Cao Xueqin - The Story of the Stone: The Dreamer Wakes (Volume V)

C AO X UEQIN (?171563) was born into a family that 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 (also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber), of which this is the fifth volume. The first four volumes, The Golden Days, The Crab-Flower Club, The Warning Voice and The Debt of Tears, are also published in the Penguin Classics.

G AO E (?17401815) was a Chinese Bannerman of the Bordered Yellow Banner, who for the last twenty years of his life worked in the Grand Secretariat and the Censorate in Peking. In 1792 he and his friend Cheng Weiyuan published for the first time a complete version of The Story of the Stone in 120 chapters. Previously handwritten copies of the novel had circulated, which ended with the eightieth chapter. Cheng and Gao claimed that they edited the last forty chapters of their complete version from a fragmentary manuscript by the original author.

J OHN M INFORD was born in 1946. He studied Chinese at Oxford and at the Australian National University, taught in the Peoples Republic of China (198082), and then in Hong Kong, where he was until 1986 director of the Research Centre for Translation in the Chinese University, and editor of the journal Renditions. He is now Professor of Chinese at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

A CHINESE NOVEL BY
CAO XUEQIN
IN FIVE VOLUMES

*

VOLUME V
THE DREAMER WAKES

*

TRANSLATED BY
JOHN MINFORD

EDITED BY GAO E

PENGUIN BOOKS

FOR EMMA, LUKE, DANIEL AND LAURA

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

This translation first published 1986

Translation copyright John Minford, 1986
All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-196892-6

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 the 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.

Needless to say, if difficulty is experienced in making the distinction, it is always possible to pronounce both groups like English j, ch, sh, as has already, by implication, been suggested overleaf.

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 oeuf 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 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 author (e.g. Duo)

u after semivowel i and all consonants except j.q.x.y. is pronounced like Italian u or English oo in too (e.g. Bu Gu-xiu)

u after j.q.x.y and after 1 or n is the narrow French u or German , for which there is no English equivalent (e.g. Bao-yu, N-wa)

an after semivowel u or any consonant other than y is like an in German Mann or un in Southern English fun (e.g. Yuan-chun, Shan Ping-ren)

an after y or semivowel i is like en in hen (e.g. Zhi-yan-zhai, Jia Lian)

ang whatever it follows, invariably has the long a of father (e.g. Jia Qiang)

en, eng the e in these combinations is always a short, neutral sound like