红楼梦 A Dream of Red Mansions

by Cao Xueqin

One of the four classic novels of ancient China, A Dream of Red Mansions depicts the intertwining lives of a noble family in vivid detail, focusing on the tragic love story of Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu, and Xue Baochai. All the splendor and luxury of the most sophisticated refinements hide the fateful downfall of the Jia family and three other once thriving feudal aristocratic families. This book is an abridged version of the novel and contain 20 stories that are each approximately 3,000 characters in length or shorter. All the stories are limited to the 2,500 characters required by HSK Level 5. By reading the classics, Chinese language learners can further improve their reading ability and get a better understanding of Chinese culture. In this book, each story is annotated with pinyin. A "pinyin-invisible card" is provided so that readers who want to read the stories without referring to pinyin can cover it.

Genres: China

261 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Xueqin Cao (Chinese: 曹雪芹; pinyin: Cáo Xuěqín; Wade–Giles: Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in, 1715 or 1724 — 1763 or 1764) was the pseudonym of a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
It has been suggested that his given name was Zhan Cao (曹霑) and his courtesy name is Mengruan (夢阮; 梦阮; literally "Dream about Ruan" or "Dream of Ruan")[...]

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this beter than I did. Having read another in this series that was a level below. I thought I'd try this one. Hongloumeng is my favourite novel of all time. I've read it translated, dual language, lianhuanhua, and lots of different kids versions. The reason I'm giving this a 3 out of 5 is it just isn't a good representation of the story. Rather than retell in detail different parts of the story, it does very general overview which removes all the interesting parts and characterisation. Definitely not the way I would recommend reading this story. I got about 2/3rds of the way through. There is at least good vocabularly help, overview and cultural context.