Love’s End

The Transcendence of Sentimentality in Honglou meng

 

Anne Henochowicz

May 2004

 

In the late Ming era (1368-1644), underdog literati rebelled against Neo-Confucian doctrine though the “cult” of qing 情 (Naquin 35).  Qing can be translated as “‘feelings,’ ‘love,’ ‘romantic sentiments,’ and ‘passions,’” or even “the human condition” though none of these words provides a full definition (Lee 86, Santangelo 77).  Qing legitimized and even sanctified human desire, including sexual desire, as the defining principles of the individual (Lee 86).  This counter-culture concept, which intellectuals condemned after the fall of the Ming dynasty, is nonetheless a trademark of a vast body of Ming and Qing literature.

The Story of the Stone (Honglou meng*), considered the last work of literature in the tradition of qing, at once transcends qing and reaffirms the individual.  Through series of tragic romances, the author, Cao Xueqin, critiques and ultimately refutes the power of qing and its integrity with the soul of each individual.  Among four alternate titles for the novel is A Mirror for the Romantic (Fengyue baojian) (Hawkes 1.18).…  Indeed, Honglou meng reflects on quite a few relationships; love affairs among minor characters resonate with each other and augment the drama and portent of the central romance, that between Jia Bao-yu and Lin Dai-yu. Cao leads up to Bao-yu’s final renunciation of the world through the tragic but melodramatic loves affairs of minor characters, such as Qin Zhong, Chess, and You San-jie.  Their stories acknowledge the power and beauty of qing, but ultimately prove that love, like all other emotions, are a mere illusion. What is not an illusion is the individual soul; to liberate the soul, one must renounce all the emotions and desires that constrain the individual on earth.  Emotions and desires shape personality and impinge on the autonomy of the soul.  Only when an individual is free of all affinities and emotions—in other words, when he is free of qing—can he exist in his pure, unfettered state.

 

A Brief History of Qing

 

The philosophy of qing was spearheaded by Wang Yangming’s radically liberal Taizhou School of the Mind (心学), a school of thought created in direct reaction to Neo-Confucian doctrine.  Ironically, qing was first redefined by Zhu Xi, ironically one of the most important Neo-Confucians.  Qing was traditionally criticized for its tendency to mask or impose upon a man’s xing 性, or inborn nature (the Neo-Confucians revived the Mencian theory that all men are good by nature, but act badly due to lack of education, lack of personal restraint, the social environment, and other outside factors) (Huang 156).  The “cult” of qing idealized human sentimentality and sensuality, elegizing sexual love and other emotional desires as intrinsic qualities of each individual.  The cult shifted intellectual discussion away from tianli 天理, or Heavenly principle. Instead of emphasizing the individual’s moral role in society, qing as a positive element of both human spirit and human action. 

In particular, qing caught on with those disgruntled literati who were unable to make it in the examination system (Naquin 35).  It has a special appeal for those who have been placed at the bottom by the Confucian social hierarchy, for the cult of qing rejects that very structure.  Cao, who went from a childhood of luxury to a life of poverty, could truly sympathize with examination-failures (Hawkes 20).  The cult philosophy rejuvenated xiaoshuo (fiction) and propelled it through the mid-eighteenth century; the movement is considered to have ended with Honglou meng (Santangelo 77).The literature of the cult defines the individual through qing.  Thus qing goes from an aberration to “the defining essence of human existence,” freeing intellectuals from the strictures of Neo-Confucian doctrine (Lee 87, Santangelo 102). 

The preface to Tang Xianzu’s play The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting), one of Cao’s primary inspirations, contains what many consider the “manifesto of qing”: “Love is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper.  The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again” (qtd. Lee 87).  In Honglou meng love kills plenty of people: it relentlessly torments Dai-yu and does away more quickly with moral transgressors (in Qin Shi’s case, by adultery).  Even Bao-yu suffers from a “mental illness” that impedes his studies and at times sends him into fits of “stupidity”.  But Cao takes qing a step beyond the cultish fervor; his dead lovers never come back to the realm of man.

Qing was distinguished from yu欲, or the overindulgence of desire (Huang 161).  Yu has been called “the perversion of sentiment,” limited by and large to carnal desire and other physical pleasures (Lee 87).  Cao begins to refute this separation through his characterization of Bao-yu, “the most lustful person …in the whole world” (1.5.145).  Bao-yu’s lust is a “lust of the mind,” the most insidious of all lusts (1.5.146).  While lust of the body has clear implications, lust of the mind sits on a plane above normal human interactions, where it is harder to overcome.  Ultimately, lust of body and mind intertwine, leaving Bao-yu no choice but to abandon all passions and become a monk.

By the 1760s, when good chunks of Honglou meng manuscripts were circulating among Cao’s relatives and friends, qing had fallen out of favor with the majority of writers and philosophers; indeed, early Qing literature rejected Wang Yangming’s teachers vehemently (Naquin 65).  This was in part due to the nascent Qing government’s censorship laws, which suppressed xinxue and its branches of thought (Santangelo 103).  Honglou meng is usually considered the final work in the idiom of qing.  Cao draws on the cult philosophy only to go beyond it.  Love and feeling may define the human being, but the human being does not define the soul that inhabits him.  Cao does not reject qing; rather, he contextualizes it in a Buddhist universe. 

 

Qin Zhong and the World of the Precious Mirror

 

Qin Zhong, the You sisters, and Jia Rui belong to the “World of the Precious Mirror,” a place where qing is desecrated by yu and where amorous deviance earns violent, comical, and even obscene deaths (Li 233).  These characters seem to come from a novel that precedes Honglou meng, called Fengyue baojian (as mentioned before, also an alternate title to Cao’s final work) (Hawkes 3.620)*.  This accounts for the Precious Mirror’s lack of congruence with the main plot; these characters are outside the Jia household, and their stories usually delay the main events of the novel.  The World of the Precious Mirror is far from superfluous, however.  Its garish scenes of foolish loves, lustful fulfillment, and punishment for both reflect on the insular world of the Ning and Rong Mansions, and especially on the other alternate world, Prospect Garden.  They bring hidden sentiments out into the open, portending future misfortunes within the insular Jia universe.  They remind us that, as pure and innocent as Prospect Garden may seem, human sentimentality and sensuality will defile it.  Nothing is pure, and nothing that seems pure can be permanent.

Qin Zhong’s name秦鍾is homophonous with qingzhong 情种, translated either as “the affectionate one” or “the love breed” (Yang 77, Lee 104).  Qin Zhong seems to be Bao-yu’s first homosexual love interest (Yang 77).  There are certainly hints of a homosexual foray in their relationship.  Still, Bao-yu’s more innocent encounters with the actor Jiang Yuhan and the Prince of Bei-jing indicate neither that this is Bao-yu’s only homoerotic interest, nor that his relationship with Qin Zhong is completely romantic (Lee 104).  Bao-yu and Qin Zhong’s friendship is in fact publicly sanctioned as one between schoolmates.  Qin Zhong is certainly one of the more affectionate characters in the novel, one whose sweet demeanor Bao-yu continues to recall years after his friend has passed away.  Yet Qin Zhong pays for an act of yu with death, and his whole undoing is filled with comic blunders.  He is ultimately a flat character who functions as a warning to Bao-yu in his future romantic endeavors and setting a precedent for the punishment of this crime.

