The Story of the Stone

这个博客的初衷是记录美国学生和教授们共同学习《红楼梦》的心得，标题上的这句话是我当下的有感而发。当你真正热爱一件事并一直执着，无时无刻不在捉摸，纵然青丝上鬓、华灯轻盏毫无知晓，心中只淤积着寻找答案的渴望和焦虑，然后是更多的寻寻觅觅、疑惑、煎熬和郁闷，幸者，极为少数的寻到谜底，大多数的不得扪心自我安慰、遗置半路。

上周开始，突然发现David Hawks的翻译版本竟然大量的删减了曹雪芹原著的内容，比方说，第四章结束的时候中文版本中有一段“一场幽梦同谁近，千古情人独我痴”这是在芝加哥大学Haun Saussy的文章Reading and Folly in Dream of the Red Chamber里提到的 （英译：”A mystic dream-with whom did he come hither? She of all lovers from time immemorial-I alone knew who she was.” )，却没有在 Hawks里看到，当时因为正巧刚和司徒彬聊到他读中英版《红》的感触，他提到Hawks 在翻译《红》的过程中太过瘾了，他简直就是重写了一遍，似乎不高兴的地方就删了，讲不清的地方就改了，我当时还听得无心，以为只是有些地方实在是从中文翻译成英文的过程中因为根本就没有直截了当的对应词、甚至是对应文化概念或物件，所以是一些翻译过程中的自然取舍。当Hawks省略原文中最后一句caplet上的话（而在Wu Shih Ch’ang的版本中提到）我以为是一种基于斟酌后合理的文学再加工过程，可直到发现第一章青梗峰下，一僧一道和顽石的对话也被简化，就越发疑惑，要知道这是表现《红》的主旨之一，通灵的顽石是恣意要到凡尘走一遭，无论多少劝解似乎所有的虚空都是要再真正的纠结、历练后才能领悟。而Hawks的版本确似乎只是僧道执意的派遣，少了几层深意。

对照了几个中英文的版本，发现中文的都倾向第一种写法，而英译版本都是第二种，这个例子的结论让Stuart老师纠结于仿佛被骗的沮丧，突然意识到自己借助于英文译本学习《红》的事实终究隔靴搔痒并不能真解此书，并且懊恼于此生不会有用中文读《红》的备选项了，可是更不解的是为什么这样的差异会存在，为此他查阅了很多资料，最终查到Hawks翻译的是1964年人民文学出版社出版的，看着他一直焦灼的寻找蛛丝马迹，我给他分享了一个我自己的故事：

上大学的时候，我所在的哈尔滨师范大学是红学研究的一个主要基地之一，因对文学的喜爱常常溜到中文系去听课，记得当时有个年轻的讲《围城》的教授曾经有板有眼的告诫这帮学生如果在师大的校园里看到衣衫褴褛、貌似换鸡蛋的老人，千万不要小看和怠慢，因为极有可能是一些红学的老学究。只记得当时听到此话脊背发麻、为这些为此书奉献一生的老者酸楚，现在我还在捉摸是不是隐隐之中这是我为什么一直深爱文学，却始终自醒的保持一定的距离，因为生命的周全才是我追求的境界。可我相信每个人心中那种近似宝玉的“痴”，对某人某事有着不忍的割舍, 只是表现出的弹性不一。因着爱和那些佝偻如虾米的形象畏惧，所以保持每天只对《红》痴那么一点，然后在跑步机上再有些反思，因为对穷苦潦倒境遇的思量，所以一心申请经费资助，而万不敢埋头啃文章，但其实真正想做的事是坐在阳光撒布的窗前，一杯卡布一捧《红楼》，正如现在，可是如果让我可以恣意所有的时间都为此，我还会如此珍惜如此感恩于每分每秒的研读吗？但这些真的又似乎是《红》超越时空和国界启发人类的永恒和普世的价值之光。

最后想分享一段Hawks感人的话：

　　”My one abiding principle has been to translate everything-even puns. For although this is ,in the sense I have already indicated, an “unfinished” novel, it was written (and written) by a great artist with his very life blood. I have therefore assumed that whatever I find in it is there for a purpose and must be dealt with somehow or other, I cannot pretend always to have done so successfully, but if I can convey to the reader even a fraction of the pleasure this Chinese novel given me , I shall not have lived in vain.”

Click each link to read each of the parts of our application to Asianetwork.

