Chapter 61 Cao Xueqinyi

Proust, a French writer, wrote a multi-volume novel "Reminiscence of the Past"; Cao Xueqin of China devoted his whole life to writing it in ten years.Both are classics among the classics, which makes people look up to them.I've always felt that there are similarities between the two.Do memories and dreams point to the same thing?The scale of the two novels is huge, and it is beyond the author's ability to use them for comparative research in all aspects.However, I always think that Proust wrote behind closed doors due to long-term asthma, and Cao Xueqin fell into poverty in his youth.The two writers have similar motivations: to bring back time. "Reminiscing about the Past" is divided into seven volumes, the second volume is "Beside the Girls", the third and fourth volumes are "Female Prisoner" and "Female Fugitive", and the seventh volume is "Time to Reappear".Cao Xueqin pursues the past, and his immediate impulse is to return to the girls.

In one part, it is not enough to write about the twelve beauties of Jinling, but it is also necessary to write about the twelve beauties of Jinling.A large group of women came to us with their respective destinies. And more than two hundred years ago, they were all in front of Cao Xueqin's eyes, in his writing, and in his sleep.The author incarnates as Jia Baoyu, breathing and sharing fate with them.Experience and witness the defeat of wealthy families and the fall of feudal mansions. Lu Xun said it really well: "The mist of sadness is all over Hualin, but Baoyu is the only one who breathes and understands."

A dream of prosperity and wealth.A beautiful woman's dream. A writer in the Qing Dynasty wrote novels, and neither fame nor fortune could be discussed. "The stream of novelists is based on street talk..." Cao Xueqin, a son of three generations of wealthy families, endured hunger and cold and was looked down upon by others, "read ten years, added and deleted five times." He wrote under the broken window every day. What is it for? To live on paper. Language has this function.Language is the home of being.Language contains all the memories of human life. Live on paper, does this phrase fit Cao Xueqin's motivation for writing?

So did Proust, living year after year in his near-closed room.He has won the highest form of art, so there is everything in the house: the sun, the moon and the stars sing and laugh.From those subtle eyes, subtle manners to tidal ups and downs of fate, everything.Proust need not go out.The palate aroused by a morsel of Marlande would have been enough to make him live (!) at Combray or at the Swanns. The place where Cao Xueqin wrote is Xishan in Beijing.The scene unfolding in the book is a mixture of Beijing and Nanjing (Jinling). Cao Xueqin plunged headlong into the illusory realm and lived a happy life, no one could pull him back. "The whole family eats porridge and wine on credit." His family suffered along with him, and he seemed completely unconscious.Has Cao Xueqin's deep affection and compassion for the world, especially for women, turned into a paper full of absurd words and tears of bitterness?

"When Qianhong cries, Wanyan mourns together." ——Women who have been oppressed for thousands of years are all described by Cao Gong.But it also reveals the details of the life of thousands of people, showing their amazing beauty and self-esteem. This is Cao Gong's great cause.In the long history of China, it was the first time he set off this huge wave, this endless red tide.It doesn't matter if the whole family eats porridge.At that time, with Cao Xueqin's "practical" talent, it was not difficult to find a well-off life. Mao Zedong said: You have to read it five times.

I read it three times.Some perceptions and thoughts that have been intermittent and not in chapters for several years are presented to Fang's family. Cao Xueqin was born at the turn of spring and summer in 1724, the exact date is unknown.Died on New Year's Eve in 1764, at the age of forty and a few months.There is no test for the year of birth, and the year of death is during the Spring Festival, so determining his anniversary or death day is a difficult problem for the Chinese nation. Cao Xueqin's first name was Cao Zhan, his style name was Mengruan, and he later called himself Xueqin.The word Xueqin comes from Su Shi's poem about Huangzhou Dongpo. ——Mr. Zhou Cezong, a well-known overseas red scholar, made a detailed argument for Zhou Ruchang's "Cao Xueqin's Biography" without sparing space.Mengruan means dreaming of Ruanju.Ruan Tie was the second person among the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove" in the Jin Dynasty, second only to Ji Kang.Ruan also has two characteristics: wild and arrogant; yearning for women.He has supercilious eyes on the rich and powerful, and blue eyes on beautiful women.This guy is a lot of fun.Behind the play is the strength of character.

