China is recapturing itself

CAO XUEQIN — THE DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER — BOOK ONE — TRANSLATED BY BENCRAFT JOLY — 1791–1968–1891–1973–1980

The whole book has five volumes, altogether several thousand pages. This is not the only novel of this type in Chinese literature. Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West (c. 1592) is another example. This book was only published in 1791 after the death of the author and the first translation into English was published (only two books) in the translation by Bencraft Joly in 1868 and 1891. The first full edition in English was published in 1973–1980. The novel has been adapted to the stage or the silver or TV screen, including an opera and a ballet or dance drama. The National Ballet of China has just launched a ballet on modern music. Behind the ballet is a heavyweight cast team including stage designer Liu Xinglin from the Central Academy of Drama, composer Ye Xiaogang and costumes designer Yang Donglin, who designed the costumes for the hit poetic dance performance The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting. It premiered in February 2023 in Beijing. But films and DVDs have encountered difficulties to reach the Western market in local languages or Western subtitles.

I will make a few remarks on this first volume only. The next ones will come later eventually. For me, this is a catch-up crash course on Chinese culture, and once again we have to say that in the West, we do not make a big effort to include Chinese culture in our schools, universities, or cultural institutions. In the West, we have a lot of long fictional novels in many volumes like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter in seven volumes: Philosopher’s Stone (1997), Chamber of Secrets (1998), Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Goblet of Fire (2000), Order of the Phoenix (2003), Half-Blood Prince (2005), Deathly Hallows (2007). The next example I am thinking of is Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, with a prequel novella The Little Sisters of Eluria (1998), and a sequel which is, in fact, an extra episode that takes place sometime before reaching the Dark Tower, hence between two of the eight volumes of the official series, The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012). The…