Join us Saturday 5/28 11am ET for #ReadingTheStone Chat 8 for discussion of HLM’s “Grand Prospect Garden” (大觀園 daguanyuan), translating proper names, and any questions/comments through Ch18.

Here is a wonderful introduction by Anne Sytske Keijser (one of the Dutch translators of HLM), to editions of Dream of the Red Chamber in the holdings of Leiden University Library Special Collections, including this detailed map of Grand Prospect Garden (大觀園 daguanyuan), a 1908 stone lithographic print by 陸子常 Lu Zichang and published by 求不負齋 Qiubufu Zhai.

This 大觀園精細全圖 “Detailed and Full Map of the Prospect Garden” is a depiction of the garden…drawn by 陸子常 Lu Zichang, about whom not much is known. His map is not a mere schematic rendering of the garden with just the buildings, but a carefully drawn semi-realistic impression of what the garden might have looked like. The garden is presented as a microcosmos that is not connected to the Rong mansion that it was part of. The self-contained world of the garden as imagined by Lu Zichang is surrounded by nature: we can see hills and trees in the distance, there is nothing to indicate that the garden was part of a mansion in urban Beijing. The garden is empty of people so that readers are free to project any scene from the novel that is situated in the garden onto the map.

Read the full piece here: https://leidenspecialcollectionsblog.nl/articles/imagining-a-garden-lu-zichangs-map-of-the-prospect-garden?utm_source=pocket_mylist#50286