The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1) [Paperback]

Cao Xueqin (Author), Hsueh-Chin Tsao (Author), David Hawkes (Author), O Kao (Author), John Minford (Author), Hsueh-Ch'in Ts'ao (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 1974

"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, The Golden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy who prefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai, his parents' choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beauty Dai-yu. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich, magical work sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder - within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Chinese (translation)

About the Author

Cao Xueqin (?1715-63) was born into a family which for three generations held the office of Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in Nanking, a family so wealthy they were able to entertain the Emperor four times. However, calamity overtook them and their property was consfiscated. Cao Xueqin was living in poverty when he wrote his famous novel The Story of the Stone. David Hawkes was Professor of Chinese at Oxford University from 1959 - 1971 and a Research Fellow of All Souls College from 1973-1983. He now lives in retirement in Wales.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (March 30, 1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140442936
• ISBN-13: 978-0140442939
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #28 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Asian
  • #80 in Books > History > Asia > China

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

163 of 167 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Achievement, August 18, 2002

By 

mp - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1) (Paperback)

I spend a lot of time wandering through bookstores. One particular book has caught my eye over the years, and the other day I bought it - Volume 1 of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth century epic, "The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days". As a developing eighteenth century scholar, I was doubly attracted to it. "The Golden Days" absolutely blew me away - used as I am to eighteenth century novels (British, French, American), this is wholly unlike anything I've read from the era. It bears structural similarities to the Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and "Sentimental Journey," but aside from that bears more in common with ancient Greek novels like Longus's "Daphnis and Chloe" or Heliodorus's "Eithopian Romance," as well as the mysticism of the ancient Egyptian "Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor." And yet, Cao's attention to actual life experiences, and the detail he conveys about tradition and ceremony, along with frank dealings with human relationships and sexuality makes "The Golden Days" much more than any quick summary of style or content can relate.

"The Golden Days" begins in amusing, but sympathetic fashion: the goddess Nü-wa is repairing the sky with 36,501 stones. When she finishes, one remains, which is cast off. Having been touched by a goddess, this stone has magical properties, able to move, change size, and even talk. One day, a Buddhist monk and a Taoist come upon the stone, and promise to let the stone have an adventure - to become human. As the stone waits by a pond, it falls desperately in love with a Crimson Pearl Flower, which is also selected for incarnation by the Fairy Disenchantment. The stone and the flower are incarnated as the novel begins in earnest, as a young minor nobleman named Jia Bao-yu, and a commoner related to the family, a girl named Lin Dai-yu - both unaware of their heavenly origins. "The Golden Days" centers around the daily events and occurrences in the lives of these two teenagers, as they come to grips, as we all must, with human life.

The Rong and Ning branches of the Jia family, on opposite sides of Two Dukes Street, are the centerpieces of the novel's action. Like the "big house" fiction of the English eighteenth century, these ancestral manses provide a locus of activity, as the nobles, their extended families, friends, and servants mingle and interact constantly. Cao marks himself as a remarkable author by the way he handles a massive cast of characters, letting us into the private lives and concerns of all ranks of society, as well as the forms of etiquette that determine their relationships. Another terrific facet of the novel's construction is the almost stream of consciousness style Cao employs - as characters pass in and out of the immediate action of the novel, the narrative seems to choose the person it's most interested in and follow them for pages at a time, before seamlessly passing to the next character. It's really quite amazing, how, in this way, we come to understand the motivations, fears, and hopes of so many individuals. Time, distance, culture, Cao levels distinctions, making historical China accessible to even 21st century readers - he reduces people to their human concerns.

Cao Xueqin's novel is also remarkable for what I can only call it's pro(to)-feminist tone. While we are reminded by certain characters that male lineage is of major importance to the structure of the society, the narrative consistently shows the power, ability, and influence of women. At the novel's beginning, a Taoist named Vanitas finds the stone, and is asked to transcribe its story, but complains initially that it is about a "number of females". The stone obviously insists that the story be written out. Later, Bao-yu, the major male character, says he is more comfortable around women - that they are like water, while men are like mud, castoffs, unclean. One of the main characters of this volume is Wang Xi-feng, a young woman in her early twenties, who for an extended period, manages the affairs of both the Ning and Rong mansions. Cao's respect and admiration for the strong women in Bao-yu's life: Xi-feng, Dai-yu, and two particular servants, Aroma and Caltrop, is quite obvious and important to the novel.

