Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai
I don’t think I’ve seen any other author describe characters the way Cao Xueqin does it.
Notice, for example, that Cao Xueqin waited until chapter 8 to describe Xue Baochai, who winds up competing with Lin Daiyu for Jia Baoyu’s heart. We know by this time that Lin Daiyu is jealous, and we know that Jia Baoyu has an interest in Xue Baochai. And yet we don’t know who she is yet.
But the brilliance here is in the fact that Cao Xueqin deliberately refrains from describing what the girls look like.
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