Zhou Ruchang's collated edition of "Dream of the Red Chamber"

Author: Cao Xueqin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: This is an extraordinary Dream of the Red Chamber. Extraordinary, because the entire creation and editing process from inception to publication spanned fifty-six years. The second extraordinary aspect is that the fifty-six years of various experiences, twists, hardships, and difficulties were not ordinary circumstances or trivial matters, nor are they imaginable (or even comprehensible) to today's readers. This could have been a separate book. The third extraordinary aspect is that the collation and editing of this Dream of the Red Chamber differ significantly from all existing versions, with many distinctive features. The fourth extraordinary aspect is that this "plain text" may seem unremarkable but is a manifestation of its "essence." The fifth extraordinary aspect is that the collation of this book not only involves carefully examining the correctness of discrepancies from the exceptionally complex textual evidence but also delves beyond the "literal" text to uncover certain truths of Cao Xueqin's original manuscript. This book is the result of Mr. Zhou Ruchang's over half-century of meticulous collation based on eleven extant ancient manuscripts of Dream of the Red Chamber, word by word. The collator has studied and grasped Cao Xueqin's true writing style, discerned false additions and corruptions, and strived to restore the original form, providing a reliable text for red chamber enthusiasts. It differs from the 120-capter version that includes the 40 chapters by Gao E, and can be considered a true "work by Cao Xueqin." Most readers believe that Cao Xueqin only left behind the first 80 chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber during his lifetime. However, scholars like Zhou Ruchang argue that Cao Xueqin completed Dream of the Red Chamber, but the manuscript after the 80th chapter was lost for some reason. At the end of this book, the article "The Trace of the Lip Stone and the Lingering Shadow of the Red Chamber" includes the collator's research findings on the content after the 80th chapter, based on clues from the Lip Stone annotations, presenting a complete authentic version of Dream of the Red Chamber for reference. This book strives to remain faithful to the ancient manuscripts. During the Qing Dynasty's Qianlong period when Cao Xueqin wrote Dream of the Red Chamber, few literati wrote in colloquial language, and many words in the "vernacular" had no fixed forms. The author often used phonetic representations, leading to inconsistencies. Ancient writing also had its own customs: writers favored variant characters and avoided uniformity, unlike the standardized characters of today. The collator cross-referenced various manuscripts and discovered that Cao Xueqin's draft used words and phrases inconsistently, often varying over time, with the same meaning but different forms, such as "wounded feelings" () and "winding path" (), "to observe" () and "to estimate" (), "to attend to" () and "to serve" (), etc. (examples not exhaustive). For instance, "a trip" was written as "a flow," "very" as "very much," and the modern character "to stroll" () had different forms in ancient texts, such as "sightseeing" (), "open" (), "left radical +," and "right radical +," etc. These variations were used interchangeably, reflecting the writing habits of the time or differences in time and place during transcription and revision. There are also characters that modern readers may find difficult to understand, such as the Manchu Eight Banners people often misspelled "inlay" () as "side" (), which was not considered unusual. This book aims to preserve the original form of the text, retaining all variant characters without standardization. The word and phrase phenomena in the book are explained in advance, and key annotations are added, which should not hinder smooth reading and can also help readers appreciate the evolution of vernacular Chinese writing and the origins of today's standardized characters. Additionally, there are differences in character names between ancient manuscripts and popular versions, such as "Dai Shu" () instead of "Shi Shu" (), "Bilang" () instead of "Bihen" (), and "Qi Guan" () instead of "Qi Guan" (). For example, the place where Miaoyu lived was actually "Longcui An" (), not "Longcui" (). These differences may seem unfamiliar to readers, leading them to suspect errors, but please pay close attention and discern. Besides the widely circulated versions that include Gao's continuation, there are also various "ancient" manuscripts of Dream of the Red Chamber in the market, including "collated versions" based on single or multiple manuscripts. However, most of these texts merely list variant readings without thorough collation or definitive text. Such versions are suitable for researchers but not for general readers. Now, the publication of this Zhou collated version aims to provide ordinary readers with a new choice for appreciating Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber.