Reading Notes
Week 5
Part B
- Can created one of the most best and worst of traditional China into one story. "The Story of Stone"
- Powerful story and began to move people's hearts and minds. Through a story that took a deep dive into sex, lust, and differences between both sex.
- Can was raised by a Han Chinese family which ruled the ethic group numbers in China. And his family helped in a prominent and lucrative jobs working as Imperial Textile Commission
- With the fame of the Cao family there are not many details on the life of Cao Xueqin but it is know that his family's mansions and property's were swiped by a new emperor over optical reasons.
- From 1740 to 1750 Cao was working on "The Story of Stone" living in the suburbs of Beijing where he was forced to move after losing everything. Also he was living just above the means of survival selling painting to make ends meet while working on his story. on pg.518
- It was claimed that Cao story was of real life so since there was even less information on his life the story he wrote gave clear inside, especially of what happened to his family's wealth.
- It is tradition for Chinese novels to be very long. And since Cao's followed that tradition made it hard to summarize or even pull out the important parts.
- On pg. 519 it points out a similarities of the settings in the story and to where Cao lived in real life
- On pg. 521 it gives good insight on to the themes the story uses to become great and allows readers to stay intrigued.
- It is very interesting that the story had a genealogy to give information further into the beginnings of the characters and makes it even feel more of a true story with the added genealogy.
- At the bottom go pg. 527 it says "The accumulation of good and bad deeds that determines a soul's future lives". showing the relationship between Buddhism and the way the characters lived in the story.
- Beautiful poems on pg. 617 and through out the reading
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