Cao Xueqin - The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice (Volume III): The Warning Voice v. 3 (Classics)

A CHINESE NOVEL BY
CAO XUEQIN
IN FIVE VOLUMES

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VOLUME III
THE WARNING VOICE

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TRANSLATED BY
DAVID HAWKES

PENGUIN BOOKS

Resourceful Tan-chun abolishes abuses in the interests of economy;
And sapient Bao-chai shows how small concessions can be made without loss of dignity

In which the cock-bird who mourns his mate is found to be a hen;
And a true heart is able to sympathize with a strange kind of love

By Willow Walk the conservers of property resort to violence and abuse;
And at Green Delights the defenders of law and order invoke a higher authority

As a substitute for rose-orris Jia Huan is given jasmine face-powder;
And in return for rose essence Cook Liu is given lycoperdon snow

Bao-yu owns up to a crime he did not commit;
And Patience bends authority in order that the innocent may be spared

A tipsy Xiang-yun sleeps on a peony-petal pillow;
And a grateful Caltrop unfastens her pomegranate skirt

Flower-maidens combine for nocturnal birthday revels;
And a grass widow copes with funeral arrangements single-handed.

Five fair women make subjects for a chaste maids verse;
And nine jade dragons make a love-gift for a flirt

Jia Lians second marriage is celebrated in secret;
And the future marriage of San-jie becomes a matter of speculation

Shame drives a warm-hearted young woman to take her life;
And shock leads a cold-hearted young gentleman to renounce the world

Frowner sees something that makes her homesick;
And Xi-feng hears something that rouses her suspicions

Er-jie takes up residence in Prospect Garden;
And Xi-feng makes a disturbance in Ning-guo House

A scheming woman kills with a borrowed knife;
And one who has ceased to hope swallows gold and dies

Lin Dai-yu resuscitates the Poetry Club;
And Shi Xiang-yun tries her hand at a song lyric

Lady Xing deliberately humiliates her daughter-in-law;
And Faithful inadvertently interrupts a pair of love-birds

Wang Xi-feng refuses to see a doctor;
And Brighties wife seeks help with a betrothal

A half-witted servant-girl picks up a highly embarrassing object;
And an easy-going young mistress refuses to inquire into a theft

Lady Wang authorizes a raid on Prospect Garden;
And Jia Xi-chun breaks off relations with Ning-guo House

Midnight revellers are startled by a sound of evil omen;
And Mid-Autumn moon-watchers listen to quatrains of unequal merit

Flute-playing at Convex Pavilion provokes too much melancholy;
And linked verses at Concave Pavilion betray a morbid sensitivity

A wronged maid takes a loving last leave of her master;
And three young actresses seek to escape matrimony in the cloister

Jia Zheng commissions the Ballad of the Winsome Colonel;
And Bao-yu composes an Invocation to the Hibiscus Spirit

Xue Pan finds to his sorrow that he is married to a termagant;
And Ying-chuns parents betroth her to a Zhong-shan wolf

Unfortunate Caltrop is battered by a philandering husband;
And One Plaster Wang prescribes for an insufferable wife

PENGUIN CLASSICS

CAO XUEQIN (1715?63) was born into a family which for three generations held the office of Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in Nanking, a family so wealthy that they were able to entertain the Emperor Kangxi four times. But calamity overtook them and their property was confiscated. Cao Xueqin was living in poverty near Peking when he wrote his famous novel The Story of the Stone, of which this is the third volume. The first two volumes, The Golden Days and The Crab-Flower Club, and the last two volumes, The Debt of Tears and The Dreamer Wakes, are also published in Penguin Classics.

DAVID HAWKES was Professor of Chinese at Oxford University from 1959 to 1971 and a Research Fellow of All Souls College, from 1973 to 1983. He now lives in retirement in Wales.

FOR JEAN

Chinese proper names in this book are spelled in accordance with a system invented by the Chinese and used internationally, which is known by its Chinese name of Pinyin. A full explanation of this system will be found overleaf, but for the benefit of readers who find systems of spelling and pronunciation tedious and hard to follow a short list is given below of those letters whose Pinyin values are quite different from the sounds they normally represent in English, together with their approximate English equivalents. Mastery of this short list should ensure that names, even if mispronounced, are no longer unpronounceable.

c = ts
q = ch
x = sh
z = dz
zh = j

The syllables of Chinese are made up of one or more of the following elements:

1. an initial consonant (b.c.ch.d.f.g.h.j.k.l.m.n.p.q.r.s.sh.t.w.x.y.z.zh)
2. a semivowel (i or u)
3. an open vowel (a.e.i.o.u.), or

a closed vowel (an.ang.en.eng.in.ing.ong.un), or
a diphthong (ai.ao.ei.ou)

The combinations found are:

3 on its own (e.g. e, an, ai)

1 + 3 (e.g. ba, xing, hao)

1 + 2 + 3 (e.g. xue, qiang, biao)

Apart from c = ts and z = dz and r, which is the Southern English r with a slight buzz added, the only initial consonants likely to give an English speaker much trouble are the two groups

j q x and zh ch sh

Both groups sound somewhat like English j ch sh; but whereas j q x are articulated much farther forward in the mouth than our j ch sh, the sounds zh ch sh are made in a retroflexed position much farther back. This means that to our ears j sounds halfway between our j and dz, q halfway between our ch and ts, and x halfway between our sh and s; whilst zh ch sh sound somewhat as jr, chr shr would do if all three combinations and not only the last one were found in English.

The semivowel i palatalizes the preceding consonant: i.e. it makes a y sound after it like the i in onion (e.g. Jia Lian)

The semivowel u labializes the preceding consonant: i.e. it makes a w sound after it, like the u in assuages (e.g. Ning-guo)

a is a long ah like a in father (e.g. Jia)

e on its own or after any consonant other than y is like the sound in French auf or the er, ir, ur sound of Southern English (e.g. Gao E, Jia She)

e after y or a semivowel is like the e of egg (e.g. Qin Bang-ye, Xue Pan)

i after b.d.j.l.m.n.p.q.t.x.y is the long Italian i or English ee as in see (e.g. Nannie Li)

i after zh.ch.sh.z.c.s.r. is a strangled sound somewhere between the u of suppose and a vocalized r (e.g. Shi-yin)

i after semivowel u is pronounced like ay in sway (e.g. Li Gui)

o is the au of