In appearance and demeanor, Qin Zhong mirrors both Bao-yu and Dai-yu.  When the reader is introduced to him, he is someone “more than [Bao-yu’s] equal in freshness and liveliness of feature… but whose painful bashfulness created a somewhat girlish impression” (1.7.177)*.  Bao-yu also has an effeminate physique, which to a degree reflects his personality and his sexual proclivities. In this way Qin Zhong shares both physical and emotional posture with Bao-yu.  Simultaneously, Qin Zhong and Bao-yu give each other a profound first impression, similar to when the latter meets Dai-yu: “Each, plunged in reverie, for a while said nothing… presently they were in the midst of a delightful conversation and were already like old friends” (1.7.178).  The two boys quickly form a close bond, in the same spiritual sense that Bao-yu immediately connects with Dai-yu.  Qin Zhong also shares some of Dai-yu’s qualities, as Qin Shi informs Bao-yu: “He may be shy, but he’s got quite a nasty temper.  He’s not really easy to get on with at all” (1.7.179).  Furthermore, Qin Zhong is one of the few sickly men in the novel; he dies of a “lovesickness”, the same “illness” that takes the life of his sister.  Though the causes and symptoms of their illnesses differ, Qin Zhong’s killer is distinctly feminine.  Thus Qin Zhong is, on a crude level, Dai-yu’s male double. 

Qin Zhong falls from grace when he acts upon his love for Sapientia, the adolescent nun of The Temple of the Iron Threshold.  They are true lovers: “Although nothing serious had as yet passed between them, in their inclinations and affections they were already united” (1.15.296).  But Qin Zhong crosses the line from qing to yu when, under cover of darkness and overcome by his desire, he rapes her.  His impropriety is three-fold: he has premarital sex with a nun during the mourning period for his own sister.  Even worse, he has no remorse: after shaming Sapientia the night before, he is still “anxious” to see her (1.15.300).  The impropriety goes both ways, as Sapientia quickly puts aside her guilt and exchanges “all sorts of secret vows” with her lover (1.15.301).  Sapientia seems to fear only the remonstration of the other nuns, rather than karmic punishment for the crime forced upon her.  Indeed, just before Qin Zhong rapes her she urges him to “get me out of this hole and away from these people.  Then you can do what you like” (1.15.299).  Though born of true love, the romance is thoroughly transgressive.

Perhaps Sapientia’s shame and Qin Zhong’s terminal illness are brought on not by their conjugal act in and of itself, but rather by Bao-yu pouncing upon them in the midst of sex: “[bearing] down on them from above” (1.15.299).  Mocking them playfully, he hardly realizes how fatal his jokes will be.  Yet Bao-yu cannot be completely aloof, for he “settle[s] accounts” with Qin Zhong later that night (1.15.300).  What exactly this entails the narrator leaves a mystery: perhaps Bao-yu forced Qin Zhong to confess his love for Sapientia, or perhaps he had his own conjugal confession to make.  Either way, Bao-yu seems oblivious to the damage he has done.  It seems that the risk of being exposed, even by so close a friend as Bao-yu, is what triggers Qin Zhong’s death.

Qin Zhong’s death is a warning: he demonstrates the consequences of expressing one’s romantic desires, even the purest and most heart-felt.  What his death does not make clear, however, is whether retribution comes because one has realized one’s true feelings or debased them by bringing them into the “real” world.  In the case of romantic realization itself, Confucian and Neo-Confucian doctrine equate sentiment with sexuality and love with lust (Lee 109).  Although Bao-yu and Dai-yu are lovers at a level far beyond the world of the living, “in the absence of a properly negotiated marriage, all that could ensue from acknowledged sexual attraction between [them] would be sexual scandal” (qtd. Lee 110).  But Bao-yu is rarely if ever held back by Confucian ideals: he consistently shirks his studies in favor of spending platonic time with the maids and ladies of Prospect Garden.  Punishment for defiling one’s sentiments seems more synchronized with Bao-yu’s personal standards.  Haiyan Lee claims: “In his rebellion against the Confucian order, Bao-yu strives to carve out a space for the individual self on the basis of qing, a concept that… celebrates compassion and companionship” (111).  Were Bao-yu to mimic Qin Zhong’s surreptitious escapade, he would be throwing his higher connection with Dai-yu to the wayside and confirming masculine depravity.  Thus while Bao-yu may seem chastened into his proper place, his restraint almost defies the strictures of Confucianism by preserving qing from the vulgar world.  Bao-yu maintains his “lust of the mind” long after his dear Qin Zhong has passed away (1.7.145).  True love “is like a bud.  Once open, it ceases to be true love” (5.111.210).  Indeed, the lust of the mind by its very definition cannot be communicated; if his love for Dai-yu could be put into words, it would not be a true love (Li 209).

