《红楼梦里的生活美学》来自：顾春芳教授

The first time when i met with Professor Gu may be originate from the encounter of her book of Chekhov's rose. Inside the book, Gu accounts Chekhov as a excellent and diligent gardener for his regular cutting and fixing on his land. Gu said" Chekhov borned in the countryside, which inspired him to create his works with the real rural thinking." 

And today I was lucky to have the Gu's lecture of the life aesthetics in the Story of the Stone. Here are some conclusion and personal experiences from the sharing.

After her talking did i realized the time of wirting the book is during the reign of Qianlong in Qing dynasty，specifically, in the Nine years of Qianlong. At that time, the writer, Cao Xueqin' family just suffered from a large political unheaval that was exterminated from the bureaucratic court by Yong Zheng's emperor. From then on, Cao's family was in straitened circumstances both economically and politically. Actually, Cao's grandparents was the playmate of the Kang Xi emperor.

Let's look at the course of 藕粉桂花糖糕. This dish has been displayed on the legend of Zhen Huan, but in The Story of the Stone it was firstly met among the public. From their name, we can easily found that most of them are equipped with the Jiangnan relish, for the JinLing City, the venue of the story, referring to Nanjing today lying in the Jiangsu Province. In the Novel, Jia Baoyu thinks highly of the time and place of eating. For example, he asist that the dish of 糟鹅掌鸭信 should be tasted on the big snow time. 鸭信，just as its name implies, 鸭 in phonetic character is 压 press, and 信 stands for the tongue of dusk. 鸭信 hidde the meaning of press one's tongue, which conveys us the expection that the person who eats the 鸭信 is good at speaking. As Liu Laolao came to Grand Sight, Wang Xifeng invited her to taste the eggplant cooked with various spices and complex process, Liu realized the luxury of the food is not decided by the ingridient itself, but the procudures of cooking. How to comment one dish's taste? That is whether the cusine is cooked  with the spirit of unique and exquisite or not.

Incense Culture

Basically, incense as one of the necessary in ancient person's daily life, it ca be used in the furnitue, flavour etc.