Beautiful Chinese Music【19】Traditional【Song of The Burial of Flowers】

紅樓夢 "A Dream of Red Mansions"
Also called "Story of the Stone (Shitouji 石頭記)", this novel written by Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1715--1763) is said to be the greatest masterpiece of Chinese fiction. A wide branched scholarship does not consent about the main theme of this novel, should it bea novel of sentiment, of Daoist-Buddhist enlightenment, of social observation, of the decay of an aristocratic familiy, or even a veiled attack on Manchu rule. The frame of the novel is the contest of a Buddhist and a Daoist priest who make be born a young noble boy called Jia Baoyu 賈寶玉 and his girl cousin Lin Daiyu 林黛玉. With a loving detail describing the life of the two cousins in a huge noble mansion, between gardens and palaces, the red thread is the triangular love between Baoyu, Daiyu and a second girl cousin called Xue Baochai 薛寶釵 that is of more plumper character than the ever sick Daiyu. Switching between their life, the divine world and dreams, Baoyu becomes deranged after the disappearance of a stone (the origin of the second title) he had in his mouth when he was born. Not knowing, his love Daiyu died, he is tricked to marrying Baochai. Becoming aware of being tricked, Baoyu leaves the world of the "red dust" and becomes a monk. With hundreds of persons and their stories, paralleling the life and feelings of servants to the life of the main persons, the story is very complex and full of symbolisms, but very interesting and convincing for its encyclopedic character, depicting the life of a noble familiy in the 18th century Qing China 清.

Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 1715--63, Chinese novelist. He is the author of Story of the Stone (or A Dream of Red Mansions), which is considered China's greatest novel. After his wealthy and prominent family fell victim to an imperial purge in 1728, Ts'ao's father managed to avoid enslavement and resettled them in Beijing. There Ts'ao, poverty-stricken, worked on his semiautobiographical novel, which remained unfinished at his death. Edited and completed by Kao E (1740--c.1815), it is a masterful chronicle of the decline of a distinguished family, focusing on a triangular romance among the three main characters. The witty narrative, rich in naturalistic detail, emphasizes metaphysical themes of transience and the risks of passionate desire.

Beautiful Chinese Music Traditional Playlist
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B2CFDC94ED219184

LYRICS: 葬花吟

花謝花飛花滿天，紅消香斷有誰憐？

遊絲軟系飄春榭，落絮輕沾撲繡簾。

明媚鮮妍能幾時？一朝飄泊難尋覓。

花開易見落難尋，階前愁殺葬花人。

獨倚花鋤偷灑淚，灑上空枝見血痕。

願奴肋下生雙翼，隨花飛到天盡頭。

爾今死去儂收葬，未卜儂身何日喪？

儂今葬花人笑痴，他年葬儂知是誰？

天盡頭，何處有香丘？

天盡頭，何處有香丘？

試看春殘花漸落，便是紅顏老死時。

一朝春盡紅顏老，花落人亡兩不知！

花落人亡兩不知！