 

The Ominous Affairs of Chess and You San-jie

Less comical and more important are the love affairs and suicides of Chess, Yuan Chun’s maid, and You San-jie.  Honglou meng is filled with “echo plots,” stories that repeat themselves in the isolated episodes of various characters.  Each “echo” intensifies until it reaches a climax in one of the main characters (Yee 613).  The romantic tragedies of You San-jie and the Chess resonate with Bao-yu and Dai-yu’s story.  Isolated from the Jia household, San-jie’s death warns of the sorrows that simple misunderstandings bring.  Her story colors the love tragedies that follow.  Chess affects Bao-yu more directly; like other denizens of Prospect Garden, her exile and death adds to the losses that eventually lead Bao-yu to enlightenment. 

            The story of the You sisters brings us once again to the World of the Precious Mirror, this time for a prolonged visit.  Here the reader discovers that the World of the Precious Mirror, while kept outside the Rong and Ning gates, includes denizens from the Jia household (Jia Lian and Jia Zhen).  Followed immediately by the search of the Garden, it hints at the layers of corruption and decay that will continue to be revealed in the next 50-some chapters.

You San-jie’s tragedy is one of unrequited love and dire miscommunication.  She is an intelligent, strong-willed lady who in marriage will settle for no less than the love of her life: “If it is someone I cannot give my heart to, I shall feel that the whole of my life has been wasted” (3.65.287).  She sets her eyes on the actor Liu Xiang-lian, a man who may have been romantically involved with Qin Zhong (Yee 402).  Of course, he does not even know of her existence in the five years she spends waiting for him.  However pure her sentiments, this unreciprocated love is doomed from the outset. 

Xiang-lian suffers in this “relationship” from his own coldheartedness.  Hoping to marry a “stunningly beautiful girl” and wary of Jia Lian’s motives, he decides privately to withdraw his pledge. When he later visits the Yous to confess to a previous betrothal (a lie), San-jie severs her ties with the world, including with her lover before a captive audience that includes her own mother and sister.  Xiang-lian assumes that the Jia men are up to no good (which they are), but why should that have stopped him from meeting San-jie and deciding for himself if she was a suspicious fiancée?  He is too quick to calculate on his own behalf; he gave no thought to the reactions his withdrawal would set off.  While San-jie acted swiftly and perhaps selfishly, her suicide is one of many “noble” deaths in the name of true love and personal honor (3.66.305).  Xiang-lian is the most guilty partner.

At first taken with Jia Lian’s matchmaking proposal, Xiang-lian gives him a family heirloom, a “Duck and Drake” sword to take to San-Jie as a pledge (3.66.300).  Xiang-lian soon recognizes his own mistake and joins San-jie in the Land of Disillusion.

The Duck and Drake symbolize love and lovers; they are “symbols of conjugal bliss” (Li 237).  Yet they also link San-jie to Xiang-lian in their renunciation of love.  The Duck and Drake nest together, suggesting the violence of romantic feelings and perhaps alluding to the suicides of so many young women in the name of love.  Like Xiang-lian himself, the blades are “cruel”, “glittering with the cold brightness of autumn waters.”   Love itself will soon be cruel to her; when it is, San-jie makes sure to end her plight with the female sword.  She keeps it with her in the afterlife, where she joins Disenchantment as a recordkeeper of lovers.  When in a dream she says good-bye to Xiang-lian, she “cradles” the Duck like an impetuous child.  (In chapter 116 she will attempt to cut down Bao-yu with the Duck so as to speed his transition from the human world to the spirit world.)  Still longing for him, she confesses her love to Xiang-lian in one moment and repudiates it the next:

I did not know that your heart was as cold as your face.  It was a foolish love, and I have paid for it with my life… From love I came; from love I now depart. I wasted my life for love, and now that I have woken up, I am ashamed of my folly (3.66.306). 

