Dream of the Red Chamber Woe

Author: Eileen Chang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-11-01
Features: The fact that a novelist conducts research is the greatest feature of The Red Chamber Dream (Hongloumeng Yǎn). Her (Eileen Chang)'s "ten years of obsession with research" demonstrates an exploratory passion and abundant imagination that cannot be found in other similar books." — Qian Min, Eileen Chang and Her Hongloumeng Yǎn
If we take 1963 as the midpoint of Eileen Chang's life, then she devoted her first half to fiction and her second half to The Red Chamber. Among cultural figures, apart from some "Red Studies" scholars, only Eileen Chang seems to have dedicated her entire life to The Red Chamber." — Meng Qingde, Gossip About Eileen Chang
Only Eileen Chang can truly be called a confidant of Cao Xueqin. In my opinion, this is far more important than the many works she wrote." — Zhou Ruchang, Surely a Person from the Red Chamber
The Red Chamber Dream is the crystallization of Eileen Chang's ten years of research on The Red Chamber while living in the United States. It is also an academic research work. For a writer like Eileen Chang to spend ten years conducting such meticulous research on The Red Chamber seems truly a "nightmare" of uniqueness. However, those who love her works know that she has an extremely deep connection with one of the greatest novels in Chinese history. She loved reading The Red Chamber from a young age and reread it every few years. Yes, she became so familiar with The Red Chamber that "different editions didn’t require her attention—only slightly unfamiliar characters would pop out." During her youth, she even imitated The Red Chamber to write her own works. Later, her writings like The Golden Lock and the Golden Hairpin (Jin Suo Ji) and others inherited the essence of The Red Chamber in terms of artistic conception, techniques, and language. No wonder she was deeply immersed in everything within the world of The Red Chamber, even to the extent of: "Occasionally pointing out flaws, no matter how small the matter, as long as she spent some time 'detailed' on The Red Chamber, it would be fine." The Red Chamber had already become so deeply intertwined with her life and existence. Truly, to understand Eileen Chang, one cannot afford to ignore this.