The Story of the Stone (part four)

Cultural China's picture of Baoyu, Baochai, and (I think) Dai-yu will be a good lead for this entry on the fourth volume of the Story of the Stone.  Here the cousins are older.  Bao-yu has begun to take his studies much more seriously, in part to please his father and the rest of his family but also because he is no longer able to spend time with his female cousins.  Some have returned home; some are married.  In fact, his family is making arrangements for his marriage to Baochai (the young lady on the right) as well.  Bao-yu, on the other hand, loves Dai-yu even though she is pushing him away.  (She continues to be ill in this book and at one point even tries to will her death.)  Yet Dai-yu hopes that she will marry Bao-yu.  Finally, despite what this picture implies, Baochai is pushing herself away from Bao-yu as well.  She has moved back in with her mother and taken on more responsibilities as her family situation has become worse and worse, even with the marriage of her brother Xue Pan, who seems to have reformed. 

However, Xue Pan has also married Xia Jin-gui, a spoiled yet wealthy young lady who is constantly trying to assert herself and cause trouble in her husband's family.  She is jealous of her husband's "chamber wife," Caltrop (whom she arbitrarily renames); her own maid; and, of course, Baochai.  Then, after her husband is sent to prison for killing a waiter, Xia Jin-gui attempts to seduce her husband's cousin, a clean-cut young man.

In this volume, even more so than in Volume 3, we see the rivalries within the family and among their servants.  I have already mentioned Xue Pan's wife.  In addition, as Wang Xi-feng becomes weaker and the family less rich, she becomes vulnerable to attacks from others.  At one point when her daughter is very ill, Jia Huan, the son of a jealous concubine, knocks over the medicine that Wang Xi-feng has gone to great lengths to make for her daughter.  Then the convent located in the family compound is the site of a lurid scandal.  The family member responsible for maintaining this convent is caught partying with the young novices.  The family then disbands the convent, returning the novices to their families. 



Amidst all of this turmoil Bao-yu and Dai-yu find time to discuss their mutual love of music.  Not only is Dai-yu a brilliant poet but she is also proficient on the qin, a seven-string instrument that is now called the guqin.  (It is pictured above.)  For more information about this instrument, see this link:  http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/qinjieshao.html 
To listen to what the guqin sounds like, see these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKNeParT2eQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRFFpxkrfGw&feature=related

At the climax of this volume, right before he is about to go to a viewing party for out-of-season crab flowers, Bao-yu loses his jade.  He attempts to cover it up at first, but he is not successful as he quickly becomes very ill.  Despite everyone's best efforts, including a visit to a psychic, the jade does not turn up.  Bao-yu continues to be quite ill, and in order to cure him, Grandmother Jia and the rest of his family decide to bring about the union of jade and gold...that is...marry him off to Baochai.  Since he is still very much in love with Dai-yu, the family tricks him into believing that he will marry her...hence this scene below.

Then, as Bao-yu and Baochai marry, Dai-yu dies alone, with only her maid Nightingale to keep her company.  (The family has neglected her in this last illness.)  Bao-yu relapses but does not learn about his beloved's death until Baochai informs him.  In the short run, he appears to handle the news well, but in the next volume, we will see about the long run!

I'll close this section with an image from a Shanghai ballet based on The Story of the Stone.  Of course, here, Bao-yu is with Dai-yu.


The fourth volume of The Story of the Stone is also a good point to talk about the novel's authorship.  In the version of the novel that I've read, the first three volumes are exclusively the work of Cao Xueqin (@ 1715 - 1763 or 1764), a descendant of a once-flourishing family that fell into disgrace in the 1720s.  The last two volumes were edited and even reconstructed by Gao E (1785 - 1838) as some chapters were missing and there were different versions of others.  Translator David Hawkes has speculated that the missing chapters had been supressed.  Interestingly, the fourth and fifth volumes contain many references to the Emperor's benevolence.

I'll end this entry with an image of Cao Xueqin's statue in Beijing and one of the Cao Xueqin Memorial Hall in a suburb of that city. The author, however, was not from the capital.  He was born in Nanjing and did not move to Beijing until after his family's disgrace.  However, his novel is set in Beijing.