Reading the Guiyou Edition of Dream of the Red Chamber
"The Guiyou edition cannot be the original; it contains a great deal of modern language, some excessively blunt, and betrays the influence of many late-Qing novels. Yet the Guiyou edition is certainly closer to the original than the manuscript copies."
The Guiyou edition itself cannot be the authentic text. Even piercing through the fog of He Lili’s crude additions and alterations, if one focuses only on the Qing-dynasty original text within the Guiyou edition, the style differs greatly from the Cheng-Gao edition of Dream of the Red Chamber. It contains a great deal of modern language, some of it excessively blunt, and one can also detect the shadow of many late-Qing novels.
Yet the Guiyou edition is certainly closer to the original than the manuscript copies. It points directly to the central theme of the Ming-Qing transition, and moreover, its spiritual complexion could only have been written by one who had lived through the dynastic change—and not merely an ordinary change of dynasty, but specifically the Ming-Qing transition. I believe the version circulating online is probably not the original Guiyou edition, but rather He Lili’s synthesis and supplementation of an original fragmentary text. However, the original Story of the Stone was too otherworldly, so much so that the boundary is clear-cut. The first one hundred chapters are mostly original, while the last eight chapters likely mix in earlier passages to fill them out. The flaws are first of all in the place names. People of ancient times would not so bluntly call Jinling or Changshu; in the first several dozen chapters, it is always the “Weiyang region.” Jinling might have been called the old capital beneath Purple-Gold Mountain, and Changshu probably the city of seven streams flowing to the sea. Next, the spoken language: at that time, the vernacular had not yet undergone the grammaticalization of the Republican-era masters. The characters speech is too obedient to modern grammar, too proper, too Mandarin. Finally, the emotions are too exposed. The original was a comprehensive reflection on feudal society, in which the author prominently expresses anti-Qing, anti-Manchu sentiments. Yet this does not hinder the accuracy of the plot framework. Because the front and back are so symmetrical, even if this is not the original, the original should have been just like this.
The plot of the Guiyou edition is a thorough reflection on the Ming-Qing transition; every sentence is an allusion to the history of the Wanli, Tianqi, Chongzhen, and even Hongguang reigns. Things I had never associated with Ming history when reading the first eighty chapters now immediately correspond one-to-one with the history of the Ming. It should be made clear that the characters in the Story of the Stone are not one-to-one mappings from beginning to end, but rather amalgamations of different figures from Ming history. Wang Xifeng corresponds to Wei Zhongxian and Zhang Juzheng; Lin Daiyu corresponds to Wen Tiren and the Chongzhen Emperor; Jia Baoyu corresponds to the Tianqi Emperor and the Hongguang Emperor; Little Red corresponds to Yuan Chonghuan. As for the raid and search of the Grand View Garden corresponding to the Palace Removal Case, and Mother Ma plotting against Jia Baoyu corresponding to the Club Attack Case—this leads one to wonder whether Grandmother Jia dying in the original might correspond to the Red Pill Case? As for the later bandits like Jia Huan and Jia Qiang, they undoubtedly correspond to the various roving bandits of the late Ming. In short, one must be familiar with Ming history before reading the Story of the Stone to appreciate its meaning. Its literary style is much criticized, but the style is precisely the greatest evidence of its date of composition.
From the perspective of language style, the Guiyou edition should have been composed during the Shunzhi reign, and at the latest no later than the middle of the Kangxi reign. From the vocabulary, the Guiyou edition should have been written by someone from the Jiangnan region, most likely from Yangzhou, Nanjing, and other such places.
The Guiyou edition is a fragmentary text, but through the original text we can still read the original author feeling of utter despair in the face of the Ming-Qing transition. The original Story of the Stone in the Guiyou edition is actually a One Hundred Years of Solitude for the Ming-Qing transition. The Ming-Qing transition was not an ordinary change of dynasty; the Manchu entry was not an ordinary invasion by an alien people; the wrangling of the Hongguang court, the degeneration of Li Zicheng, the viciousness of the Qing army—it is certainly not merely mourning the Ming, for to be frank there is little in the Southern Ming worth mourning. It is a thorough reflection on the entire Ming-Qing transition, on the two thousand years of Chinese feudal history. Finally, through the mouth of Baoyu, does it not speak of the cyclical law of feudal dynasties? The pity is that the author still looks down on peasant rebels like Li Zicheng in the book, unable to survey history from a higher vantage point as modern people can. Therefore, I am unwilling to believe the Sentiment List ending is the true ending, though such endings were indeed conventional novelistic devices of the time. Whether in Investiture of the Gods, The Scholars, or Flowers in the Mirror, this at most proves that the Guiyou edition was composed by someone from the early Qing. I am more inclined to believe it was a collective creation of the Fushe members, for in their youth they had experienced a life of luxury, and after the fall of the Ming they indeed had national仇恨 and family grievances; moreover, they had independent works with similar plots.
