People Have Qing: Origins, Method and Conclusions of an Interpretive Reconstruction of the Last Thirty Chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber
人是有情的：《红楼梦》后三十回诠释性复原的缘起、方法与结论

Notes on the text

1. This is the English version of a paper first published in Chinese (人是有情的：《红楼梦》后三十回诠释性复原的缘起、方法与结论, same concept DOI); it corresponds to the Chinese version 0.8. It is a rewriting for English-speaking readers, not a line-by-line translation: background has been added where an English reader needs it, and the argument, the tables and the registers are unchanged. Where the two differ in substance, the Chinese is authoritative. This is a pre-release. New versions will follow as understanding changes and readers respond; the reconstructed text is likewise a revisable pre-release. Cao Xueqin, the book tells us, "read it over for ten years and revised it five times"⟨H01⟩: the book was always made one version after another.
2. The paper series and the full reconstructed text are published independently; nothing here presupposes that the reader has the full text. Every quotation from the reconstruction gives its chapter and enough context to stand on its own. The reconstruction is still being revised round by round, and the wording quoted here is the wording at the time of writing, which later rounds may change; the paper's arguments rest on the reconstruction's plot-level choices and on the item-by-item registers, not on any one round of drafts (Appendix 3). The full text is available on request.
3. The first eighty chapters and their commentary are cited from the project's collated electronic base text (hereafter "the project base text"), with each note attributed to the manuscript named in that text.[^s0-1] Where the base text differs from the standard critical edition, the difference is noted in place; checking every reading against facsimiles remains outstanding and will be reported in later versions.
4. Quotations from the first eighty chapters are to be given in David Hawkes's translation, and quotations from the 120-chapter Cheng–Gao edition in John Minford's; in this pre-release draft these passages appear in the author's working translation, each marked ⟨H…⟩ or ⟨M…⟩ for replacement with the published wording and page reference.[^en-1] All translations of the commentary, of the reconstruction, and of Kant, Zhuangzi and other sources are the author's own. Names are given in pinyin.
5. The project's internal reference numbers (audit item numbers, ruling numbers and the like) are kept out of the main text; terms are listed in Appendix 4.

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1 Introduction

By "reconstruction" this paper does not mean restoring a lost manuscript word for word. It means building, under public constraints, an ending that can be tested. A reconstructed text can show that a reading can be carried all the way through; it cannot show, in reverse, that Cao Xueqin's manuscript was like that. This is the paper's first methodological principle, and every part of the paper is bound by it. Whatever the project itself wrote is cited as "Reconstruction, chapter n" (abbreviated "Rec. ch. n"), never as "Cao Xueqin writes."

1.1 Why reconstruct again

Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng, also known as The Story of the Stone, Shitou ji) circulated in the 1750s and 1760s as a manuscript of about eighty chapters, copied together with a running commentary by readers close to the author, chief among them the figures known as Zhiyan Zhai ("Red Inkstone Studio") and Jihu Sou ("the Old Man of the Odd Tablet"). The surviving manuscripts, conventionally named by the cyclical year recorded on them, by a former owner or by a preface (Jiaxu, Jimao, Gengchen, Mengfu, Qixu, and the lost Jing manuscript), differ in extent and in the commentary they carry. In 1791 Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E printed a 120-chapter version, and its last forty chapters have travelled with the book ever since.

How far Cao Xueqin, in his lifetime, wrote the story beyond chapter 80, and in what form, remains unsettled. The commentary speaks of "the last thirty chapters," names episodes such as the Prison Temple, Wei Ruolan's archery ground, "letting go at the cliff's edge," and Jinghuan's Roster of Feeling, and says that five or six drafts "were lost by a borrower."[^s1-1] Since Hu Shi's work in the 1920s, most scholars have held that the last forty chapters of the Cheng–Gao edition are not by Cao Xueqin. For more than two centuries continuations have been written and the lost ending has been sought: the field of tanyi, "recovering what was lost," works back from the commentary and from the foreshadowings in the first eighty chapters to what should follow them, and several complete continuations have been published.

So the question this project asks is not whether the last thirty chapters can be written; others have done that. It is whether the reason for every narrative choice can be laid out, so that the reader can see which sentence has direct support in the first eighty chapters, which is inference, which is a choice the reconstructor made among several readings according to a publicly declared criterion, and which is simply an authorial decision. The paper calls this practice interpretive reconstruction. A continuation carries the story on; an interpretive reconstruction carries it on while marking the layer each choice stands on (§4.2). What distinguishes it from a continuation is that its reasons are public, not that every choice is Cao's intention.

1.2 The thesis, the criterion, and where they meet

The proposition this paper reads out of the novel is: people have qing.

Qing (情) covers feeling, love, attachment and the whole sphere of affective relation; the novel uses the word constantly. To say that people "have qing" is not to say that everyone is good or loving. It is to say that each person has feelings, relations, desires and directions that start from that person, and cannot be reduced to a function in someone else's story. Jia Yucun and Jia Huan are included. Qing cannot be reduced merely to a bond to be escaped: Wang Guowei read the book through Schopenhauer and arrived at "liberation," and the Cheng–Gao edition has Baoyu leave home as a monk after passing the provincial examination. Nor can a person's fate be reduced merely to an entry in a ledger of retribution: in chapter 120 of the Cheng–Gao edition, Zhen Shiyin declares that "the good are blessed and the wicked punished; so it has been, in all ages."⟨M01⟩ The tears repaid, the Land of Illusion, the karmic bonds and appointed calamities are all present in the first eighty chapters, and each of these readings has textual grounds; this paper claims only that they do not exhaust the book. The book uses qing to show that a person cannot be replaced.

We should say at once where the hardest textual anchor in the first eighty chapters lies. In chapter 5 the goddess Jinghuan ("Disenchantment") separates yiyin, "lust of the mind," from "the lust of the skin." The latter "delights in faces and in song and dance … wishing only that all the beautiful women in the world might serve my pleasure for an hour"; the former is "a strain of infatuation born into one's nature."⟨H02⟩[^s1-2] We read this as follows: the lust of the skin gathers people in as things for my use; the people in yiyin cannot be exhausted in that way. In other words, because of qing, a person is never exhausted by being a thing for my use. This is an interpretation built on a textual anchor, not the text's own sentence; "people have qing" is likewise a literary interpretation built on such anchors.

The reconstructor brings in a separate criterion: persons are ends in themselves. This is what Kant's Formula of Humanity says: that humanity, whether in oneself or in anyone else, must never be used merely as a means.[^s1-3] The criterion is not derived from the materials; it is a reading the reconstructor introduces openly. The project uses it to choose among readings that the evidence still allows, and to constrain how the reconstruction is written (§4.1). "Never merely as a means" is the criterion carrying that reading (because of qing, a person is never exhausted by being a thing for my use) into a practical conclusion. The two point the same way; they are not the same sentence.

"Having qing" does not logically entail "being an end." The paper claims only that the two share a direction, and it reads the novel's ethical direction, which starts from qing, as meeting Kant's Formula of Humanity at qingqing. Qingqing (情情), "feeling for those who feel," is the epithet the commentary reports that the Roster of Feeling gave to Daiyu; the paper's use of it is a reading that shifts its meaning, and this must be acknowledged openly (§6.1). The three terms have fixed roles throughout, and are not used interchangeably:

Term	Status	What it does
People have qing	Thesis: the literary proposition this paper reads out of the novel	The book uses qing to show that a person cannot be replaced
Persons are ends in themselves	Criterion: a reading the reconstructor introduces openly	Chooses only among readings the evidence allows, and constrains how the reconstruction is written; not derived from the materials
Qingqing	Meeting point	The paper reads this irreplaceability through the criterion; the two share a direction and meet here

The reconstruction's own endpoints are divided the same way. Rec. ch. 109, a chapter of gathering and warmth, lands on "people have qing"; in Rec. ch. 110 Baoyu leafs through the Roster of Feeling in a dream and on waking writes the Rhapsody on Qingqing, which lands on "persons are ends in themselves." At the end of the reconstruction stands a commentary note written by the project itself, whose last four lines read:

Twelve Beauties of Jinling: qingqing joins the kangzhuang. Blood held in the mouth, dripping ten years: Master Cao's name for a thousand years.[^s1-4]

Inside the book, kangzhuang (康庄) simply means "the broad highway," and the line reads plainly. Outside the book, the paper reads the two syllables as Kang(de) and Zhuang(zi): Kant and Zhuangzi. This note was written by the project; it is not part of the Zhiyan Zhai commentary, and it is flagged as such every time it is quoted.

