This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
Only by becoming a noble person can one sustain a noble family.
In “What Real High Society Is Like,” the writer Su Cen divides “high society” into three grades:
These are the nobility of the nobility, with both wealth and social standing.
The second grade: not rich but noble.
Though lacking in economic strength, they enjoy due respect in social life.
The third grade: rich but not noble.
Though they have money, they are merely called upstarts; even with countless riches, they do not merit the word “noble.”
She calls the first two the true aristocracy.
The best-known aristocratic family in China is none other than the Jia household in Dream of the Red Chamber.
1
Whenever we leaf through the luxury and pomp of the Rongguo and Ningguo mansions in Dream of the Red Chamber, we are always stirred by the swaying words of the book.
At first you marvel at the Jia family’s extravagance, dining to the sound of bells from rows of cauldrons, but on careful reflection you discover that true aristocracy has never been a pile of material things, but a spiritual abundance.
I remember the chapter in which Granny Liu enters the Grand View Garden for the first time. Facing countless jade plates of delicacies, the Lady Dowager and Aunt Xue have Wang Xifeng serve Granny Liu, and they talk about a simple home-style dish, “aubergine relish.”
“You take freshly picked aubergines, peel them, keep only the flesh, and dice it finely, then fry it in chicken fat. Then take chicken breast with fragrant mushrooms, fresh bamboo shoots, mushrooms, five-spice dried tofu and all kinds of dried fruits and nuts, dice them all, and simmer them in chicken stock. Reduce it with sesame oil, mix in some fermented-grain oil, put it in a porcelain jar and seal it tightly. When you want to eat it, take it out and mix it with fried chicken strips, and that’s it.”
The Jia household’s food had long gone beyond the worldly level of delicacies; what it valued was freshness and refinement, and what it pursued was the richness and variety of life.
So we see that the Lady Dowager was unmoved by the gold, silver and jewels that others presented as “tribute,” while the pile of “jujubes, pumpkins and wild greens” that Granny Liu brought on her second visit to the Rongguo mansion was a great hit in the Grand View Garden.
Still from the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
The modern scholar Chu Anping, from his observation of aristocratic society in China and Britain, once said:
“Every true aristocrat looks down on money… A true aristocrat is a truly noble person.”
It is not that true aristocrats do not love money or do not spend money, but that they understand the true meaning of material things; they care more about life itself and know how to make the best use of things.
When “the Lady Dowager twice feasts in the Grand View Garden,” she recalls that a good deal of exquisite “soft-mist gauze” is stored in the storeroom.
It was something even Wang Xifeng coveted when she saw it, but the Lady Dowager had it all brought out; besides using it to paste new window gauze in Daiyu’s Xiaoxiang Lodge, she herself picked a bolt in the colour of the sky after rain to make bed curtains.
Then she ordered Wang Xifeng that if there was any left over, she should give Granny Liu two bolts, or line it to make sleeveless jackets for the maids.
Finally the Lady Dowager remarked lightly: “Kept in storage for nothing, it will just go mouldy.”
In many people’s eyes, wealth and nobility are conjoined twins. But “wealth” has never had any necessary connection with “nobility.”
What truly gives an aristocrat nobility is not a luxurious exterior, but a heart that “does not rejoice over things”: able to enjoy the pleasures of life that material things bring, yet never becoming a slave to material desires.
2
When studying the great aristocratic families of ancient China, Mr. Qian Mu once remarked with feeling:
Those great families were in fact “mostly forgiving in their family tradition,” very generous, “especially sincere and kind in aspiration”; in their inner character, they all took sincerity, kindness and goodness as the highest principle in educating their sons.
Many who have read Dream of the Red Chamber dislike Jia Zheng.
But Master Cao rated him very highly:
Through the mouth of Lin Ruhai he says that Jia Zheng “is modest, respectful and kind-hearted, not one of those frivolous officials from pampered families.”
When the poor scholar Jia Yucun came to him for help with a letter from Lin Ruhai, Jia Zheng helped without hesitation. The book says:
“And this Jia Zheng loved scholars most of all; he treated the worthy with courtesy and stooped to those beneath him, aided the weak and helped those in danger, very much in the manner of his ancestors.”
This was not only Jia Zheng’s personal quality, but even more the consistent family tradition of the Jia household.
In Chapter 40 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the Lady Dowager takes Granny Liu around the Grand View Garden, facing this poor old woman from the countryside who was several years older than herself.
Still from the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
Far from showing the slightest disdain, the Lady Dowager looked on Granny Liu with special favour because of her humour, wisdom and warm charm.
