Reflections on Dream of the Red Chamber By Liu Zaifu

Sometimes homeland is a deep well that suddenly appears in a desert, a small stream that suddenly appears in the wilderness, and a bonfire that suddenly appears in a dark night; at other times it is a sky that allows me to fly freely, a thoroughfare that allows me to travel freely, a treasure trove from which I can search for wisdom past and present. Not just the hills and mountains behind my grandmother’s tomb, homeland is life, a refuge for life, and a vehicle that carries your longings, tears, sorrows, and happiness. For Goethe’s Werther, his homeland is a girl named Lotte, a girl who imbues everything Werther sees with poetry and changes the mundane into dreams and music. Werther wanders everywhere looking for a homeland for his feelings. This homeland is Lotte, just as Lin Daiyu is Jia Baoyu’s homeland. As soon as Lin Daiyu dies, Jia Baoyu’s soul is at a complete loss.

Cao Xueqin redefines the meaning of homeland in the very first chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber. He pushes homeland far, far back, all the way to the Rock of Rebirth on the bank of the Magic River, to the immense void in which Nuwa patched up the sky eons ago, to the absolute silence of a transcendental world, and to the faraway depths of white clouds and the even more faraway places where there were no clouds, making us aware of the long history of life and, furthermore, of our status as transient travelers on earth. Since we are only transient travelers, we should not busy ourselves with trying to possess things or fighting over things. Nor should we “take an alien land as the homeland.”

3.

Like the greatest poets and writers, such as Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Goethe, Cao Xueqin reminds me of a vast river in my homeland. Meanwhile, I remain a child who always tries to scoop up some water from the river. Without the nourishment from these rivers, I would never have grown up. It is precisely because I approach these rivers from time to time that my life has not dried up or withered. Since I left China, I have moved farther and farther away from it on the one hand and, on the other hand, I have moved closer and closer to it. I have moved farther and farther away from those nightmares as I have moved closer and closer to the “vast river of the homeland” and the cradle of my childhood.