Literature is not philosophy. The paper does not equate Cao Xueqin with Kant or with Zhuangzi; the comparisons are for mutual illumination, and where they diverge the divergence is recorded as it stands (§7.5).

1.3 Four readers, four first questions

The paper expects four kinds of reader, each with a question they will ask first.

The scholar of the novel will ask: "What entitles you to call this a reconstruction?" The answer: it is an interpretive reconstruction, whose constraints, criterion and authorial decisions are all public; it makes no claim to restore a manuscript word for word.

The philosopher will ask: "How does having qing make someone an end? Is this Kant?" The answer: they are not the same. "Having qing" is a literary reading, "end" is a public criterion, and qingqing is where they meet; Kant is an interlocutor, not the book's secret theory.

The methodologist will ask: "If you set your own statistical bands and then revise the text until it falls inside them, isn't that overfitting?" The answer: those numbers are guard-rails, not a scorer of authenticity, and meeting a constraint is not a test. The paper can honestly claim only two tests: the joint-satisfiability test, and a planned diagnostic hold-out test that has not yet been run (§4.4, §9.1).

The reader of continuations will ask: "How does this differ from the Cheng–Gao edition, or from the continuations by Zhang Zhi and Liu Xinwu?" The answer: the difference does not lie in having written a complete text, but in whether the reasons are made public and graded, whether the criterion can be swapped out, and whether meeting a constraint is passed off as a test.

1.4 What would bring the whole paper down, and what would only damage a part

So that readers know where to aim a rebuttal, the load-bearing claims are separated from the rest:

Load-bearing (if it falls, the paper falls)	Not load-bearing (if it falls, only a part is damaged)
The method of interpretive reconstruction: public criterion, four layers, graded evidence, registered departures	The specific strata of the book's layered composition (which the paper does not argue)
The reading of "people have qing" in the first eighty chapters, resting only on the hardest anchor: the chapter 5 distinction of yiyin, read as "because of qing, a person is never exhausted by being a thing for my use." Other anchors: the two Roster epithets reported in the commentary on chapter 19, the commentary's "attentive care" (titie) note on chapter 8, and the discussion of offerings in chapter 58	The hypothesis that the Guiyou manuscript is a re-creation from Cao's drafts
The reconstructed text serves only as a stress test, never as evidence of the original	The reason for the excision of the Tianxiang Tower episode (conjectural)
	The explanation for moving from 108 to 110 chapters
	The rereading of Qin Keqing: "her sin was not beauty but politics"
	The meaning-shifting reading of qingqing and the out-of-book reading of kangzhuang
	The comparisons with Kant, Zhuangzi and Schiller
	The political inference against "the realm as a family estate"
	Supporting material: "among the women's quarters there were people, each distinct" (textual status: commentary layer; §6.1)

Even if some of the working hypotheses on the right were later overturned, "people have qing" and the method of interpretive reconstruction could still stand. Conversely, if anything on the left falls, the paper has to be rewritten.

1.5 Structure of the paper and of the series

Section 2 surveys the scholarship and locates the paper. Section 3 explains why the project was undertaken: where the Cheng–Gao edition "turned the book into a different book," the project's boundaries, the book's layered composition, and why the chapter count was set at 110. Section 4 is the method. Section 5 gives an overview of the reconstruction. Section 6 is the interpretation. Section 7 sets the interpretation beside Kant and Zhuangzi. Section 8 presents the tables of conclusions. Section 9 sets out the limits and the points at which the paper can be falsified. Section 10 concludes.

This paper is the overview of a series and stays at the level of "origins, method, conclusions"; for each detailed topic it gives a one-paragraph conclusion and leaves the argument to a topical paper. The material papers come before the interpretive ones:

