The Golden Days
Page 58
Introduction
5. In Imperial China the salt monopoly was an important source of government revenue. Distribution was in the hands of contractors operating under government licence. Great fortunes were made in salt both by the merchant-contractors and by the Government Inspectors who controlled them.
6. Chinese emperors were in the habit of proclaiming ‘eras’ with grandiloquent titles. These era titles were used in dating events: thus the outbreak of the An Lu-shan rebellion occurred in the ‘thirteenth year of the Heavenly Treasure era’ and the Jürched sacked Kaifeng and carried the Chinese emperor into captivity in the era of Pacific Tranquillity. In the Ming and Qing dynasties it became the practice to have one era-name for the whole of the reign, as a consequence of which Chinese are in the habit of calling Ming and Qing emperors by the names of their eras. Strictly speaking we should say ‘the Kangxi Emperor’ or ‘the Emperor of the Kangxi era’, but it seems neater to follow Chinese colloquial practice. To avoid confusion, I later on refer to Kangxi’s successor as ‘Yongzheng’ even before he became emperor, although this is really a solecism.
Introduction
7. Cao Yin’s mother, the old lady who was once Kangxi’s nurse, was a Sun and may have belonged to the same family.
Introduction
8. Xueqin’s eighteenth century insights can be quite startling. Consider this passage from chapter 3:
‘ “None of the girls has got one,” said Bao-yu, his face streaming with tears and sobbing hysterically. “Only I have got one. It always upsets me. And now this new cousin comes here who is as beautiful as an angel and she hasn’t got one either, so I know it can’t be any good.”
‘I do not think the fact that he is actually referring to his jade talisman makes this passage psychologically any the less interesting.
Introduction
9. Mr Wu in fact identified Red Inkstone with one of Xueqin’s uncles, but he also made the important point that Bao-yu is a composite of Xueqin and Red Inkstone.
Introduction
10. A clearer impression of the nature of Gao E’s work on this novel has become possible since the publication in Peking in 1963 of 9 much corrected draft which he evidently used at some stage in his preparation of the first printed edition.
11. The kang was a brick platform, often carpeted and cushioned and furnished with low tables and other small furniture, which could be heated from underneath in winter. It provided a place to work, lounge or eat on during the daytime and a place to sleep on at night.
Introduction
12. The extremely superficial nature of Xueqin’s use of this form – one based on the methods of the professional story-teller, with each chapter arranged in imitation of the storyteller’s ‘session’ to end at a point of suspense – can be judged from his statement in chapter 1 that the division into chapters and the composition of chapter-headings took place after the novel bad been completed. In some manuscripts chapters 17 and 18 are in fact still undivided.
13. This is not only my opinion. Red Inkstone constantly makes use of the technical vocabulary of Chinese painting in discussing the novel and insists that Xueqin’s technique as a novelist is essentially a painterly one.
Chapter 1
1. See Appendix, p. 528.
2. Yu-cun is thinking of the jade hairpin given by a visiting fairy to an early Chinese emperor which later turned into a white swallow and flew away into the sky. Metaphors of flying and ‘climbing the sky’ were frequently used for success in the Civil Service examinations.
Chapter 5
1. See Appendix, p. 527.
Chapter 5
2. See Appendix, p. 528.