7. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound?

[John]

7. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character? Maybe there's a particular comment that states the book's thematic concerns?

[[deleted user]]

didn't find anything that stood out in this volume

[Anna]

Bao-yu makes several comments about how clever women are especially after hearing about the two actresses who played husband and wife in the plays and their love for each other even when separated by death.

[Jen]

I didn't highlight anything this volume.

[Pip]

The interminable histrionics between Bao-Yu and Dai-Yu are exemplified when B-Y says "If I were to die now, I should die with a grievance, and all the masses and exorcisms in the world wouldn't lay my ghost. Only when you explained what your reason was for ignoring me should i cease form haunting you and be reborn into another life". This reminded me of how, even now, Chinese feel that ghosts are all around them. Another interesting quote was B-Y again discussing the building of temples, when he says "I hate the silly, senseless way in which vulgar people offer worship and build temples to gods they know nothing about. Ignorant old men and women with to much money to spend to hear rhe name of some god or another - they've no idea who it is, but the mere fact that they've heard it from the lips of some ballad-singer or story-teller seems to them incontrovertible proof of the god's existence - and go founding temples in which these fictitious deities can be worshipped. No prizes for guessing why I thought this quite contemporary!