For example, the Carnal Prayer Mat, composed during the Shunzhi reign, has plots locally similar to the Story of the Stone, and is also divided into four volumes of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, matching the structure of the Guiyou edition:
Weiyangsheng, relying on his talent, considered himself the foremost talent under heaven and his wife the foremost beauty, but cared nothing for fame and fortune, only for “women as his very life.” The cloth-bag monk urged him to “cut off lust and enter the Buddhist gate to achieve enlightenment,” and his father-in-law, Tiefei Daoren, wanted him to be a proper gentleman, but to no avail. Weiyangsheng, under the pretext of traveling to study, went to the capital to hunt for beauties. One day in the suburbs he met the chivalrous bandit Sai Kunlun, and the two swore brotherhood. The celestial real man used dog kidneys to augment the “human yang” of Weiyangsheng, making it “towering and magnificent, truly transformed.” And he asked Sai Kunlun to seek out beautiful women for him, successively committing adultery with the beauties Yanfang, Xiangyun, Ruizhu, and Ruiyu.
Li Yu was from Rugao in our Jiangsu province; the language style of The Carnal Prayer Mat is also similar to that of the Story of the Stone, differing only in subtle details. As for Dream of the Red Chamber, it uses more Manchu Eight Banners cultural vocabulary. In terms of word formation, the Cheng-Gao edition employs a richer variety of word-formation methods; in terms of syntax, the Guiyou edition obviously has more parallel, discrete sentence structures, a pattern consistent with the evolutionary characteristics of Qing-dynasty Chinese grammar, indicating that the Cheng-Gao edition should postdate the Guiyou edition.
As for the plot, apart from the talented-scholar-and-beauty episodes like Qin Keqing and Sister Duo, chivalric novels were also fashionable around the early Qing. The Tale of Heroic Sons and Daughters was deeply influenced by Dream of the Red Chamber, and shaped a female knight-errant who saves a declining Han Eight Banners family. The description of the An family compound in the novel has the same marvelous effect as the description of the Grand View Garden; when I was in elementary school, I once tried to reproduce this section in Minecraft.
The two of them agreed with their pants full of pee, and hurriedly brushed off a flurry of dust, saying, “All right.” Only then did the girl turn her head around, her face full of spring, and say to Young Master An, “Honored guest, where shall I put this stone?” Young Master An blushed to his ears, eyes on nose and nose on heart, and answered, “Thank you for your trouble! Just put it inside the room.” Hearing this, the girl picked up the stone with one hand, swaying her tiny feet up the steps, while the other hand lifted the cloth curtain and stepped through the door. She gently placed the stone against the south wall inside the room, turned around without panting, without blushing, without her heart racing. Everyone stretched their heads to look into the room, all amazed.
Needless to say, the onlookers dispersed in twos and threes, each offering their own speculations. But let us speak of Young Master An, who, seeing the girl enter the room, walked forward to hang up the cloth curtain on the door, stepping aside himself so she could come out. Who would have thought that after putting down the stone, the girl patted the dust off her hands and body, shook it off, turned around, and sat down on the chair by the table. At the sight of this, Young Master An thought to himself, “What am I to do? I feared she would come in, and she came in; I hoped she would leave, and she simply sat down!”
The Return to the Lotus Dream, also composed in the early Qing, is almost a sibling piece to the Story of the Stone. At the beginning it still retains the storytelling style of Ming novels, but by the ending,
We speak of Wang Changnian keeping watch in the room of Xiangxue, overwhelmed with resentment. According to custom above, when a person dies, before the coffining, the closest kin must first go to the wilderness to summon the soul. Changnian waited until the fifth watch, and without waiting for servants to follow, went alone to the outskirts to summon the young lady soul. After walking several li, he became drowsy and confused, not knowing how far he had gone. In the distance he saw a large garden pavilion, and Changnian thought, “No one lives in the wilderness; how could there be such a garden? I suppose in the years I was away, someone has built it.” As he was thinking, he suddenly saw the Flower Spirit come and say, “Young master, I trust you have been well since we parted. Where are you going this time?” Changnian recognized her at once and thanked her, saying, “I am deeply grateful for your rescue on the road earlier. I never expected to meet you here as well. It is just that I have suffered many misfortunes, and there has been a great upheaval in my family recently. I came here this morning out of heartbreak.” The Flower Spirit said, “Do not grieve; the young lady is perfectly well here.” Changnian said, “I cannot believe such a thing. Who died at home, then?” The Flower Spirit said, “If you do not believe, follow me, and I shall return a young lady to you.” Changnian suspected it was a dream, but followed the Flower Spirit into the garden, where he saw a hundred flowers competing in beauty, and indeed Miss Xiangxue was sitting among the flowers. At the sight, Changnian was overjoyed and said, “So the young lady is truly here. Was my return home last night but a dream?” Xiangxue said, “By chance I was assigned the duty of flower spirit and went out temporarily. My brother returned from afar, and I failed to welcome you.” Changnian seized her hand and said, “For the sake of the young lady, I am restless day and night. Now that we meet, I shall not leave for a single moment.” The Flower Spirit smiled and said, “Why the hurry? I shall send you back.” She ordered two sedan chairs, which flew like the wind, and in a moment they arrived at the Cui family gate. Changnian got out first and entered. Shixun was waiting in the front hall, and seeing Changnian, was about to burst into tears when Changnian said, “The young lady is alive and came with me.” Shixun was greatly astonished and went outside, where indeed there was a Miss Xiangxue, graceful in figure, walking in. The two sedan chairs had vanished. The whole family, large and small, was amazed and gathered around the young lady to enter the room together. Xiangxue only smiled and said nothing. Because of this strange event outside, everyone went out, and not a single person remained in the room.