No.	Paper	Content
0	Overview (this paper)	Origins, method, conclusions
1	Commentary audit	A data paper. The full table of 4,099 notes; forward audit, full reverse audit, disclaimed items (notes the reconstruction explicitly does not realize, each with its reason), procedures
2	Layered composition	All textual evidence for the layered-composition thesis; a survey of popular theories, without adjudicating among them
3	The Guiyou manuscript	Evidence for the re-creation hypothesis, the list of what was adopted, and a direct engagement with the forgery view
4	Corpus and style	The Gengchen conformance pass, machine measurements, the diagnostic hold-out test (measures chosen after a revision-history audit, preregistered separately before measurement), style as stance
5	The Roster of Feeling	Setting up the roster and denying its finality; future-directed texts and the register of the ought; item-by-item argument for the response register (full table in Appendix 5)
6	Characters (three or four papers)	Organized by theme; candidates: Daiyu and Baoyu, Baochai and status, Xifeng and Yuanchun, Miaoyu and Xichun
7	Plot structure	The thirty-chapter skeleton, chains of foreshadowing and fulfilment, time anchors; the scholarship on chapter count
8	Political background	Against "the realm as a family estate," the fictionalized dynasty; Qin Keqing's origins and how this compares with other views
9	Kant and Zhuangzi	The two-column comparison in full, for philosophical readers

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2 Scholarship and the Place of This Paper

2.1 The foundation of the philosophical reading: Wang Guowei

The foundational starting point for interpreting Dream of the Red Chamber through a systematic philosophical framework is Wang Guowei's Honglou meng pinglun (A Critique of Dream of the Red Chamber, 1904). Drawing on Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will, he read the book as depicting the desire for life and its suffering, and as pointing toward liberation. This paper treats him as its principal opponent, for two reasons. First, he read the 120-chapter version, in which Baoyu becomes a monk after passing the examination, an ending that perfectly supports the "liberation" reading; if the last forty chapters are not Cao's, the textual basis of that reading has to be re-examined (§3.1). Second, the paper wants to move the centre of the philosophical reading from "liberation" to the relation among subject, respect and end, and that move has to start from him.

One fact is worth recording. Wang Guowei relates that when he first read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason he found the Transcendental Analytic almost entirely unintelligible, broke off, and turned to Schopenhauer; at twenty-nine he went back to Kant, this time taking up his ethics and aesthetics as well.[^s2-1] A Critique of Dream of the Red Chamber was written in exactly those years, after the reading of Kant had stalled and he had turned to Schopenhauer. The paper states the fact and draws no inference of the kind "we complete what he left unfinished."

2.2 Textual scholarship and the making of the book

The textual studies of Hu Shi and Yu Pingbo made "the last forty chapters are not Cao Xueqin's" one of the most influential judgements of modern Redology; this paper adopts it as a working judgement. In the study of how the book was made, Wu Shih-ch'ang, Dai Bufan and others inferred from internal inconsistencies that the book had earlier drafts and rewritings, and Eileen Chang's Nightmare in the Red Chamber (Honglou mengyan, 1977), which collates the variant readings across the manuscripts, belongs to the same line.[^s2-2] In accepting the layered-composition thesis this paper continues that line and claims no priority for it (§3.4).

2.3 Tanyi and continuations

Formally, this project belongs to tanyi. Zhou Ruchang, Liang Guizhi (Shitou ji tanyi) and Cai Yijiang (Lun Honglou meng yigao), among others, all work back from the commentary and the foreshadowings of the first eighty chapters to the plot after chapter 80.[^s2-3] One element of this reconstruction, that Baoyu and Xiangyun end by living out their lives together, points the same way as Zhou Ruchang's reading of Xiangyun and the "white-haired pair of stars,"⟨H03⟩ and that must be acknowledged.

Among complete continuations there is Zhang Zhi's Honglou meng xinbu and, more recently, Liu Xinwu's continuation of chapters 81–108, twenty-eight chapters in all. Two things about Liu Xinwu must be stated plainly. First, the author knew of Liu's view that Qin Keqing alludes to the daughter of a deposed crown prince, but did not consult his "Qin studies" books, nor his continuation; how the reconstruction's treatment of Qin Keqing's origins compares with other views is left to paper 8, and this paper makes no comparison. Second, while the project was working to a 108-chapter scheme it planned twenty-eight chapters after chapter 80; that number came from subtracting 80 from 108 and coincides with Liu's by a different route (§3.5).