“I was just wanting an old person full of old tales to chat with. Invite her in so I can see her.”
The Lady Dowager led Granny Liu to every one of the places where her grandsons and granddaughters lived, even to the Green Lattice Nunnery where Miaoyu practised her religion, and showed her everything.
The Lady Dowager’s warmth came not only from her respect for someone of her own age, but even more from the upbringing rooted deep in her heart.
Another time, at the Qingxu Temple, a little Daoist novice accidentally bumped into Xifeng and was frightened out of his wits amid cries of “Beat him, beat him!”
But when the Lady Dowager saw this, she hastily said: “Quickly bring the child here, don’t frighten him. Children of humble families are all pampered and spoiled; where would they have seen such a display? If he is frightened, it would be a real pity, and wouldn’t his father and mother be heartbroken?”
“Treat the elders of others as you treat your own elders, and the young of others as you treat your own young.” Compassion and kindness are the true wealth of an aristocrat.
Still from the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
The master of Chinese classical learning Mou Zongsan once told us:
Aristocrats have an aristocratic upbringing, and this “upbringing” is the most crucial point that distinguishes aristocrats from ordinary people: taste, way of life, cultural refinement. Even though we have all been to university now, we do not necessarily have that kind of upbringing; it is a very different inner requirement.
The rich are defined by material possessions, but aristocrats must be spiritually abundant.
3
Su Shi wrote in “Inscription for the Hall of Three Pagoda Trees”: “Loyalty and kindness pass down the family for long; poetry and books carry on through the generations.”
Besides holding fast to an elegant family tradition, the most important characteristic of aristocratic families is that they attach extreme importance to the education of their descendants.
Baochai, a merchant’s daughter, always had the phrase “our ancestors were also a family of scholars” on her lips, afraid that others would think her family lacked a good upbringing.
The reason is simply that a merchant family, however rich, could not be called aristocracy.
Reading can not only give you higher social status, it is also a cultivation of one’s culture and upbringing.
The saying “wealth does not last beyond three generations” holds because no amount of wealth can buy spiritual nobility.
Only reading can allow aristocratic families to be passed down from generation to generation.
When I read Dream of the Red Chamber as a child and saw Jia Baoyu forced by Jia Zheng to study, I sympathized and rather resented Jia Zheng’s tyranny and domineering.
When I read the novel again as an adult and saw how the once vast Jiangnan Imperial Textile Commission family behind Master Cao collapsed overnight, I suddenly understood why Dream of the Red Chamber has a background of such desolation.
Still from the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
For that crowd of pleasure-seeking “rich second generation” in the novel may well be what Master Cao witnessed with his own eyes as a child.
Reading is seen by many as one of the “principal contradictions” in the book. But from Cao Xueqin’s assessment of Jia Zheng we can see that he never opposed reading.
As the second grandson of the Duke of Rongguo, Jia Zheng seems stuffy, but having “loved reading passionately since childhood,” he always conducted himself as a modest and courteous gentleman.
This forms a sharp contrast with his elder brother Jia She, who relied on his ancestors’ protection and became a dissolute playboy.
Still from the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
Later Jia Zheng not only became the most eminent figurehead of the Rongguo and Ningguo mansions, but was also praised for being refined, gentle and cultivated.
Jia Zheng was not oppressing the child; he was showing the child the meaning of reading by his own example. This is a heritage of the aristocracy, and even more a mission of being an aristocrat.
The writer Wu Guanqi says in the essay “What Is the True Aristocratic Spirit”:
“The true aristocratic spirit is, first and foremost, cultural upbringing: resisting the temptations of materialism, not taking pleasure as the aim of life, and cultivating noble moral sentiments and cultural spirit.”
So we finally understand why the “endowment of both good and evil” that appears in Chapter 2 of Dream of the Red Chamber is regarded as the general outline of the whole book.
Because Master Cao wanted to tell us a very clear truth:
The shaping of character is mostly guided and formed in the family environment after birth.
Family tradition and household customs are far, far more important than individual talent and ability.
One reads to understand principles, one understands principles to cultivate oneself, and cultivating oneself is learning to be a person.
Only by becoming a noble person can one sustain a noble family.
Still from the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber
Su Cen says: “The whole of Dream of the Red Chamber is really a collective biography of the aristocratic families of a society, with all kinds of sons of aristocratic and non-aristocratic families coming and going, playing out a ukiyo-e picture of the human world.”
Once you understand Dream of the Red Chamber, you will understand what true Chinese aristocracy is.
Aristocracy is a spirit, and it should also be a totem in the heart of every Chinese person.
