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Preface 1
Reflection as an Approach to a Novel of Reflections
On the eve of my trip to Sweden twelve years ago, I wrote the article “Wandering Around the World with Cao Xueqin and Nie Gannu on My Back.” In it I mentioned that reading Dream of the Red Chamber was part of my itinerant life and that those innocent, clean boys and girls in the novel were my friends day and night. I often congratulated myself that I was born after Dream of the Red Chamber had come into existence, otherwise my spiritual life would definitely have been much less interesting. I read Dream of the Red Chamber in a way that was quite different from the way I read other books, with no intention whatsoever to do research or to produce scholarship. I read it simply because I enjoyed reading it and would feel happy if I was able to glean some thought-provoking messages along the way. I read Dream of the Red Chamber simply to satisfy a need in my spiritual life.
Probably due to this particular approach, I rarely read scholarly works on Dream of the Red Chamber, since I only enjoyed reading the novel itself.