The descriptive technique is almost identical to that of the Story of the Stone.
As for the Precious Mirror of Romance depicted in the book, it resembles the main plot of The Peach Blossom Fan: on one side, the talented scholar and beautiful lady, the love between children; on the other side, the fall of the nation and the ruin of the family, the perdition of all under heaven:
[River Water] (Dan) My heart is in turmoil like tumbleweed; several times I wished to pour it out to the emperor. Torn apart as husband and wife, my soul is shattered; mother and son cut apart, fresh blood surges—more savage than the roving bandits. Playing dumb and feigning deaf, I curse their shamelessness. (Jing) So there were such sorrows. (Fujing) This woman has indeed suffered. (Mo) Today the gentlemen are here enjoying themselves; let us not dwell on grievances alone. (Dan) Master Yang knows that my bitterness is not worth recounting. [Five Offerings] Mighty lords, the southern half of the dynasty looks to your eminence. Born desiring honor and favor, you choose only songs and beauties, adding several more tunes of Backyard Flowers. You toy with me so, making me accompany your toasts and poems against the icy wind and snowy sea of mountains. (Jing, angrily) Hush! This girl speaks reckless nonsense; she deserves to be slapped. (Fujing) I have heard that Li Zhenli was originally a courtesan praised by Zhang Tianru and Xia Yizhong and their ilk; naturally she is presumptuous. She deserves a beating! (Mo) She looks very young; she may not be that Li Zhenli. (Dan, resentfully) Even if she is, what of it! [Jade Branch] The Donglin brothers—all in the brothels we know and respect. Adopted sons and godsons are employed anew, the Wei seed never dying out. (Fujing) How bold! Who is she cursing? Quickly drag her away and throw her into the snow. (Wai drags Dan down) (Dan) Ice skin and snow intestines are the same, what fear have I of iron hearts and stone bellies freezing? (Fujing) This slave, in the presence of the Grand Secretary, is so insolent; she has made us all lose face. Hateful, hateful! (Gets up and kicks Dan) (Mo rises to pull him back) (Jing) Enough, enough! For a slave like this, it would not be hard to put her to death, but it might harm my ministerial magnanimity. (Mo) Yes, yes! The dignity of a chancellor and the lowliness of a prostitute are as far apart as heaven and earth; why take offense? (Fujing) Very well! I shall report to the venerable teacher, and have her sent to the inner court, assigned the bitterest of roles. (Jing) That would be fitting. (Mo) Have her dragged away! (Za drags Dan) (Dan) I have already staked my life. I cannot vomit enough cuckoo blood to fill my breast, I cannot vomit enough cuckoo blood to fill my breast.
The Ten Solitary Laments composed by Daiyu in the Guiyou edition, though vulgar works, show in their titles alone a resonance with The Peach Blossom Fan.
In short, the ghost edition is closer to the original Story of the Stone than either the manuscript copies or the printed editions. Story of the Stone, Stone City, the Ning and Rong mansions, the northern and southern capitals—how could the Grand View Garden where these events took place be any specific garden? Is it not the eighteen provinces of the Han land? As the saying goes:
The prosperity of the Han River, the treasures of Jiangnan, still preserving the elegance of the Xuanzheng era. Green windows and red doors, for ten li the silver hooks gleam. Once blades and soldiers rise together, banners surround a million fierce troops. Driving long into the singing towers and dancing pavilions, the wind rolls away the sorrow of fallen flowers.
Three hundred years of peace, laws and culture, people and things, all swept clean to the ground. Fortunate that this body did not go north, still a guest in the southern land. Where is Young Master Xu of the broken mirror? Empty melancholy, no way to meet. From now on, dream spirits for a thousand li, night after night at Yueyang Tower.