A Dream of Red Mansions is one of China's four classic literature pieces. The other three novels are Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of Three Kingdoms.

Written in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Red Mansions was originally titled The Story of the Stone.

The book is widely read in China. The tragic love story between its protagonists, Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, has been adapted into various kinds of local operas, TV dramas and movies, and is known to almost every household.

But Red Mansions is far from being just a love story. By closely following the story of the Jia Family, the book is a vivid description of the fall of feudal society.

The novel is not an intact work and was hand-copied by devoted readers. The most commonly found version nowadays has 120 chapters. It is generally believed that the first 80 chapters were written by Cao Xueqin and the rest 40 by Gao E. The parts written by Gao clearly lack the artistic value of the former chapters and in many places misinterpret the original author's intentions.

It is said that Cao Xueqin (1725-63), whose own family got caught up in the centre of the power struggles during the rule of emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng (reigned 1723-35) and Qianlong (1736-95), had finished the whole novel.

But the latter chapters were lost and some scholars blamed it on the extremely strict censorship at that time.

There are many other mysteries behind the book, such as the relationship between the characters and the people in the real life, as well as the author himself.

Red Mansions has been translated into 22 foreign languages and has hundreds of millions readers worldwide.

In order to honor their contribution in promoting the novel, the Chinese Redology Society issued awards to 22 translators of the book in 2003.

According to Hu Wenbin, the earliest foreign language edition of Red Mansions was the Korean edition, which was published in 1799. The earliest European translation was in German.

Esperanto and Arabic are newcomers in this big family of translations. The book was translated into the two languages just several years ago.

In Italy, Malaysia and Thailand, translation projects of the novel has been initiated.

Several translation editions are available in many languages. For example, the book has been translated into Japanese and Korean a dozen times each.

According to Hu, he has learned that the novel has also been published in Romania, Albania and Greece.

(China Daily April 4, 2006)