If you are like me, and know tragically little about Chinese literature and culture, Cao takes care of that too - there is a heavy emphasis throughout the novel on the cultural productions of China. The book integrates a wide range of poetry, drama, fiction, folk wisdom, and mythology as a central part of Bao-yu and Dai-yu's upbringing. One can sense Cao's insistence in the novel that education and cultural production is of vital importance, particularly to children. While the Fairy Disenchantment seems to be the guiding spirit of the novel, hinting at the diappointments inevitable in the course of life, this is a novel about youth, and hope for the future, even in the midst of concern about how long prosperity can last. Taken altogether, "The Golden Days" cannot be recommended enough. David Hawkes's translation is first rate, and his introduction, pronunciation notes, and appendices are thorough and very helpful.

63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Chinese novel of all time!, November 16, 2003

By 

Fíal (Paris, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1) (Paperback)

Well, in my opinion anyway. David Hawkes has done an amazing job translating this brilliant 18th-century novel into colloquial modern English. I have read all the translations-- this is my favorite novel, and this is by far the best version for an English speaker who just wants a good book. I can imagine that a Chinese reader could pick holes in this translation, as I could nitpick at a translation of Shakespeare-- the wealth of the original is impossible to transfer whole into another language and culture. If you want a word-for-word translation so you can use this as a study guide while you read the Chinese, maybe the wooden Beijing Languages version could help you! But I have a hard time imagining any new translation being more vivid and fun to read than this one. Yes, it is littered with sometimes annoying Britishisms. That is the price of a colloquial translation! It's true that Hawkes does not explain all the references-- that would be another book in itself. And I am sure he made mistakes-- I help a French translator occasionally and even though he is very well-versed in English, it is so easy for him to miss something that only a cultured native speaker could pick up. But this translation is ALIVE. Until that perfect translation comes along one day, Hawkes's is still better than all the others. Be grateful to him! (2003)

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Chinese classic that should be better known in the West, December 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1) (Paperback)

This is one of the most entertaining, satisfying "big baggy"-type novels of all time. Readers who like long Victorian or Russian novels, or got all the way through "Clarissa," will get many hours of enjoyment from "Story of the Stone" ("Dream of the Red Chamber" is the more common title). It is about a cultured, wealthy family in early Ching dynasty China, with a teenaged hero called Bao-yu. Bao-yu spends all his time in the women's quarters, which is unheard-of for a boy his age but allowed because his grandmother spoils him. Instead of fulfilling his filial duty by studying for the civil service exams, he indulges in the same idle pleasures as the women of the household, eating, dressing, gossiping, composing poetry, and/or playing drinking games with his many girl cousins, aunts, mother, doting grandmother, myriad serving maids, a troupe of actresses, and the occasional nun from a convent located on the grounds. Bao-yu is a dreamy, precocious romantic, very spoiled but charming, and always (usually platonically) in love with several girls at once. However, his deepest feelings are for his cousin Dai-yu, his soulmate, who is sickly, orphaned, frequently whiny, and not considered a good match by the family. It is hard to believe that Cao Xueqin wrote about 300 years ago on the other side of the world, because he gives such a touching, ironic depiction of romantic love unfolding between two sensitive, self-conscious, and precocious kids. His characterizations of women are also sympathetic and insightful, aware of the suffering that society's conventions inflict on them. And the rest of the novel is a fascinating portrayal of traditional Chinese culture, manners, religion, entertainment, food, clothes, interior decoration, medicine, and family values. Family members and servants go about their lives, putting on funerals, having birthday parties, intriguing for improved status within the family, casting spells on enemies, eating lavish meals, entertaining Imperial guests and poor relations, threatening or committing suicide to save face, scheming to take concubines behind wives' backs, etc. etc. Symbolism in names, metaphors, dreams, poems, etc. abounds. The novel has literally hundreds of characters (David Hawkes helpfully organizes them by letting the family members keep their Chinese names and translating the servants' names into English, the actresses' names into French, and the monks' and nuns' names into Latin). Caveat lector: "DRC" is challenging even for a Chinese reader because of its allegories, wordplay, poetry, and cultural references. It is full of allusions to Chinese literature and history -- which can be frustrating since Hawkes does not provide explanatory footnotes. (I was able to get my Chinese boyfriend and his mother to explain some of the allusions.) Also, although the translation is unabridged and usually idiomatic, it sometimes grated on my (American) ears. Hawkes sometimes makes the characters talk painfully quaint British slang. But if you can overlook these difficulties, this is one of those novels that can conjure up a world and make its inhabitants real for the reader.