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Subject:Aha!
Posted By: rat Mon, Apr 21, 2014
The mark and the vase are of little value, but Daguanyuan is the name of a garden depicted on the vase and featured in China's most beloved and richest novel, The Story of the Stone, aka Dream of the Red Chamber. It is worth looking into.
As the book's greatest translator, David Hawkes, wrote in his introduction to his translation: "For although this is...an 'unfinished' novel, it was written (and rewritten) by a great artist with his very lifeblood. I have therefore assumed that whatever I find in it is there for a purpose and must be dealt with somehow or other. I cannot pretend always to have done so successfully, but if I can convey to the reader even a fraction of the pleasure this Chinese novel has given me, I shall not have lived in vain."
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