Dream of the Red Chamber

Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story, is the masterpiece of Chinese classical novels during the Ming and Qing dynasties with the most profound influence on later generations. The work is comprised of 120 chapters, the first 80 of which were written by Tsao Hsueh-chin and the remaining 40 by Kao Hgo. Since the author has experienced a wealthy life which later turned down to decline, he puts on painstaking efforts to portray such amazing characters. Tsao Hsueh-chin created a tragic love story between a young man, Jia Baoyu, who was born along with a jade and a young lady, Lin Tai-yu, who harbored hatred while she died. Their love has been misunderstood and then broke down since Daiyu couldn’t understand that Baoyu loved her but married the other girl, Xue Baochai. With unlimited distress and sorrow, she died eventually. Since Baoyu was hoodwinking by his family that he was going to marry Daiyu, instead of discovering the truth on time, he missed Daiyu forever. Finally, he became cynical and understood the emptiness of the material world, and then became a monk. Drawing the materials from real life, the novel is full of the author’s personal feelings filled with blood and tears. This is probably the reason why I do want to become a nun and look everything as nihility.