That day was Grandma Liu’s day to visit the Grand View Garden. In order to make the children happy, Mrs. Jia specially arranged a banquet. At the banquet, the official Yuanyang gave Lin Daiyu a drinking order:
Yuanyang ordered: "There is a sky on the left." Daiyu replied: "Liangchen is so beautiful but there is no sky."
"The beautiful scenery in a good time can't help the sky" comes from Tang Xianzu's work "The Peony Pavilion". The full sentence is "How can the sky be so beautiful in a good time, whose home is so pleasing to the eye?"
This sentence means: How to spend such precious time in such a beautiful spring? Who has the things that make people happy?
Looking at Tang Xianzu's poems, it is not difficult to see that these are rare and good poems. But why did Xue Baochai remind Lin Daiyu afterwards? Did Lin Daiyu do something wrong?
Afterwards, Xue Baochai found Daiyu and said that Daiyu was unruly. Daiyu was unconvinced at first, but when Xue Baochai mentioned the scene during the drinking ceremony, Lin Daiyu suddenly came to her senses and begged Xue Baochai not to tell anyone.
At that time, when I saw this, I was really confused and didn’t think there was anything wrong with Lin Daiyu’s correct answer. Yes, "The beauty of Liangchen is so beautiful", what a beautiful poem! What mystery could there be in it?
Later I found the following passage and understood its meaning.
In Tang Xianzu's "The Peony Pavilion", there is a character named Du Liniang. When the spring flowers were in full bloom, Du Liniang had no one to complain about her spring. She was immersed in sadness, and finally became so lonely that she sneaked into the back garden to dream of meeting her lover. Therefore, Du Liniang was reprimanded by her parents and asked to strictly guard her boudoir.
In the era of Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai, books such as "The Peony Pavilion" and "The Romance of the West Chamber" were "forbidden books" containing obscene words and songs, and were absolutely not allowed to be read.
Therefore, when Daiyu blurted out the sentence "A good time and beautiful scenery cannot be achieved", it immediately touched Baochai's sensitive nerves. Only Xue Baochai would remind her.
Therefore, we live in an era where we have become accustomed to these things and cannot understand the background of Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai's era at all. It is not difficult to understand why we have questions about this.
Do you have any other thoughts on this?