Rice Fragrance Village
It’s around this point in Dream of the Red Chamber that most Western readers find their eyes glossing over the text. The problem is that Cao Xueqin uses a lot of dense and somewhat difficult to understand literary allusions. Most print translations struggle because there just isn’t enough room to actually quote the original poems and explain the allusions and what they mean. Of course, this blog has an advantage, since the world of internet posting means I’ve got an unlimited amount of manuscript paper to work with.
There are so many poetic allusions in this section that it’s going to be a pretty dense read. As is the case with all of the other passages with extensive and dense literary allusions, I strongly recommend consulting the translation notes even if you don’t know any Chinese.