 

When she leaves, Xiang-lian meets the mendicant Daoist of the Land of Disillusion, and in his conversation with him “opens his eyes to the vanity of human affections” and reaches enlightenment (3.67.308).  With the “companionless Drake” he will cut off his queue and follow the Daoist.  The Duck and Drake have united them in their rejection of all sentiment and empathy.  True love, it seems, can never end in union. 

            Although San-jie’s tragedy is a shocking, almost ridiculous one, it is more than an entertaining interlude from the Jia saga.  It highlights the folly of love, the deep misunderstandings that cause even the strongest of lovers to feel betrayed.  Romantic attachments are no reality, but foolish dreams from which one will eventually awaken.  A story with only faint ties to that of the Jias, it is a preemptive commentary on the future of other lovesick youths, leading up to the pinnacle of Bao-yu and Dai-yu.  

            By the time the novel arrives at Chess’ story, the World of the Precious Mirror has already begun to erode the innocence of Prospect Garden.  On a night soon after the suicides of San-jie and then Er-jie, Faithful discovers Chess in the midst of a tryst with her cousin, Pan You-an.  In love since childhood, they had confessed their love for each other repeatedly over the years, but “had not yet reached the point of physical union when Faithful surprised them” (3.72.418).  The scene recalls Bao-yu’s discovery of Qin Zhong and Sapentia.  Terrified of punishment, Chess falls ill with a combination of lovesickness and fright while her lover runs away.  A day or so later, a pornographic embroidered pouch shows up in Prospect Garden; Xi-feng orders a search of the maids’ belongings which leads to Chess’ dismissal.  For a time, the Jias suspect that the pouch was a gift from You-an to Chess, marking them as trespassers in the Garden world.  Later, the accusation proves false; the degrading of Prospect Garden cannot be pinned to one or two individuals.  Chess and You-an’s impropriety, You-an’s breach of the Garden walls suggest that, as the innocent Garden inhabitants reach adulthood, they fall prey to the deviant pleasures of the World of the Precious Mirror. 

Chess’ romance ends with a flourish reminiscent of You San-jie’s.  In defiance of her mother, who refuses to let her marry You-an, Chess rams her head into the wall and dies instantly.  Then, to prove his faithfulness, he goes off to buy Chess a coffin, returns with two, and finally, while preparing Chess’ corpse, slits his throat.  Just as San-jie and Xiang-lian rejected a world in which they could not exist in union, so too do Chess and You-an end their lives.  The stony-faced detachment of Chess during the Garden search and of You-an in his final moments are probably not be indicative of detachment from the illusion of love; beyond You-an’s stoicism in his final moments, nothing suggests that either he or Chess have reached enlightenment.  Yet their straight-faced deaths liberate them from a world that prohibits them from being together.  Thus relinquishing qing earns them independence.

Equally ominous is Chess’ mother’s role; just as she destroyed two young lives by refusing to acknowledge their love for each other, so too will Bao-yu’s arranged marriage with Bao-chai be the final blow to Dai-yu.  Unlike the San-jie plot, this tragedy does not merely shape the ruined romances to follow.  As a former member of the “Garden society,” the news of Chess’ death will have a more direct impact on Bao-yu’s emotional well-being; Chess is one more innocent companion wrested from him.

