![]() ![]() ![]() Tsao Hsueh-chin, the author of A Dream of Red Mansions, was born and raised in an aristocratic family, but he died in misery and isolation. Recently, it was made into a miniseries in China. This massive, sprawling novel of China was written in the mid-eighteenth century, during the Ching Dynasty, and has been widely read during the past two hundred years. For example, we use both "Black Jade" and "Lin Tai-yu" for the same character until the reader feels comfortable referring to the character by her Chinese name. In addition, because the novel touches on the lives of over 400 characters, we use both the adaptor's English names for key characters and their Chinese names through the first several chapters so that the reader will feel at ease with the Chinese equivalent. However, anyone reading these Notes alongside the more popular (and easier to acquire) one-volume paperback Dream of the Red Chamber should have no difficulty and will appreciate reading about the episodes that Chi-Chen Wang omitted from his adaptation. ![]() We have based this set of Notes on the three-volume original novel, feeling that the richness of the original work is too important to ignore. Dream of the Red Chamber is a one-volume adaptation of a much longer, three-volume work, sometimes translated into English as A Dream of Red Mansions. ![]()
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