Dream of the Red Chamber

Dream of the Red Chamber

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The Girl In The Palace

What yesterday's poem means

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Daniel Evensen
Jul 15, 2025
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The Girl In The Palace

賈元春

Don’t feel bad if you’re unable to understand any of these poems at this point. The truth is that many of them refer to characters that we really haven’t read much about yet.

The fifth chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber is the sort of composition that makes more sense once you’ve been through the entire book once. We don’t quite have that luxury in this blog. I can’t assume that you’ve already read the book, of course. And so I’ll do my best to give you the information you need to figure out what is going on — and then we’ll come back later to expound on a bit more, in order to avoid major spoilers.

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