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Dream of the Red Chamber Chapter 1
🎧 Production Note:
Original audiobook script by madefrom.hk
Narration produced exclusively for this project.
文字稿
00:00Dream of the Red Chamber
00:02Chapter 1
00:03Zhen Shi-yin awakens to the illusion of the spiritual stone.
00:09Jiu-yu-tsuan, adrift in the world, yearns for a noble lady.
00:14This story begins with the stone.
00:18In the age when the sky was torn and the earth lay broken,
00:22the goddess Nua refined countless stones to repair the heavens.
00:26When the work was complete, one stone was left unused.
00:32Unchosen and abandoned, it was cast aside at the foot of Greensickness Peak on Great Fable Mountain.
00:39For ages beyond counting, the stone lay exposed to wind and frost, sun and rain.
00:47Gradually it absorbed the vital essence of heaven and earth, the quiet purity of sun and moon.
00:53Over time, it awakened to awareness.
00:57It could think, remember, and move at will.
01:01Yet this awareness brought it no joy.
01:05Among all its thoughts, one regret consumed it.
01:09Though endowed with spiritual nature, it had not been chosen to mend the sky.
01:15Others had fulfilled their purpose.
01:17It alone remained whole, capable, and useless.
01:22One day, a Buddhist monk and a Deoist priest happened to pass by the mountain path.
01:29Seizing this rare chance, the stone addressed them earnestly.
01:34Revered masters, it said,
01:36I beg you to take me away from this desolate place and allow me to enter the world of men.
01:41I wish to experience prosperity and decline, love and resentment, union and separation.
01:49Only then may I know whether this awareness was granted in vain.
01:55The Deoist shook his head and replied,
01:58The world you long for is a realm of illusion and entanglement.
02:02Once entered, there is no escaping suffering.
02:06The stone answered,
02:08To remain here, knowing yet never living, is suffering enough.
02:13The monk examined the stone closely, and saw upon its surface faintly engraved characters.
02:20Records of desire and grievance, joy and sorrow, success and ruin, laughter and tears.
02:26He smiled and said,
02:29Since your fate inclines toward the red dust of the mortal world, we shall grant your wish.
02:36With a single gesture, he transformed the stone into a piece of clear, luminous jade.
02:43The inscriptions remained upon it, visible yet indistinct,
02:47as though revealing and concealing themselves at once.
02:51The monk and the Deoist took up the jade and vanished beyond the clouds.
02:57The reader should understand this from the outset.
03:00This tale is not written as a record of verifiable events.
03:05It is composed in false words, yet within those false words lies truth.
03:12Disguised as fiction, it speaks of real affairs.
03:16Those who read it seeking history will be misled.
03:19Those who dismiss it as fantasy will see nothing at all.
03:23The jade was later entrusted to a mortal man,
03:27who, moved by the story engraved upon it, recorded it faithfully.
03:32Yet knowing that truth spoken plainly is seldom believed,
03:36he concealed it with an illusion and presented it as a work of fiction.
03:41Thus this book came into being.
03:44Now let us turn to the human world.
03:47In Renching Lane, in the city of Gusu, there lived a man named Zhen Xi'in.
03:54His family was respectable, his means modest but sufficient,
03:59and his temperament gentle and withdrawn.
04:02He sought no advancement through officialdom,
04:05preferring instead a quiet life of reading and contemplation.
04:10His wife was kind and capable, and together they had a daughter, born late in life,
04:16whom they cherished deeply.
04:18The child was delicate, in health yet unusually perceptive.
04:23On the night of the lantern festival, Zhen Xi'in took his daughter out to admire the lights.
04:29The streets were crowded, music filled the air, and lanterns shone like constellations brought down to earth.
04:38In the confusion, the child was lost.
04:41Despite frantic searching and desperate cries, she was never found.
04:46From that day on, sorrow settled over the household.
04:52Zhen Xi'in bore his grief in silence, turning increasingly inward,
04:57as though seeking answers beyond the visible world.
05:01One afternoon, weary from thought, he fell asleep at his desk.
05:07In his dream, he found himself in a strange and desolate place.
05:12There stood the same Buddhist monk and Daoist priest, holding between them a scroll.
05:18When the monk unrolled it, Zhen Xi'in saw written upon it the record of prosperity and decline,
05:25joy and sorrow, union and separation, all the affairs of the world, laid bare.
05:31The monk said to him,
05:33All things under heaven follow the law of illusion.
05:37Prosperity must give way to decline, meeting must end in parting.
05:43Why cling so fiercely to what cannot last?
05:47Before Zhen Xi'in could reply, the scene dissolved.
05:51He awoke in alarm, his heart shaken.
05:55From that moment on, his attachments to worldly affairs began to loosen.
06:01Not long afterward, a scholar named Jiu Yuzun came to lodge nearby.
06:07Though learned and ambitious, he was poor and without prospects, drifting from place to place.
06:15Zhen Xi'in, recognizing his talent, treated him with kindness and support.
06:20One day, while conversing beneath the moon, Jiu Yuzun spoke with emotion of his frustration at being unable to serve
06:29the world.
06:31Zhen Xi'in encouraged him and introduced him to a noble family, hoping to aid his advancement.
06:38Yet worldly fortunes are as fickle as dreams.
06:43Soon after, Zhen Xi'in's household fell into ruin through fire and misfortune.
06:50Reduced to poverty, he wandered from place to place until, at last, he encountered the monk and the deoist once
06:58more.
06:59At that meeting, Zhen Xi'in finally understood the meaning of his dream.
07:05Casting aside his former life, he followed them into the mountains and vanished from the world of men.
07:11As for Jiu Yuzun, his fortunes would rise and fall and turn, his ambitions entangling him ever more deeply in
07:20the dust of the mortal world.
07:22Thus begins the story.
07:25Dream of the Red Chamber
07:28Chapter 1
07:30Ending
07:41Ending
07:57Ending
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