Dream of the Red Chamber, Condensed

I picked up a miniaturized version of A Dream of the Red Chamber at the book fair. Previously I've read a translation of this book that was 2500 pages translated by the Yangs. (A husband and wife team who translate many books for foreign language press in Beijing) And it was one of my favorite novels ever. This book was 330 pages long, it was translated in the 50's and was apparently twice as long as the author's original translation published in the 20's. The translator and editor's name was Chi Chen Wang.

To be fair I can see the magnitude of the challenge and he didn't do a terrible job. Though there were some flaws, he used people's titles intermittently with their given names, which made it much harder to keep track of the vast cast of characters in this book, and I've read it before, and know the titles he was using. I can't imagine how impossible it would have been for someone who didn't know the story, or much about Chinese culture. He ignored lots of events, obviously, and several main chapters and adventures he just condensed down into paragraphs describing what happened. He also moved the main area of the plot away from the garden and into the mansions. It's odd, thinking back on the full length novel I always think of the events in the garden as the main parts of the novel, whereas it was hardly utilized at all in this book.

But there were a couple things he managed to do well. Firstly the thing that really confused me in the Yang's translation (I don't know how it is in the Story of the Stone translation as I still need to read that) is that they never mention ages or how much time is passing, so that can be a bit confusing, as the novel takes place over 8 years or so, starting when the character are children. But Wang was very good about saying how old everyone was and how much time had passed through events which made it much clearer.

The other thing he did was make it much more of a love story. When I originally bought the big novel, it had been advertised as a classic love story, but there was so much more in it, that the love story really wasn't the main point at all, at least till much later. It seemed odd, whereas in this book, it was clearly the main point, and he tended to ignore everything that didn't relate to it. (This being the 50's the lesbian cross-dressing maids were of course left out)

I hope to read all the different versions of this story eventually, and hope one day my Chinese will become good enough to read it in the original. I know there are simplified books of it available for Children in Chinese, which isn't a bad place to start, even if I know they won't have some of my favorite parts in them.

A look at Sung Examinations.

For my class we had only one book to read, (besides out text books and articles) it was The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China By John W. Chaffee. A very in-depth look at the examination system in Northern and Southern Sung, and it's social implications.

Having been reading so many books about religion lately this book was a little hard to get into. It contained many charts and tables, doing an extensive analysis of just who got their degrees, where they came from, how many graduates there were year to year etc. If you're interested to know everything about the examination system, then this is the book for you. If you are only a little curious. I'd be tempted to say no. But it is very well written and amazingly throughly researched. It has many appendices, including one that gives detailed descriptions of the problems involved in using local histories as research tools, and how you have to double check them against other sources, such as the imperial list of graduates.

The chapter I found the most interesting was his chapter on the culture of the examinations, what their impact on society was and how they changed it. It was very interesting, and contained things like poems written about students smuggling tea to pay to support them in their endeavors. And the superstitious rites, that became common place in the hopes of getting help for passing the examinations. These included many ghost stories, and stories of Gods visiting candidates. (As usual my bias is very obvious)

One of the things this book did that was very interesting was his extensive use of geography in examining his data. He really understood the difference by regions of what was happening. It seems like too many books I've read about China, particularly by Western Scholars, try to paint it as uniform. The same thing happening in the same places, being representative of the Chinese way of doing things. But Chaffee was really able to break down those barriers.

I would say this was a book written by a scholar for other scholars, while in his introduction he talks of things the general reader will find interesting, I would guess that it is a bit too detailed for only a casual interest. While it's very interesting to see the patterns of education and change in the elite that comes from the examination system, I'm thinking the none specialist would find the in-depth analysis of just how many graduates there were year by year, and where they came from a little dry. I did at times and I really like this period!