s something odd going on with the names of Qin Keqing’s two maids.

The maid who takes her own life is named Ruizhu (瑞珠), which means “lucky pearl.” As I mentioned yesterday, this name is no coincidence. Rui Zhu combines the names of Jia Rui (賈瑞), who passed away in chapter 12, and Jia Zhu (賈珠), the older brother of Jia Baoyu and husband of Li Wan who passed away before the book began.

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As you can see in my latest video, the biggest scandal in Dream of the Red Chamber isn’t the death of Qin Keqing. Instead, it’s the apparent cover up of her relationship with Jia Zhen.

Jia Zhen clearly has raped Qin Keqing. This is not a consentual relationship by any means. It’s not entirely clear what Jia Zhen’s motivation is, but I’m also not sure that it entirely matters at this point.

Qin Keqing is destined to take her own life as a result. This is clear from the poems about her fate. Both the first and second poems convey the same information, often using the exact same language:

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Most people ignore the items in Qin Keqing’s room. Her room is filled with legendary items from China’s literary history. These mythical items convey not only a sense of sensuality, but also the inevitability of loss and failure as a result of that sensuality:

Now, I’ve written about the Qin Keqing affair several times, though this post is probably the best summary of everything:

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However, the best evidence of this comes from the Zhiyanzhai commentary, as I mentioned in the video.

In his handwritten notes at the end of chapter 13 in one of the early manuscripts, Zhiyanzhai takes credit for convincing Cao Xueqin to remove all references to Qin Keqing’s suicide:

「秦可卿淫喪天香樓」，作者用史筆也。老朽因有魂托鳳姐賈家後事二件，的是安富尊榮坐享人不能想得到處。其事雖未行，其言其意則令人悲切感服，姑赦之，因命芹溪刪去。

“Qin Keqing Dies Wantonly at the Celestial Fragrant Tower” - the author used the brush of a historian here. Because Qin Keqing’s spirit entrusted to Wang Xifeng two things concerning the Jia family’s future, things that those who, like me, enjoy wealth, honor, and ease, who sit and reap the fruits of the labors of others, could never conceive of. Though these matters were never carried out, her words and her intentions are enough to make one both grieve her loss and admire her. I therefore pardoned her, and ordered Cao Xueqin to delete the section.

Or, in other words, Zhiyanzhai has taken credit for ordering Cao Xueqin to delete the section in question.

Now, Zhiyanzhai does note two sections in chapter 13 that still refer to the deleted parts about the suicide. However, he does not make those comments regarding the predictive poems in chapter 5. Instead, his only remarks indicate that he felt the poems were extremely well written.

Could there have been a conspiracy to cover things up? Perhaps. However, it seems more likely to me that Cao Xueqin is deliberately having fun with his audience by subverting its expectations.

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The indifference we saw on Jia Jing’s part yesterday is half of the Jia family problem.

It’s actually a pretty simple problem to explain. On the one hand, you’ve got ridiculous sexual activity by many of the men of the family. These include younger and older men, many of whom have decided to abandon their family responsibilities in favor of running after different sexual affairs.

The second problem is kind of the opposite. You’ve also got older members of the family that have abandoned their responsibilities entirely in order to gain some sort of murky and undefined religious benefit.

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