Down with Dream of the Red Chamber — Why Lavish Resources on a Mere Book?

2006/4/11 21:23:37

Today's topic is a cultural icon within culture, a peak among peaks — anyone who dares to disparage it is branded an uncultured waste. "文" (culture/writing) means traces, yet if the antelope hangs its horns leaving no trace, what harm is there in being uncultured? But on what grounds should a novel that is nothing extraordinary consume vast resources of the nation and its people?

The language, structure, ideas, and so on of Dream of the Red Chamber have been studied to death. What deserves more study than the studies themselves is: exactly how many people has this book fed? How many people has it gilded with halos? How many people has it enriched? What are the hidden rules of this game? For a single book to spawn an entire academic field is rare in world history — so does this book truly contain profound hidden meanings?

The thought in this book is merely a hodgepodge of traditional Chinese Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism — miscellaneous rather than refined, neither broad nor deep. It was simply hyped up by a bunch of frustrated literati. As for the poetry and lyrics within — setting aside the extensive plagiarism of Ming Dynasty verse — even judged among ordinary poetry, they are at best second-and-a-half rate. The so-called integration of poetry with characters and plot is merely a basic requirement — what's there to make a fuss about?

As for the interpretations of this book, they serve no purpose beyond bamboozling and bewildering people. Liu Xinwu's recent textual research — claiming that the prototype of Qin Keqing was a daughter of the deposed Crown Prince Yinreng, secretly fostered at the Cao household — is merely the latest baton in this bamboozling relay race, with many more runners to come.

The myth of Dream of the Red Chamber is essentially the same as all current cultural myths — the former is merely an older version. Of course, the length of the bamboozling is a key measure in such matters. In other words, bamboozle long enough and it becomes a classic — that is the truth of the matter.