Tucson's "A Detailed Description of the Red Mansion": What is the meaning of Daiyu's funeral

Tucson's "A Detailed Description of the Red Mansion": What is the meaning of Daiyu's burial of flowers Editor's note of "A Detailed Description of the Red Mansion": The song and music of the 87 version of Dream of Red Mansions TV series is by the famous composer Wang Liping...

Editor's note of "A Dream of Red Mansions":

The songs and music of the 87 version of the TV series Dream of Red Mansions were written by the famous composer Wang Liping based on the lyrics of Cao Xueqin's "The Twelve Hairpins of Jinling" and took more than four years to write. Among them, "The Song of the Burial Flowers" took the musician almost two years. Its songs, performed by Chen Li, a music wizard, have almost become eternal songs in the hearts of fans.

In order to recreate the beauty of the Red Mansions songs, the Tucson Huasheng Chorus in Arizona and the Confucius Institute at the University of Arizona jointly organized the 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival Concert of Dreams of Red Mansions (held on September 20 and September 21). Wang Liping and Chen Li will attend the concert, and Chen Li will also serve as the lead singer of the chorus. This is the first time Chen Li has performed the song of Red Mansions since the TV series "Dream of Red Mansions" was aired in 1987.

In view of the lack of understanding of the story of Dream of Red Mansions by overseas audiences, this column specially invites experts to introduce and comment on the story and characters of Red Mansions, hoping that this will attract more Chinese friends.

>Why is Daiyu buried with flowers?

>Tucang Huiming

Whenever Daiyu is mentioned, a frail girl appears in front of people's eyes. She comes with a hoe, digs a hole, lays down on a few petals of flowers and leaves, stretches her waist when tired, and sheds a few tears.

There are so many sad things in this world, why is this beautiful woman so moved by such things as falling flowers? People all express their own opinions and often think they are unique.

What everyone saw was the death of her mother, the loneliness in a new place, and the sentimental temperament that caused Daiyu to miss others because of flowers. In fact, the plot is subordinate to the content. Whether a literary work is attractive or not depends not only on the specific description, but also on the author's overall grasp of the frame content of the work. Often once the framework is established, the characters inside come alive.

Before writing Red Mansions, what was the story framework in Cao Xueqin’s mind? I guess he was trying to restore the original history of that time by analyzing the rise and fall of several families in front of him. The background of the Red Mansion seems familiar to us: the Qing Dynasty ruled the land of China and has gone from prosperity to decline. The lower-class peasants and poor people as well as the small landowners with good family backgrounds were annexed by the powerful and powerful, and their land and family property were plundered. Lin Daiyu's family, including Ning Rong in the future, described in current language, was "land reserve" by the powerful, causing their family to be ruined.

Daiyu is a young woman who has only read the "Four Books". It is not convenient for her to come out with grand speeches complaining about the social system, but it is still in line with her status to express grievances. Therefore, in the eyes of outsiders, she is just a sister Lin who "sits in silence with nothing to do, either frowning or sighing, and she doesn't know why, and often bursts into tears."

But in fact, listen to her tears when burying the flowers, and she actually complained like this: "In March, the fragrant nest has just been built, and the swallows in the beams are so ruthless! Although the flowers can be pecked next year, they will not let people go. The empty nest has fallen. Three hundred and sixty days a year, the wind, the sword, the frost, the sword. How long can the bright and beautiful flowers last? It is hard to find them once they wander." Is this Sister Lin complaining about the cold world? The whole story is Cao Xueqin's feelings about the rise and fall of a family or a social regime. In other words, it is Miss Lin who is deeply saddened, but behind it are the sentiments and chants of those literati who adhere to Chinese tradition.

Although Chinese literati have no skills, they are willing to be noble at all times and "don't eat the food that comes after sighing." Therefore, Cao Xueqin used Daiyu's sigh of burying flowers to sing about her own noble nature of "coming and going clean again, not letting dirt fall into ditches." But this kind of taste is difficult for readers who only like Sister Lin's beauty and beauty to understand.

Judging from the plot of burying flowers in the Red Mansion, it was originally a youthful love affair between Daiyu and Baoyu's childhood sweethearts, picking up fallen flowers, but later evolved into "The souls of flowers and birds are always hard to keep, and the birds are speechless and the flowers are ashamed. May I have wings today and fly to the end of the sky with the flowers." In the end, even the resentful sister Lin expressed it when she buried the flowers. "A lot goes out, but little comes in. If we are not thrifty now, we will not be able to catch up with anything else." The sighs all reveal the common people's hope for tradition and beauty. This is no longer the case that love can contain sodium.

Lin Daiyu mournfully expressed her beauty and love with the funeral flowers. Such deep friendship and deep sorrow may not be in line with the era in which readers lived. However, people in the future can always remember Sister Lin’s smile and frown, because her unique views on love, Guan Yunchang’s loyalty and Confucius’ benevolence have formed a unique page of Chinese traditional culture.

(For the plot of burying flowers, please refer to Chapter 23\27\62 of "A Dream of Red Mansions")