            It is no coincidence that these romances all end by fault of the male partner.  Xiang-lian’s coldness and self-interest lead him to grave assumptions about his betrothal; You-an’s cowardice leaves Chess alone to deal with her loss and the recriminations of the Jias and her own mother.  What of Bao-yu?  He marries Bao-chai at the very instant that Dai-yu dies, as Dai-yu has bitterly resigned herself to Bao-yu’s loss of love for her.  But he thinks the bride underneath the veil is Dai-yu, and learns the truth too late.  While the marriage itself is not Bao-yu’s fault, his aloofness left Dai-yu alone at the time when she most needed him.  His “betrayal” of Dai-yu will precipitate his renunciation of the world, just as Xiang-lian cuts off his queue after he understands his error.

 

Return to Greensickness Peak

Since they were children, Dai-yu and Bao-yu have never been able to find the words to express their love for each other in words.  This proves that their love is a true love.  But as Dai-yu’s death and Bao-yu’s wedding day draw near, the two lovers (seemingly) go mad and put their feelings in the open.  Dai-yu suffers with the knowledge that she will never marry Bao-yu, while Bao-yu loses his jade (and his wits) not long before “the bond of gold and jade”—his marriage to Bao-chai—is made official (4.95.307).*  At this point the lovers exchange silent vows that say more than words ever could.  Dai-yu, in a last bout of relative health, comes uninvited to Bao-yu’s sickbed.  They stare at each other, “smiling like a pair of half-wits” (4.96.338).  This is perhaps their most tender moment; it is definitely the last one before Dai-yu’s hopes are dashed by Bao-chai’s betrothal to Bao-yu.  They seem like fools to the on-lookers, but their stares are more powerful than any love-note or pledge-gift could ever be. 

While she is on her death bed, Bao-yu joyfully marries who he thinks is “the most wonderful thing that had happened in heaven or earth since time began” (4.97.361).  His dreams are dashed, of course, when he lifts his bride’s veil.  “This must all be a dream,” he says (4.97.364).  It is indeed a dream, the grand illusion of life, which he begins to wake from at this heart-wrenching moment.  The fall of the Garden and the deaths of certain inhabitants (such as Chess and Skybright) have slowly built up sadness in Bao-yu.  Dai-yu’s death completes his despair.  His greatest dreams have been crushed by fate.  The world is an unforgiving place, refusing to let him hold on to anyone he loves.  Left with the unsympathetic Bao-chai for a wife, he delays the consummation of their marriage and continues his “idiotic” behavior afterwards.  Bao-yu’s mental state after Dai-yu’s death might also explain the relative calm of the Imperial search of the Jia household.  Bao-yu’s marriage and Dai-yu’s death are the climax of the novel; in its wake, the search no longer seems important.  For Bao-yu, sudden poverty only “accentuat[es] his imbecility” (5.107.150).  The worst has already happened, the greatest loss already suffered.

            Bao-yu awakens from the illusion of life when his soul pays a visit to the Land of Disillusionment, now renamed The Paradise of Truth.  Guided by the Daoist monk who first appears in Chapter 1, Bao-yu comes face-to-face with “Dai-yu” for the last time.  He calls out impulsively to her and is chased away.  Dai-yu has ceased to exist; the love of his life was nothing but a mirage.  Before he returns to his human frame, the Daoist warns him: “Predestined attachments of the human heart are all of them mere illusion, they are obstacles blocking our spiritual path” (5.116.293).  Bao-yu has had his final lesson in illusion; romantic love, even of the strongest variety, does not carry over after death.  Upon his return to the realm of men, Bao-yu will suffer some final bouts of sorrow before he finally reaches enlightenment.

