# Zhiyanzhai

Zhiyanzhai (Chinese: 脂硯齋/脂砚斋; literally: "Rouge Inkstone Studio", sometimes translated as Red Inkstone or Rouge Inkstone) was the pseudonym of an early and mysterious commentator of the 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber.

## Quotes

* 若云雪芹披阅增删，然则开卷至此这一篇楔子又系谁撰？足见作者之笔狡猾之甚。后文如此者不少。这正是作者用画家烟云模糊处，观者万不可被作者瞒蔽了去，方是巨眼。
** It says that Xueqin worked on this book and revised it many times. In that case, who wrote all this preliminary section up to here? Evidently this is just the author playing a trick on us. He resorts to this sort of device in many other places besides this one. It's what painters call the "mist and cloud" technique. The reader, if he is wise, will be very careful not to be taken in by it.
*** Comment in the 1754 jiaxu manuscript on a passage in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, which established Cao Xueqin as the book's author, as quoted in "The Translator, the Mirror, and the Dream—Some Observations on a New Theory" by David Hawkes, published in Renditions 13 (Spring 1980), p. 19
* Persons whom I saw thirty years ago and with whom I was intimate now appear on the page, and this compels me to declare that The Story of the Stone is a book of the deepest feelings and the truest words. Unless, however, one has in fact experienced such events or been deluded by such feelings, reading it is like "chewing wax" absentmindedly, never understanding the miraculous wonders of what one has witnessed.
** Comment in the 1760 manuscript of Dream of the Red Chamber, as quoted by Anthony C. Yu in Rereading the Stone (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 7
* Only one who understood the message of this book could have the hot and bitter tears with which to finish it. Xueqin, having run out of tears, departed this life on New Year's Eve of the year ren-wu (12 February 1763) leaving this book unfinished. I have wept so much for Xueqin that I fear I too shall soon run out of tears. I often wish that I could find where that Greensickness Peak is so that I could ask Brother Stone about his story. What a pity there is no scabby-headed monk to take me there! If only the Creator would produce another Xueqin and another Red Inkstone to complete this book, how happy the two of us would be, down there together in the World of Shades!
** Comment dated September 1764 in the Nanking manuscript of The Story of the Stone discovered in 1927 (a copy of the original, made in 1754) next to the lines "Pages full of idle words / Penned with hot and bitter tears", as quoted by David Hawkes in The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days (Penguin, 1973), p. 35, and in The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice (Penguin, 1980), p. 14; also quoted by Liu Zaifu in Reflections on "Dream of the Red Chamber", trans. Shu Yunzhong (Cambria Press, 2008), p. 197.
* It is most likely that the author was the only one who owed and paid a debt of tears. I know something about this but not all the details.
** Note in the first chapter of an 1814 version of Dream of the Red Chamber, as quoted by Liu Zaifu in Reflections on "Dream of the Red Chamber", trans. Shu Yunzhong (Cambria Press, 2008), p. 197
* By resorting to illusions, the supreme expression of love is attained. Nothing can compare to it.
** As quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 159
* Do you still remember about that little gold charm? Objects bring back their memories. You tear my heart!
** A commentary on an episode in Chapter 8 of the Dream of the Red Chamber, trans. David Hawkes in The Story of the Stone, Vol. I (Penguin, 1973), p. 34, quoted by Gideon Shelach-Lavi in "Memory, Amnesia and the Formation of Identity Symbols in China", published in Memory and Agency in Ancient China (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
* Yet another of these useless, pestilential little creatures! All his life the author has suffered from his susceptibility to this kind of female. The commentator has suffered all his life too from the same weakness. Other people derive pleasure from encountering such characters in their reading, but I, because of the harm they have done me in real life, derive only pain. The susceptible author is extremely grateful for the comment!
** Comment on a scene involving Baoyu with the maid Number Four in chapter 21, as reported and quoted by John Minford in Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, ed. Kerry Brown, Vol. III (Berkshire Publishing Group, 2017), p. 1109
* To be enlightened is to obliterate all self-consciousness [tzu-liao, lit., "finish off oneself"]. What need is there to make others understand? This shows precisely that he has not yet attained real awakening and final enlightenment.
** Comment on Baoyu in chapter 22, as quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 221.
* The best parts of this book grow out of poems and song lyrics.
** Comment on the scene in chapter 25 in which Baoyu meets Hsiao-hung for the second time, as reported and quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), footnote on p. 168
* This grand book narrates a dream, Baoyu's affections are a dream, Jia Rui's lust is a dream, Qin Keqing's family calculations are a dream... What's more these criticisms are written in a dream...
** Margin note in chapter 48, "when Baochai is amused at Caltrop writing poetry in her dream-sleep", as quoted and reported in Men and Women in Qing China: Gender in The Red Chamber by Louise P. Edwards (E.J. Brill, 1994), p. 13; partially quoted in Reading Dream of the Red Chamber: A Companion to Cao Xueqin's Masterpiece by Ronald R. Gray (McFarland, 2022), p. 223.
* Later I came across the following in the "Final Listing [of the Characters' Feelings]": Baoyu is "feeling not-feeling," Daiyu is "feeling feeling." These epithets are naturally assessments of their perversity and obsessiveness. And these summary judgments too are illogical and paradoxical. Superb indeed!
** As quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 210
** Wai-yee Li explains the "Final Listing" thus: «According to Red Inkstone, the last chapter of Hung-lou meng [in Cao Xueqin's original conception of the book] includes the "Final Listing of the Characters' Feelings" made up by [the fairy goddess] Disenchantment, in which the major characters of the book are classified and graded according to the depth, scope, and nature of their feelings. This last chapter is unfortunately now lost to us.» (Enchantment and Disenchantment, p. 202)
* The entire Story of the Stone is plausible and reasonable, and each event or each word is judiciously put down, but this sort of absurd talk now and then appears too. Is the author being deliberately playful and whimsical? Here he is having his good laugh, unlike [authors of] other books in which "ghostly talk" [kuei-hua] is undertaken in all seriousness.
** As quoted in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature by Wai-yee Li (Princeton University Press, 1993), footnote on p. 240
* [Cao Xueqin discharged] all his shame, resentment or regrets in life through the stone (生惭恨).
** As quoted in "Novel Ridens in Ming-Qing Fiction: Pathetic Humor in and of Honglou Meng" by Weihe Wu, Ph.D. Thesis (University of Washington, 1999), p. 142, as reported in Wandering Between Two Worlds by Ronald R. Gray (Peter Lang, 2014), footnote on p. 125

