The helplessness of a hero who can’t save a flower × the ritualistic solemnity of a poet burying flowers, reimagining “the futile sublime.”
Could Cao Xueqin have imagined that roughly 300 years later, he and Wu Cheng’en would become in-laws? Perhaps Daiyu mistook the stone. This story weaves the classic imagery of Lin Daiyu together with Sun Wukong after his journey to the West.