Cao Xueqin admired Su Shi and Ruan Tun, and his life direction is clear. Su Shi was detached when he encountered adversity, and his "cultural instinct" was deeply rooted in his bones; demoting Huangzhou was like a metaphor: from the glory of the prefect of Sanzhou, he fell into the black prison of Wutai, where he was bullied and threatened. The state opened up wasteland and cultivated land, but entered the "blowout period" of Yimu. Su Dongpo was born out of nowhere, and the excellent works were like a gift from God.Cao Xueqin is well aware of this metaphor and this cultural symbol. After his family fell into poverty, he named himself Xueqin, Qinxi, and Qinpu, which have profound meanings.Su Shi was so kind to the women around him, including the wet nurse Ren Cailian.It is not accidental that Cao Xueqin yearns for it.Su Shi is also the all-rounder of culture, the master of life, and he has spiritual guidance to the young Cao Xueqin.

Look at Cao Xueqin's "Dream Ruan" again: Ruan looks down on the rich and powerful, rolls his eyes at every turn, and screams away.He disdains to be the son and daughter of Sima Zhao, who has power all over the world, drunk for sixty days, crazy and cute.Isn't this madness common in Jia Baoyu?Ruan's pursuit of beauties is also notable for a number of incidents, for example: when the beauty he didn't know died, he even crawled around to mourn her beauty, and cried loudly while touching the coffin in public.This infatuation is exactly like Jia Baoyu who wrote "Fu Rong's Daughter" and cried for sister Lin.

Cao Xueqin's grandfather, Cao Yin, was a poet and publisher during the Kangxi period. He edited and published "The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty".Cao Yin is also good at calligraphy, understands architecture and gardens, loves to read unofficial history novels, likes operas, and has a close relationship with the author Hong Sheng.He once acted on stage regardless of his status as an official, and cooperated tacitly with the humble actors.As a "quasi Eight Banners child", Cao Yin is also familiar with sensuality, dogs and horses, and various market customs.This family tradition, this tradition, has been found in the family of his son Cao Ruan.

The abundance of books in the Cao family can be counted on one's fingers in the Qing Dynasty.This ethos of collecting books can be traced back to Cao Yin's father, Cao Xi.Cao Xi was a senior official and a famous literati at that time. Hu Shi said: "It is not rare to find a rich family, but the combination of a rich environment and a literary and artistic environment was not found among the Han people at that time. It was not easy to find even in the family of the Eight Banners at that time." Cao Xueqin's life, through, shows us two directions of efforts: elite culture and secular life.Integrating the two into one, how many cultural heroes have exhausted their efforts, and finally sighed.But Su Dongpo did it, and so did Cao Xueqin.