           

Honglou meng is not about Bao-yu.  It is about Stone, the rock left over from the building of the sky.  From the beginning, Stone has been filled with desire: it wants dearly to be useful and loved, but by definition it is superfluous.  Lonely and unwilling to settle for his lot, Stone wanders into the realm of the fairy Disenchantment, where he finds and cares for the Crimson Pearl Flower.  In doing so, he makes himself useful.  But he also tips the emotional balance, for now Flower is dearly indebted to him; brought to full bloom by a sentimental soul, Flower becomes “obsessed” by her need to repay Stone (1.1.53).  Bao-yu and Dai-yu’s existence, therefore, is predicated on qing, perhaps even yu.  Though they share a deep love for one another, love is illusory “even in these immortal precincts”; taking part in “the great illusion of human life” will teach them a lesson (1.1.53, 1.5.146).  Flower pays her debt of tears on earth, returning to her source in death.  So, too, will Bao-yu the monk return to Greensickness Peak (Qinggeng feng青埂峰, a homophone for “the root of sentiment” qinggen情根) and become once again the unneeded Stone (Lee 89).  Karma and fate both have a hand in how things get done on earth, but the outcome is always the same: the enlightened soul returns to where it came from.  The debt resets the balance of the spiritual world; any deviance from one’s origin (and one’s true self) will be corrected.  Thus even the love between Bao-yu and Dai-yu is false; once Flower has repaid her karmic debt to Stone, she has nothing more to do with him. 

            Bao-yu’s lustfulness (yin淫, lust or excessiveness) may be intellectual instead of carnal, but it still chains him to the “mundane world” (Yee 391).  In fact, his type of lustfulness is the hardest to overcome.  Enlightenment takes a circular route, from void to excessive desire and back again to void.  This is “the Buddhist paradox”: one must progress through the whole domain qing in order to reach “the state beyond qing,” a process called yiqing wudao 以情悟道, or “enlightenment through love”* (Yee 405, Li 216).  By loving intensely and suffering the consequences of that love, Bao-yu understands its futility and is able to overcome his emotions. 

Bao-yu’s enlightenment and return to his original state is his greatest triumph.  Yet his slow transformation from “the most lustful” human alive to a monk devoid of feeling is still tragic.  Cao permits his novel to create a universe rooted in qing and brimming with sentimentality.  He offers his readers beautiful romances and tragic love stories; how can his audience help but miss the great lovers Bao-yu and Dai-yu when they and their love are gone?  Cao means for Stone’s return to be bittersweet.  While this is a slight acquiescence to qing, one must keep in mind that Honglou meng is a novel and not a sūtra; it is meant to entertain, and there is little appeal to a tract on the futility and illusion of human emotions.  Cao does not celebrate human nature, but through the discourse of qing he shows sympathy for both the fictional and real-life members of unenlightened mankind.   

Honglou meng is “the first major Chinese text” to explore the complexities of human emotion and self-reflexivity (Yee 378).  At the same time it concludes in a realm beyond the confines of sentimentality.  In the world of Honglou meng the soul is eternal and unchanging in nature, yet so easily tempted to join the world of men in all its mishaps and tragedies.  “Pao-yü’s ch’ing rests on a certain nondifferentiation of self and other” (Li 220).  His ultimate rejection of qing, then, is a statement of his individuality, free of all outside ties and definitions.  By letting go of qing the individual frees himself of all worldly constraints—those of the Confucian social hierarchy, as well as of human relationships, romantic and otherwise—and returns to his unique, inalienable place in the universe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

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Huang, Martin M. “Sentiments of Desire: Thoughts on the Cult of Qing in Ming-Qing Literature.”  Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 20        (Dec. 1998), 153-184.

Lee, Haiyan.  “Love or Lust?  The Sentimental Self in Honglou meng.”  Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 19 (Dec. 1997), 85-111.

Li, Wai-yee.  Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Naquin, Susan and Evelyn S. Rawski.  Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

Santangelo, Paolo.  Sentimental Education in Chinese History: An Interdisciplinary Textual Research on Ming and Qing Sources.  Leiden, Netherlands: Koninlijke        Brill, 2003.

Yang, Michael.  “Naming in Honglou meng.”  Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 18 (Dec., 1996), 69-100.

Yee, Angelina C.  “Counterpoise in Honglou meng.”  Harvard Journal of   Asiatic Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Dec., 1990), 613-650.

Yee, Angelina C.  “Self, Sexuality, and Writing in Honglou meng.”  Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec., 1995), 373-407.