What is so special about this work? Why does it continue to cast its spell on today’s Chinese readers? One has to try to imagine a book that combines the qualities of Jane Austen – brilliantly observed accounts of Chinese psychology and personality, meticulous depiction of an aristocratic Chinese/Manchu household – with the grand sweep of a novel such as Vanity Fair or the works of Balzac. Its mood is allegorical, lyrical and philosophical. It leaves the reader with a visionary experience of the human condition, comparable to that of Proust. It’s a blend of Zen Buddhism and Taoism with the underlying theme of “seeing through the Red Dust” beyond the illusion of earthly “reality”.
The Stone narrates the journey of a sensitive soul towards enlightenment. That “soul” is Jia Baoyu, the incarnation of the “stone” of the title, a delicate teenager, a dreamer, a pampered aesthete “in love with love”. In the fifth chapter he retires from a family afternoon gathering to take a nap in the boudoir of his cousin Jia Rong’s beautiful young wife. His visit, in a dream, to the Land of Illusion is described, where a fairy named Disenchantment reveals the predestined futures of many of his girl-cousins and maids, at the same time gently berating him for being such a lustful creature (in his case it is Lust of the Mind). She initiates him into the art of love with a beautiful girl, Two-in-One, so called because she combines the charms of his two favourite girl-cousins. After the dream, his maid, Aroma, proceeds to practice with him some of the “lessons” taught him by the Fairy in his “initiatory dream”. This intertwining of desire and enlightenment, of passion and disenchantment, lies at the heart of the novel.
And yet, despite its philosophical and allegorical dimension, Stone is no Pilgrim’s Progress. It is full of fun and games, describing the illusion of daily “reality” in loving detail. Its pages make up a veritable encyclopedia of Chinese life, from the making of tea with last year’s melted snow, to the eating of crabs, the performing of lyrical opera and the writing of classical verse in every possible metre. To offset the large cast of upper-class characters, there is also a wonderful assortment of low-life personalities, old village dames, garrulous matrons, drunken retainers, martial artists, sing-song girls and theatrical performers. It convincingly describes the corruption and other social ills that beset China’s society in the late traditional period (and in many ways still do).
Its rich social tapestry, and its pervading philosophical theme, take this novel far beyond the scope of the sentimental Chinese novel so popular in the 18th century. Written just before the onset of China’s 19th-century decline, Stone captures brilliantly the “glory that was China”, and the knife edge on which that glory balanced. This is what makes it such essential reading today.