The Warning Voice
Authors: Cao Xueqin
THE STORY OF THE STONE
VOLUME 3
ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE
CAO XUEQIN
(1715?â63) was born into a family which for three generations held the office of Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in Nanking, a family so wealthy that they were able to entertain the Emperor Kangxi four times. But calamity overtook them and their property was confiscated. Cao Xueqin was living in poverty near Peking when he wrote his famous novel
The Story of the Stone
, of which this is the third volume. The first two volumes,
The Golden Days
and
The Crab-Flower Club
, and the last two volumes,
The Debt of Tears
and
The Dreamer Wakes
, are also published in Penguin Classics.
DAVID HAWKES
was Professor of Chinese at Oxford University from 1959 to 1971 and a Research Fellow of All Souls College, from 1973 to 1983. He now lives in retirement in Wales.
FOR JEAN
A CHINESE NOVEL BY
CAO XUEQIN
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME 3
âTHE WARNING VOICE'
TRANSLATED BY
DAVID HAWKES
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This translation first published 1980
17
Copyright © David Hawkes, 1980
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 9781101490280
Er-jie takes up residence in Prospect Garden;
And Xi-feng makes a disturbance in Ning-guo House
A scheming woman kills with a borrowed knife;
And one who has ceased to hope swallows gold and dies
Lin Dai-yu resuscitates the Poetry Club;
And Shi Xiang-yun tries her hand at a song lyric
Wang Xi-feng refuses to see a doctor;
And Brightie's wife seeks help with a betrothal
APPENDIX I
Sandal, Musk and Skybright
APPENDIX II
Suncloud, Sunset and Moonrise
APPENDIX III
You San-jie, Liu Xiang-lian and Jia Lian's Journeys
APPENDIX IV
Old Mrs You and the Zhangs
APPENDIX V
Fivey, Bao Er and The Mattress
Chinese proper names in this book are spelled in accordance with a system invented by the Chinese and used internationally, which is known by its Chinese name of
Pinyin
. A full explanation of this system will be found overleaf, but for the benefit of readers who find systems of spelling and pronunciation tedious and hard to follow a short list is given below of those letters whose Pinyin values are quite different from the sounds they normally represent in English, together with their approximate English equivalents. Mastery of this short list should ensure that names, even if mispronounced, are no longer unpronounceable.
c =
ts
q =
ch
x =
sh
z =
dz
zh =
j
CHINESE SYLLABLES
The syllables of Chinese are made up of one or more of the following elements:
1. an initial consonant (b.c.ch.d.f.g.h.j.k.l.m.n.p.q.r.s.sh.t.w.x.y.z.zh)
2. a semivowel (i or u)
3. an open vowel (a.e.i.o.u.ü),
or
a closed vowel (an.ang.en.eng.in.ing.ong.un),
or
a diphthong (ai.ao.ei.ou)
The combinations found are:
3 on its own (e.g.
e, an, ai
)
1 + 3 (e.g.
ba, xing, hao
)
1 + 2 + 3 (e.g.
xue, qiang, biao
)
INITIAL CONSONANTS
Apart from c =
ts
and z =
dz
and r, which is the Southern English
r
with a slight buzz added, the only initial consonants likely to give an English speaker much trouble are the two groups
j    q    x      and      zh      ch      sh
Both groups sound somewhat like English
j ch sh
; but whereas j q x are articulated much farther
forward
in the mouth than our
j ch sh
, the sounds zh ch sh are made in a âretroflexed' position much farther
back
. This means that to our ears j sounds halfway between our
j
and
dz
, q halfway between our
ch
and
ts
, and x halfway between our
sh
and
s
; whilst zh ch sh sound somewhat as
jr, chr shr
would do if all three combinations and not only the last one were found in English.
SEMIVOWELS
The semivowel i âpalatalizes' the preceding consonant: i.e. it makes a
y
sound after it like the
i
in
onion
(e.g. Jia Lian)
The semivowel u âlabializes' the preceding consonant: i.e. it makes a
w
sound after it, like the
u
in
assuages
(e.g. Ning-guo)
i. Open Vowels
a         is a long
ah
like
a
in
father
(e.g. Jia)
e         on its own or after any consonant other than y is like the sound in French
auf
or the
er, ir, ur
sound of Southern English (e.g. Gao E, Jia She)
e         after y or a semivowel is like the
e
of
egg
(e.g. Qin Bang-ye, Xue Pan)
i         after b.d.j.l.m.n.p.q.t.x.y is the long Italian
i
or English
ee
as in
see
(e.g. Nannie Li)
i         after zh.ch.sh.z.c.s.r. is a strangled sound somewhere between the
u
of
suppose
and a vocalized
r
(e.g. Shi-yin)