North Central College project narrative and budget

North Central College resumes

North Central College essays

My name is Cameron Teel and I am a sophomore at North Central College. I am pursuing a double major in Accounting and Chinese. Moving from Texas to Naperville, I remember more about my first year than most students who are from Illinois and surrounding areas because everything was new and different. One moment early in my time at NCC stands out even today. At the first meeting of my International Business class in the fall of 2017, the professor told us that college gives students an unprecedented chance to do hard things. His main challenges were to learn Chinese and study abroad. His lecture that day opened my eyes to the fact that nearly one-fifth of the world speaks Mandarin. It was a jaw-dropping realization that learning Chinese would allow me to communicate with over one billion people who speak the language. Although I didn’t know a single Chinese word and had not considered studying the language before that day, I decided to accept the professor’s challenge. I went straight to my NCC advisor’s office and transferred into Chinese.

Since that second day of my freshman year, I have relentlessly pursued trying to master the language. I took the one-hundred level sequence during my freshman year and was chosen to study abroad in China during my sophomore year, which is a year earlier than most students study abroad. In Shanghai, I completed the intensive language track which consisted of five hours of classroom per day and living with a host family. When I started the four-month intensive Chinese program, my language skills consisted of saying, “Hello, my name is Cameron. My Chinese is not very good.” By the end of my study abroad experience, I was able to hold forty-minute conversations with everyone from my instructors to taxi drivers on diverse topics including China’s one-child policy, the nation’s stand on gun control, and the economic status of China.

I am choosing to direct my research towards understanding the Chinese mindset when it comes to relationships in the workplace. This theme came to mind because of living with a host family. I noticed Chinese families spend most of their time at home or at work. I was never able to see how life worked at their work but I want to. It intrigues me for various reasons but particularly because in the next few years I will be searching for my first job post-college. I am considering returning to China to pursue a career and having an idea of what to expect in a Chinese work environment would be ideal. In addition, I would be able to build connections over the summer that could help me land a job, make connections, and further my Chinese language and culture study. In addition, I would like to become a global citizen.

I have read through chapter five of Hong lou meng. There have already been numerous characters introduced and excused in the reading. The plot continues to thicken as I delve deeper. Conversing with my mentors they mentioned that to get to material that directly applies to my topic of research I will have to patiently continue reading into books four and five. I consider this the ultimate cliff hanger and it is only intensifying my passion for the book. Based off of the reading I have completed these are a few questions I have.

1. When talking with my teachers during my intensive stay in China it seemed highly irregular if not impossible to bend the law but it seems to be implied that law bends for the rich and influential. I have heard that major Chinese companies have a mutual partnership with the government that seems to bend the law. I am curious to see if this still pertains today? If so, how does it influence business in China?
2. I am curious to learn more about why Cao Xueqin chooses to make woman such a prominent focus because I would have thought that in his day and age most books, artwork, etc. would have been more focused on men. I think it offers a very different perspective than other similar works and makes it stand out as a classic.
3. Finally, another question I have is how were genders viewed at the time of writing? It seems to be something the author is comfortable writing about and if characters names were removed it would be hard to discern how the author wanted them to be portrayed.

My name is Andrea Du, and I am a sophomore at North Central College majoring in Elementary Education and Chinese. At North Central, I am involved with Ed Rising, Chinese Club, Junior Senior Scholars, and College Scholars Program. In addition, I have done a study abroad in China and Japan to take cross cultural comparison and language courses.

I have been studying Chinese on and off for the past six years. During my Chinese studies, I took on an independent study, that required me to read chapters of The Story of the Stone in Chinese and translate them into English. After that process, I proceeded to summarize my understanding of the translation using more simplified Chinese vocabulary. This process has given me translation experience and an appreciation towards the translation process.

As an education major, I am interested in best teaching practices to optimize student learning. While reading The Story of the Stone I want to pay attention to the way that our research cohort conducts the novel study, and compare this experience with research on how the Chinese have taught the novel over the past 30 years. I understand that in the United States, learning has taken more of a open inquiry approach to teaching in comparison to their previous lecture style. I want to understand the shifts in Chinese pedagogy of classic literature and the reasoning behind these shifts.

While reading Chapters 3-5, I had the following questions:

1. In Chapter 4, Feng Yuan’s encounter with Yinglian is described to be a “retribution for his entanglements in a former life”(73). I inferred they were saying that in relation to Feng Yuan’s homosexual relationships. I am wondering how is homosexuality viewed through the lens of this novel and this period in China?
2. In Chapter 5, we see Disenchantment introduce Baoyu to sex. What was the objective in doing so? What were the attitudes towards different sexuality in the time period?
3. While reading the novel up to Chapter 5, the writing content feels similar to that of Shakespeare. There is a strong presence of mythological world with human world, poetry, coming of age, and long extended familial ties. I wondered if other people had taken notice to similar themes, and how can we comprehend the reasons behind similar ideas between the Eastern and Western literature?

