Dream of the Red Chamber

Introduction

The Dream of the Red Chamber is an encyclopedic novel. With the love tragedy of Baoyu and Daiyu as the main line and the rise and fall of the four major families as the background, it depicts all aspects of Chinese feudal society in the 18th century and the budding of emerging capitalist democratic ideas under feudal autocracy. With a grand structure, euphemistic plot, exquisite details, vivid characters and vivid voices, it can be regarded as a classic among ancient Chinese novels.

The versions of Dream of the Red Chamber are quite complex, mainly divided into two categories: manuscripts and printed editions. The early manuscripts, such as Jiaxu, Jimao, and Gengchen, are mostly titled "The Story of the Stone". The content is incomplete, and mainly retains the content of the first eighty chapters. The printed edition is mainly the 120-chapter edition compiled by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E. In March 1982, the annotated version of Dream of the Red Chamber signed by "Dream of the Red Chamber Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts" was officially published by the People's Literature Publishing House and became the popular reading version of Dream of the Red Chamber distributed nationwide. It is also referred to as the "new edition" and "annotated edition of the Red Chamber Research Institute". The first eighty chapters of this Dream of the Red Chamber are based on the early manuscript Gengchen edition, and the last forty chapters are based on the Chengjia edition, which is closer to the original work of Cao Xueqin. There are more than twenty experts in editing and annotating, including Feng Qiyong, Li Xifan, Liu Mengxi, and Lu Qixiang, and there are more than 2,600 annotations in the whole book. In 2022, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the publication, the original annotation group experts and scholars from the Chinese Dream of the Red Chamber Society and the Dream of the Red Chamber Research Institute, as well as the editorial department of the People's Literature Publishing House, have comprehensively sorted out and revised the Dream of the Red Chamber Institute's annotated version, and launched a revised new edition (i.e., the fourth edition). This book is based on the brand new fourth edition, and adds 24 classic illustrations of the Dream of the Red Chamber by the famous contemporary painter Mr. Liu Danzhai.