Start Here

Guide to my Dream of the Red Chamber project

Dream of the Red Chamber is a daunting novel even for native speakers of Chinese. It can be overwhelming for foreign readers — especially because of its myriad of characters, extensive literary references, and philosophical connotations.

I decided to undertake this project in hopes of clarifying as much of this book as I could. I also wanted to dive in as deep as possible in hopes of getting as much out of the book as I can.

If you’re new to this book, or to Chinese literature in general, don’t worry. I’m going to do my best to make things as easy for you as possible.

There are two categories of posts here: translation posts, which are translations of segments of the book in order, and commentary posts, which are comments on the translation itself. I try to keep the translation posts to a reasonable length so that you won’t feel overwhelmed (and, honestly, so that I won’t get lost).

Not all posts are entirely free. I strongly recommend considering a paid subscription. It costs $5 per month (or $50 per year) to get access to all posts, as well as a ton of additional material I’ve collected for this project. This project is much more enjoyable with a paid subscription, since you’ll be able to read the entire translation and all of the commentary.

Naturally, I recommend starting from the beginning. If you just want to jump on in, this is the first post:

If you just want to read the book, I’ve created pages with links to every translation post in order. Here’s a list of them:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Keep an eye on this post, by the way. As I add in new sections, create commentary posts on important and interesting topics, and proceed with the translation, I’ll update this post with helpful links.