## Attributed

* 字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常 。
** Words on the paper mix with blood, The extraordinary labor of ten years!
** Poem in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, present in its 1754 jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本), attributed to Zhiyanzhai in Zhou Ruchang's Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181

## Quotes about Zhiyanzhai

* [Hu Shi] argued that Zhiyanzhai was none other than the author, Cao Xueqin himself. He based this [...] theory on the notion that Honglou meng is Cao Xueqin's autobiography and Cao himself is represented by Baoyu. Baoyu liked to eat cosmetics [...] and the phrase Zhiyanzhai sounds very similar to the phrase 'eat rouge' (chi yanzhi).
** Louise P. Edwards, Men & Women in Qing China (University of Hawaii Press, 2001), p. 12
* Though the drift of Red Inkstone's remarks does not amount to a total disavowal of Honglou meng as a work of fiction, Red Inkstone certainly tends to single out certain parts of the novel for praise because 'there was really such a person' or 'this was what actually happened.' The commentary, valuable as it is, thus also serves to convert fiction to history, and the modern student should use it with discretion.
** Anthony C. Yu, as quoted in Wandering Between Two Worlds by Ronald R. Gray (Peter Lang, 2014), footnote on p. xix

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Zhiyanzhai on Wikipedia
* Commentaries on the Novel at Dream of the Red Chamber: Afterlives – University of Minnesota