Rereading the Stone

Suppose your child were born on the seventh day of the seventh month, what would you do? If you saw an immortal soul falling into the well of mortal existence, would you intervene and save them? Suppose you were facing a lifetime of strangely illiquid “tear debt,” would you seek solace in historical novels and plays that serve no clear moral or dogmatic purpose? These and other questions are all addressed in this installment of Rereading the Stone, a podcast dedicated to historical Chinese literature, poetry, and philosophy. 

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One of our favorite sections of the text — Grannie Liu takes Baoyu’s bed for a spin, dreaming her own dream of red chambers! A full sensory experience, we compare it to Bayou’s dream from Qin Keqing’s bed.

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Granny Liu’s choice of cups (wood is good!) figures prominently in this installment. A wide-ranging discussion of social class and constructed value, as the real and unreal reveal themselves to be deeply interwoven.

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This part of chapter 40 of Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the Stone, Hongloumeng) is a lot of poetic fun, but is it purely fun and games? What kind of symbolism and foreshadowing lie within, and will illicit references catch the censor’s gaze? How will Baochai escape the dialectical logic of “takes one to know one”? Is gaming a kind of waking dream? What kind of displacements might be occurring? All these questions, and more, are addressed in this installment* of Rereading the Stone.

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More excellent Granny Liu content, as we travel deeper into the garden, soon by means of pleasure craft, with Xifeng at the helm. When withered lotus petals are observed on the surface of the water, Daiyu famously discusses the poetry of Tang poet Li Shangyin.

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It's Chapter 40 of Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the Stone, Hongloumeng), and we're accompanying Grannie Liu on her tour of Prospect Garden. In what ways is the garden reflective of, and in dialogue with, Grannie’s Liu’s dreams and desires? What does Grannie Liu accurately perceive on her tour, and where does she project? And what about the “country bumpkin” role that Grannie Liu is compelled to occupy? Is there any method to the maddening interplay of truth and fiction in the garden?

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In this episode, we puzzle over Grannie Liu’s arithmetic while questioning how age and social class more broadly inform her interactions with Grandmother Jia. A continuation of our discussion of chapter 39 of Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the Stone), a classic work of historical Chinese literature.

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We treat the first part of Chapter 39 of Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the Stone, Hongloumeng), as Li Wan and friends wax philosophical on the importance of having good servants to dissipate loneliness... our discussion turns toward issues of social value, and the paradoxes of hierarchy and intimacy.

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The end (or is it beginning?) of our Chapter 38 review! (This was originally intended to be the first episode we’d release, but it was the last to be recorded, and we forgot to rearrange them.) The final part of our foray into this dense and rich chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the Stone).

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The Chapter 38 poetry review continues! No poetic stone left unturned!

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