My name is Juliet Mathey and I am a first-year at North Central College. I am double majoring in Environmental Studies and Chinese with a minor in Global Leadership Studies. Before beginning my collegiate career, I took a gap year in which time I traveled to Asia for five months to expand my interests and participate in community projects along the way. Prior to this experience, I had some interest in Asian culture and wanted to go into social entrepreneurship. Obviously my plans changed and I am grateful they have. After having an glimpse into Asian culture, I became drawn to the idea of doing sustainability work in this region of the world.  

It is well known that sustainability is a white-person’s line of work, and my goal is to break that barrier. My goals for my professional career involve working collaboratively with American and Chinese corporations and governments to solve the ever-growing environmental issues our world faces. As two great superpowers, it is vital that these two countries take the lead in this effort. It is also well known that it is these two countries that continue to damage to the environment more than any other. I hope to find innovative ways to convince the larger populations of these cultures to understand the importance of sustaining and conserving the global environment.

Through this project, I plan to study the authoritative relationships within the Chinese culture through evaluating communication and schools of thought depicted in The Story of the Stone. Being as influential of a work as this one is, it is my hope that these depictions will also apply, whether unchanged or modified, to modern Chinese culture. This will prove to be important for my future career goals so that I may communicate effectively to a large population in the ever-shortening timeline we have to change our lifestyles and save the earth.

Thus far, I have read through Chapter Five of Story of the Stone. We have been introduced to many characters and the plot becomes more clear as our discussions progress. That being said, I have not found any standout moments that completely apply to my research in chapters three through five. However, I have been noticing the shift of tone in conversations and settings involving different characters.

The following questions are thoughts that I hope to expand upon and discover more deeply in future readings. If there are any other perspectives, please feel free to share!

1. In Chapter 3, there has been an emphasis to describe colors when introducing new settings or characters. What may these colors represent?Do certain colors represent authority? Are these representations still prevalent and as emphasized in China today?
2. How may perspective on authority figures change when described through the lense of Dai Yu, Bao Yu, and the narrator? Which of these lenses can we take to be more accurate? Or is each lense correct for differing scenarios?
3. In Chapter 4, it is mentioned that officials have lists of influential people and families. The law seems to bend for these families. Why is this? Is it still prevalent in China today? What school of thought does this fit under?

大家好，我是孙老师，我是这个团队中唯一的土生土长的中国人，在美国学习、工作和生活十余年。现今在中北大学我担任中高级中文班的教学工作，而怎么帮助我的美国学生深度挖掘《红楼梦》的艺术价值、并以《红》为载体激发他们对中国语言和文化的兴趣等系列问题一直萦绕于心。一年前开始读美国学者、教授发表的有关《红》教学的方法和心路分享，被推荐读到 David Hawks 的《再读红楼梦》，各种我未涉猎过的角度和分析笔触着实触动很多情绪和反思。今年年初有幸申请到和一名文学系的美国教授和六名不同专业背景的美国学生共赴中国实地研习、考察的Freeman基金，而我自己最关注的着眼点有三：

其一，收集美国学生阅读、学习、讨论《红》过程中的兴趣点和疑难点，甄别、归纳出不同类别的文化知识点，并予以解析、溯源。比如在第一次见面会上，有的美国学生提到了Magical Realism这一文学类别和书中从神话穿梭到梦境，又到真实人类社会，和《哈利波特》还有《唐吉可德》比较。还有学生问到能否用这本小说学历史，更有学生对小说叙述者的角度和口吻感兴趣，相信这些都是很好的着手点，这个过程中，将有很多红学学者、教师，普通中国读者、学生的接触，希望有机会集结观点分析成册。

其二，探索中国文化关键词Key Chinese Culture Concepts. 我曾经在高中和大学读过中文版，这是第一次读到英文版的参照，对照阅读的过程时有惊喜，比如怎么翻译其中的人名、地名，尤其是很多双关在其中，发现很多字词确实非常“中国”，比如“通灵宝玉”被翻译成magic stone, 青梗峰 是“ Peak Sickness”. 在这个学习，更准确的说是反思的过程, 是一个从美国学者、读者的角度学习的机会–误读、玄机和普性价值，等等，怎么样更准确的展示我们自己的文化精髓？还有就是这些的深层影响，比如宗教、社会结构，关键词比方：情、还、红尘、吃苦、缘分等等。

