The book I have been reading all my life is A Dream of Red Mansions, which I read as a teenager, as a youth and will continue to read in the future. I have a soft spot for it. There are countless books commenting on A Dream of Red Mansions in ancient and modern times, among which there are many works by everyone. Why did you introduce this? As can be seen from the above summary, this is a style similar to the speech draft, which is different from the general comment style. The author is Bai Xianyong. 1937, from Guilin, Guangxi. He is a novelist, essayist, critic and playwright. His father is a descendant of Bai Chongxi, a famous military commander, and Bai Chongxi later became a great literary master. When Bai Xianyong was teaching in the East Asian Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara, he specially set up a course to teach students to read A Dream of Red Mansions, which lasted for more than 20 years. In 20 14, he was invited to return to his alma mater, Taiwan Province Provincial University, to offer a general course on Introduction to Dream of Red Mansions for three semesters. The book A Dream of Red Mansions was written by Bai Xianyong after years of telling Chinese and foreign students how to read the teaching draft of A Dream of Red Mansions. It is easy to read, and at the same time it is very smooth and profound.

Some people and a book are meant to be.

What is the fate of Bai Xianyong and a Dream of Red Mansions? When Bai Xianyong was 7 years old, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and could not go to school. He spent most of his childhood alone. We can imagine that such a sensitive and lonely child, hiding alone in the house, can only be accompanied by books, but fortunately there are books. He read many China folk stories and classical literature. Among the books he has read, A Dream of Red Mansions is a book he has read all his life, and it will always be on his desk.

After his mother died, Bai Xianyong went to the writer's studio of the University of Iowa to study literary theory and creative research. It can be said that he has been doing work related to literary creation all his life. He spent most of his life in the United States, using the writing skills of modern western literature to write China's traditional way of life, especially the stories of characters in the transition from the old to the new. His unique educational background, life experience and perspective make his works always show deep feelings for the country, full of the desolation of historical rise and fall and the vicissitudes of the world.

Bai Xianyong read A Dream of Red Mansions, as a teenager, as a teenager and as an old man. In A Dream of Red Mansions, he saw himself, all beings, history and the spiritual destination of China people. He said:

? A Dream of Red Mansions is divided into two volumes with 120 chapters, which correspond to the 120 chapters of Cao Xueqin's Dream of Red Mansions. Each chapter explains the contents of the corresponding chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions and Bai Xianyong's comments on the contents of the chapter. Readers who are familiar with A Dream of Red Mansions are familiar with the content of the story, but from Bai Xianyong's comments, we can judge the unique metaphysical things. Bai Xianyong said that Cao Xueqin's Dream of Red Mansions is a gray line of grass snakes, which indicates a thousand miles; The structure of the whole Dream of Red Mansions is very ingenious, and the ending has long been thought out, but the plot is advanced step by step, so that readers can slowly discover the meaning behind a plot or character setting in the process of reading. I remember seeing a dream of red mansions in junior high school. Just like reading detective stories, I found that the fate of a certain character had been hinted at from the beginning. Then I suddenly realized that I had guessed right, and I was as excited as solving a case.

A Dream of Red Mansions is also a book that I have read almost all my life. Bai Xianyong saw affection and ruthlessness in the world of mortals in A Dream of Red Mansions, and also saw various mysterious arrangements in his seemingly accidental life. Inspired by Bai Xianyong's careful reading of A Dream of Red Mansions, I savored the architecture built by Cao Xueqin for A Dream of Red Mansions and found that there are four floors:

The first floor is the world where Jia Baoyu and his sisters, Jia Mu, ladies, Wang Xifeng, servants, Jia Zheng, Jia She and others live. It is the romantic, streamer and vicissitudes of Daguan Garden, Guo Rongfu and Ningguo House. This is a wonderful human story.

The second layer is a dreamland, which only people like Jia Baoyu can get from dreams. He listened to A Dream of Red Mansions, which predicted his personal fate, and had the opportunity to know the life trend of Jinling women. He didn't understand the first time, but by the second time, he had fully understood and sighed. The second floor overlooks the stories on the first floor, which means that everything on the first floor is arranged on the second floor.

On the third floor, there is a world where vast Buddhist monks and ethereal real people live, one Buddha at a time. They are talking about the world of mortals under the green ridge peak. I didn't expect to be heard by a stone next to me, so I moved my heart and wanted to take a walk in the world of mortals. This stone was left by the goddess of mending heaven, but it has a new mission-mending heaven. After the stone was touched with aura, it became a god, and it became a waiter of the Red Defect Palace Shenying. Every day, a crimson pearl fairy grass was watered by the Linghe River next to Sansheng Stone. Finally, Xiancao became a crimson pearl fairy. The waiter Shen Ying descended to rob him, and the crimson pearl fairy followed him to the world of mortals to repay her kindness with tears. So there are stories of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu on the first and second floors. What happened on the second floor was arranged on the third floor.

The fourth floor is about the completion of the Lingshi robbery and the return to the third world. A few generations later, an empty Taoist passed by Geng Qingfeng and saw many words carved on the lingshi. This is A Dream of Red Mansions. He copied these words and gave them to Mr. Cao Xueqin in the mourning hall. Cao Xueqin wrote a book based on them. That is, Cao Xueqin recorded all the stories of these three layers and became A Dream of Red Mansions.

Cao Xueqin lives in the real world on the first floor. The building went round and round, end to end and returned to the first floor, which was a complete success.

This unique layout reminds people of modern films such as Inception and Tenet. Mr. Cao Xueqin used it more than 300 years ago.

At the end, Cao Xueqin seems to deny that A Dream of Red Mansions is a "serious" work:

At first glance, so ironic, so ironic, so disillusioned, is this really Cao Xueqin's sincerity? Not exactly.

Great love without love, great truth without truth, great love without pity.

In A Dream of Red Mansions, the author Cao Xueqin has a very profound analysis of the sentimentality and ruthlessness of the world, and is also full of deep tolerance, love, sympathy and pity. I think Bai Xianyong has been reading A Dream of Red Mansions all his life. He must have seen himself in Jia Baoyu, sensitive and affectionate, trapped in the secular world and finally freed himself. In the life and death of everyone in the Grand View Garden, he saw the ruthlessness and affection of the world. Similarly, with love and mercy to heaven and earth, to all beings, he also used the couplets he saw in a temple in Zhangye to remind us: