The Dream of the Red Chamber 红楼梦

Hong Lou Meng is internationally the best known of China's literary masterpieces. Dream of the Red Chamber, as the title is now most often rendered in English, has resonance with many readers, even those unfamiliar with Chinese literature. More importantly, this long, involved, imaginative romance is arguably the greatest of Chinese novels - and also the most vigorously discussed. Dream of the Red Chamber has attracted interminable controversy. Because of the mystery of its authorship - obscured by the different versions of the novel and by the veil of time - because of the novel's ability to conjure the historical period when it was written, because of the intricacy of its story-telling, and, most importantly, because of its artistic quality, which is unanimously acclaimed, the controversy surrounding it has continued for more than two centuries.
Were the author's tomb tO be discovered in the mountains of Beijin9’S far suburbs and a wav f．ound to divine his tnoughtS or reconstitute his original manu* in its entirety,perhaps the enigma that surrounds Dream of the Red Chamber could be deciphered and the passionate debate that surrounds the work put to rest．But then again，perhaps It could not．Even Yu Pingb0，the great twentieth．century literary specialist who devoted his life tO the work，remarked，“We would not be able tO disentangle the realm of reality from the realm of the imaginary even if Cao Xueqin himself came back from the grave."