其三，最后也是最迫切的一点就是改编《红》里的章节为一些小故事，下面的几个月希望自己能够静下心来把改编文学的理论和书样整理一下，目前的目标是整理出12个左右小故事（和女性相关？或其他的话题），用来服务于不同年龄段和语言水平的美国学生。比如《女娲补天和宝玉》，《黛玉进贾府》，《刘姥姥和贾母》，《黛玉葬花》，《灯节和灯谜》，《妙玉和茶》、《宝玉挨打和父子、夫妻、母子关系》，《袭人回家》，《元春省亲》，《女管家：王熙凤和秦可卿》， 《清代衣饰》等等。词频、句型、背景和文化知识介绍，Guiding questions, themes, 儿童图画书，手绘图片、课堂活动和作业练习等系统的整理。

更多待续;)

“GENTLE READER,”

I am Sophie Dale Juhlin, a student of the Shimer Great Books School (formerly Shimer College), with a focus in the Humanities and a double major in French. I am a junior and I recently traveled to Morocco with a group of other North Central College students to study Moroccan culture, politics, and literature. My studies of the great books have given me a good deal of perspective on Western literature and philosophy, but I am a fresh initiate into Chinese Literature. I’m excited about this project and the daunting challenge of reading 1,200 pages of a genre I’ve really never approached in any capacity. Talk about a trial by fire!

As a student of art and language, and as a writer and poet, I was immediately, forcefully drawn to Story of the Stone from the opening line. I don’t think I’ve ever been so directly called to attention by a text. Not only did Stone’s narrator anticipate my arrival, but they made the assumption that I’m gentle.

Why?

I don’t know, but now that they have my attention, part of my project is to chase this narrator through all five volumes, follow their path, and note the injections of personality and authorial influence. I also hope to discover how this voice is useful in establishing this book as a philosophical text. Having mostly read philosophy from a Western tradition, I’m very interested to see how this book can be compared to core texts in the Shimer program, and how its story and lessons may be interpreted as philosophy. I keep getting the sense that this book intends to teach its readers something, and I would love to ask this question continually to our group and to those we meet on our trip: what does this book mean to you? By connecting so personally with a text and its characters, I hope to engage with Chinese students and professionals while in Beijing through this shared perspective. Since this is a classic work of literature which has been widely read and retold, I anticipate that I will be uniquely prepared to share in the experience of picking up a very old, very dense book and drawing out a multitude of meanings.

Having read through chapter 5 in Story of the Stone, I have a few questions to contribute to our discussion today:

1. What do you make of the main female characters so far? The majority of this reading is through the perspective of Dai You as she meets a fascinating cast of  wildly different female characters, and they each bring something unique to the household.
2. Which narrative elements do you find either most intriguing or most frustrating so far? Since we have already highlighted a few key differences between Western texts and Western-style literature, do you find that you’re having an easier time with the story, or are you starting to get into a rhythm?
3. What, so far, do you think Story of the Stone is attempting to convey? Which elements or “lessons” are you most connecting with?

I am Stuart Patterson, Visiting Associate Professor and Chair of the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College and, along with Professor Jinai Sun, one of the two faculty Mentors on our project: “Understanding China through the Classic Novel Hóng Lóu Mèng.” I have been teaching at the Shimer School for 15 years now (including at its prior incarnation as Shimer College) and lead courses in topics across our curriculum of “great” primary texts in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.

At the same time, like many faculty at Shimer, I have sought to expand our curriculum beyond the traditional focus on Western European and American texts of many “great books” programs. A few years ago, I discovered Hóng lóu mèng, or Dream of the Red Chamber – aka The Story of the Stone in its foremost translation by David Hawkes and John Minford – having assigned it, unread, for a senior seminar devoted largely to non-Western texts at Shimer. It proved a lucky choice. The novel is often referred to as an “encyclopedia of Chinese life” for its loving descriptions of day-to-day interactions among hundreds of fully-realized characters who together play out a few years of decadence and decline in an aristocratic household in Qing dynasty China.

Beyond the intimate realism of its narrative, however, a major source of my fascination for The Story of the Stone are its insights into the question of why we read fiction at all. In fact, this question appears directly in the novel’s opening line: “What, you may ask, was the origin of this book?” For readers of a book of such heft (running in English to more than 2200 pages across five volumes), it seems a reasonable question; we might want to know something about what we’re getting ourselves into. Still, we may also feel we’ve gotten a bit waylaid right at the outset of such an evidently long journey. Why concern ourselves immediately with the back story to a story we haven’t even begun?

