Introduction and Part I: Joys of the Wedding Chamber Summary and Analysis

The book opens by putting the original book and its author in their historical and literary context. The introduction describes "Six Records" as a story written according to categories, instead of incorporating all of those categories into one life-encompassing narrative. It becomes a work that describes in better detail than most literary works of the time what it was to live in the daily realities of 19th-Century China. Aspects like what it was like to be in love in a culture of arranged marriages and courtesans, and the daily activities of a woman make up the details of the stories the book tells. As love stories from that era in China are rare, it became a national favorite for that reason.

The reader also learns...