"The whole family eats porridge and wine on credit." "Ten years of hard work is unusual." These two poems were written by Dun Cheng and Zhi Yanzhai respectively.Brothers Dun Cheng and Dun Min were good friends of Cao Xueqin when he lived in a small village in Xishan, Beijing after his disaster. Zhiyanzhai is Cao Xueqin's confidante.It's a beautiful, capitalized name, an exotic flower around a great man.Cao Xueqin mentioned Dongpo's concubine Chaoyun in his novel.Chaoyun has shown her loyalty in adversity, but Zhi Yanzhai is even better, injecting her rich emotion and amazing talent.Zhiyan, as the name suggests, uses fat powder as the inkstone, and also takes the metaphor of "the skin is like curd fat".The fragrance of powder, book and ink are mixed into a strange fragrance.Cao Xueqin cried for Qianhong, and exhausted all her efforts.Zhiyanzhai shed tears of lovesickness for Cao Xueqin... Cao Xueqin's early life trajectory is hard to find, which is a headache for red scholars.Looking through his chronology, he jumped from birth to three years old, from three years old to "around 20 years old", and then jumped a few more times until he passed away.This span is ridiculously large.In Cao Xueqin's time, although novels were popular, they were still at the end of the trend.It is not uncommon for a novelist's chronology to be difficult to make.It would be strange if Duke Cao's life was preserved to this day. I think there are advantages to being vague about your life. Claiming to be "false language village language", hiding the truth (Zhen Shiyin).Perhaps Mr. Cao’s original intention was to hope that readers would read the novel directly without being distracted, and to connect the novel with his life experience.The text is self-sufficient.It is enough that the novel is charming and thought-provoking.Cao Xueqin stated at the beginning of the article that he did not specifically refer to a certain dynasty.But when we read this great work today, we feel that it shows the ancient society, not the Qing Dynasty society.It is a foolish guide to readers to link the characters in the novel with the secret affairs of the Qing palace.This stupid thing was done by the "Suo Yin School" of Hongxue at the beginning of the last century, and now it is revived again.The secret history of the Qing palace was played in a film and television drama, and some experts took the opportunity to make a fuss, took advantage of the fire, and led the great classical novels to the palace. Writing inside stories, dark stories, is one of the evil interests of novels to tease readers.Zhu Guangqian, a master of aesthetics, has a monograph on this. Cao Xueqin wears long braids, while Jia Baoyu has Han hairstyles before the Qing Dynasty.The clothing, food, housing and play of the sisters in the Grand View Garden are all Han people.Do Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochai, Shi Xiangyun look like Qing Dynasty women?Experts know it is nonsense, but they still talk about it, what is their intention? The impulsiveness of personal fame and fortune of experts must be examined in the context of cultural industrialization. Fortunately, the rigorous red scholars failed to make Cao Xueqin's chronology detailed, otherwise, the experts would have worked harder, sneaked into the palace, and pointed out to us one by one: who is the prototype of Jia Baoyu, who is the prototype of Wang Xifeng, who is Jiao Xueqin? Who is the prototype of Dasha's sister, Grandma Liu... It's all caused by Qing court dramas.The huge impulse of culture to aim at profits will not stop turning history and art into wave after wave of entertainment farce.And cultural nihilism is pushing the cultural desert forcefully, and its ultimate direction is to directly harm our nation. Perhaps today is the time to identify such toxic urges. How can the prosperity of culture depend on nonsense?Culture is the root of a nation.Culture has dignity, and talents live with dignity.Culture maintains a diverse world of life, and the transgressive expansion of the will of capital is a rush towards a single world image.How can culture be the servant of capital?How can an individual with dignity, a sense of shame, love and hate, values, aesthetic ability, and ancestral memories be entertained to death and lie in a coffin with a smile on his face? The movement direction of consumerism is to bring all human dignity and value down to the price level.Man is no longer the person who is upward and fully developed, no longer the bearer of divinity, poetry, customs, and conscience, but just a naked consumer and calculator.When all people rush towards consumerism, it will inevitably lead to the death of the earth and the collapse of the living world.As Ying Gandhi said to the Americans: "Twenty earths are not enough!" The TV series from 20 years ago is touching, the music, the characters, the veritable expert guidance, and the years-long efforts of the unknown crew.Now there is a clamor for a reshoot, which is worrying. Cao Xueqin's ancestral home is Jinling.Although the Cao family is a big family with three generations of prosperity, the population is not prosperous.To Cao Xueqin, it has been a single heir for two generations, the jewel in the palm of the family.Most likely one or two elder brothers died in infancy.According to textual research, Cao Xueqin's nickname, Zhanjieer, has two meanings: being able to occupy and occupying stability; the girl's name is similar to a country dog, which is easy to survive. If the theory of sister Zhan is true, then Cao Xueqin should have been dressed as a little girl when she was young.Both Jiangnan and Western Shu have this custom.Some boys still wear skirts in their teens.The name and clothing act on Cao Xueqin's subconscious and affect his growth.From the old grandmother to the little girl in Cao's house, no one told Cao Xueqin the truth about her gender.The truth matters.Freud once said: what a person experiences before the age of five affects his whole life.Cao Xueqin's childhood boy, like Jia Baoyu, only hangs out with his older sisters.He grew up breathing a strong femininity, so his female perspective is natural.I guess: When he finds out that he is a boy one day, he will be surprised, angry and helpless.It's so strange that Sister Zhan is not a daughter!For him, male gender consciousness seems to come out of nowhere, like a monster intruding into his daughter's embroidery room.When he reluctantly turned his head to look at the same sex, he felt in his heart that they were a bunch of men.Men, patriarchy, men's Four Books and Five Classics, Wenzhiwugong, are all turbulent streams of turbid things.As for himself, although he was destined to be a turbid thing, he discovered a clean and refreshing world of his daughter.