Experienced readers of Western literature will likely be somewhat familiar with such narrative fillips. Certainly no one who’s followed the coiling digressions of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, for example, will be thrown by a book’s gratuitous deferral of its own story. That said, as we read on, the complications mount. For, also like Sterne’s Trim Shandy, our author is a sort of memoirist; The Story of the Stone is written by the eponymous “Stone” itself. It owes its origin, as it tells us, to the goddess Nü Wa who, in repairing the vault of the heavens aeons ago, discards it as unsuitable to the work. Forlorn, it undergoes transformation into human form in the person of a boy named Bao-yu (or “Precious Jade”), the hero of much of the book. Yet we have the Stone’s story – and back story – thanks to its return to its original place at the foot of Greensickness Peak, where it has recorded this story in characters chiseled into its own body. Thence, with help from a passing monk named Brother Amor, the Stone – or rather, its story – undergoes its final metamorphosis into the very book we hold in our hands . . .

Again, and as Anthony Yu points out in his study Rereading the Stone, such authorial play is far from unusual in the Western canon. From Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Divine Comedy to Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Joyce’s Ulysses, narrative self-consciousness seems almost de rigeur in our literary classics. Yet, as Yu argues, The Story of the Stone is almost unique among great Chinese literary works for such self-reflexive examinations not just of authorship but, by extension, of readership. This, for Yu, is the novel’s great achievement: to have charted as complex a journey into the imagination as it has without any guides on hand (or none so qualified as, say, Virgil) from its own literary or philosophical tradition.

In a future post, I will offer a few words of appreciation for the “actual,” i.e. prosaically this-worldly, author of The Story of the Stone: Cao Xue-qin. For now, however, thanks for reading!

My name is Madeline Derango, and I am a sophomore at North Central College majoring in History and minoring in Conflict Resolution and Political Science. As a student, I am involved in several campus organizations. I am the fundraising chair of the Mock Trial Team, an editor for the Illinois State Bar Association Journal, a member of the Ethics Bowl, a Leadership, Ethics, and Values Scholar, and a Resident Assistant on campus. In addition to participating in various groups on campus, I have also studied abroad in both Spain and Japan. Upon completing my undergraduate degree, I will attend law school, where I hope to pursue either international law or criminal law.

In my history classes, I have had the opportunity to explore various cultures and traditions, learning about the history of several groups across the world. While I have enjoyed all my history classes, I quickly became captivated by Chinese history after taking a Traditional Chinese History class. Because China has existed for centuries, it has cultivated a rich, dynamic history that captured my attention instantly. After learning more about Chinese history, I began to find Chinese law particularly fascinating; as a result, I did research the integration and application of both uncodified and codified law in Chinese society pre- and post-Tang Code.

In my reading of The Story of the Stone, I will continue to research legal history in China. I will focus my reading of the novel on the application of legal principles to everyday life. In particular, I will study the proceedings and applications of the law in the novel’s two murder trials. I will analyze not only the codified law enforced in the novel, but also the uncodified, unspoken laws that governed society during the Qing dynasty. Uncodified laws can range from informal mediation sessions to the way that people did business. Both codified and uncodified laws shape the legal system of a nation. The law is a critical facet for understanding any nation and its peoples. The legal system of a nation reflects the values and ideas that a community shares; as a result, studying the law can give important insights into culture and history. By analyzing The Story of the Stone through a legal lens, I will gain insight into the values and customs that shape Chinese society. Understanding previous legal systems also gives insight into the current legal system that shapes China. The law is a critical part of society, providing insights into the Qing dynasty culture and society that shaped and influenced modern China.

Below are my questions based on the reading from Chapters 1-5.

We have seen through Bao-yu in the most recent chapters that gender fluidity and identity will play a large role in the novel. What do you think the author is trying to communicate with this idea, and how will it shape the major themes of the novel?

In Chapter 4, the author describes a murder case and the subsequent trial. In this trial, the author makes it clear that there is a level of corruption in the legal system. Do you think corruption was this rampant, or is the author coming from a place of bias?

In Chapter 3, we were introduced more to Bao-yu. While we have only heard some of his story, do you think he will come to be characterized as a hero? An antihero? How do you think his characterization will change throughout the novel.

How do you think the lavishness and the wealth of the families is portrayed in the novel? Is it positive/negative, and will it change throughout the novel?