2.4 Two worlds, allegory, and modern readings of liberation

Yu Ying-shih read the Grand View Garden as an ideal world set against the real world outside it. The paper uses this distinction of "two worlds" in §6.6, but treats the Garden as an unfinished experiment in treating one another as ends, not as a realized utopia. Anthony C. Yu's Rereading the Stone (1997) discusses qing, desire and fiction under the strong pull of Buddhist questions, and speaks directly to this paper's claim that qing cannot be reduced merely to a bond awaiting release.[^s2-4]

Andrew Plaks's Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber (1976) reads the novel's design through the paired patterns he calls "complementary bipolarity" and "multiple periodicity," in which opposites alternate and recur within one cosmos. This paper does not dispute the structural reading. Against that account of alternation and recurrence it asks a different question: how do future-directed texts constrain the persons they describe without exhausting them?

2.5 The line of subjectivity: the nearest predecessor

The nearest predecessor is Liu Zaifu. Following Li Zehou's philosophy of subjectivity, he read the book in terms of the subject, the heart-mind and the aesthetic in Honglou meng wu and Gongwu Honglou, and he already uses Kantian formulations.[^s2-5] This paper settles on practical reason and stress-tests its reading with a complete reconstructed text. A point-by-point comparison with him is left to paper 9; no overall assessment is offered here.

2.6 Where this paper stands

In one sentence: the paper turns the philosophical reading of the novel, which since Wang Guowei has centred on liberation, toward a reading centred on the relation among subject, respect and end, with Kant and Zhuangzi as its principal interlocutors.

What really distinguishes the paper from its predecessors is not that a complete text was written, but four things: every piece of evidence is graded; the reconstructed text is machine-checked character by character and checked against the corpus of the first eighty chapters; the commentary is audited forward (every candidate forward reference adjudicated, the rest sampled and screened) and, in targeted cases, in reverse; and the criterion is public, with every use of it on record.

The paper takes the results of textual scholarship as materials, not as its criterion. Most of its disagreements with Zhou Ruchang, Liang Guizhi and others are not disputes over textual evidence but differences of criterion: where textual scholarship can support one reading, the paper may still choose another by its criterion (§4.1). Wherever the paper differs from earlier work, it says only "the paper reads it this way, for these reasons," never "no one has said this before."

[^s0-1]: The project base text was prepared from the PDF Honglou meng zhipi ben wanmei ban ("Honglou meng with the Zhiyan Zhai Commentary: The Perfect Edition") made by Jiangshange Yin (江山阁隐), an edition circulating online which, according to its maker, takes the Gengchen manuscript as its base and adds commentary from the Jiaxu, Wangfu (Mengfu), Qixu and other manuscripts, labelling each note with its source. It was converted to text and normalized as 999_归一化全文.txt (MD5 06d87cd765c8ba133976722331b06b2b). Notes are marked 【】 and attributed to the manuscript named; counting one note per opening bracket gives 4,099 notes; "removing the commentary" means deleting everything inside 【】. Not checked against facsimiles. [^en-1]: David Hawkes, trans., The Story of the Stone, vols. 1–3 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973–1980); John Minford, trans., The Story of the Stone, vols. 4–5 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982–1986). Hawkes's translation rests on a text that differs in places from the project base text; where the argument depends on a reading peculiar to the project base text (for example pin 频, "again and again," in Baochai's willow-catkin lyric, chapter 70, where Hawkes's text reads ping 凭), the author's own translation is retained and the variant noted. Chapter titles of the first eighty chapters are translated by the author unless marked. [^s1-1]: Gengchen manuscript, chapter 20, upper-margin note (Jihu Sou, summer of the dinghai year): "Qianxue's proper text appears only at 'the Prison Temple.' Xiren's proper text bears the heading 'Hua Xiren is constant to the end.' I saw it only once, at the time of a fair copy; it and five or six drafts, among them 'Consoling Baoyu at the Prison Temple,' were lost by a borrower. Alas!" Jiaxu manuscript, chapter 26: "What a pity the pages on 'Wei Ruolan at the archery ground' were lost and no draft remains"; Gengchen upper-margin note to the same effect. Chapter 21, prefatory note: "Until one has seen the last thirty chapters, one cannot see the subtlety of this" (labelled Mengfu in the project base text). Item by item in paper 1. [^s1-2]: Chapter 5. The project base text reads pifu yinlan 皮肤淫滥; the standard critical edition (Chinese National Academy of Arts, Institute of Honglou meng Studies, annotated edition, Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe; Gengchen-based) reads lanyin 滥淫. Not checked against facsimiles. [^s1-3]: Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), AA 4:429. Kant is cited by volume and page of the Academy edition; translations are the author's own. [^s1-4]: Rec. ch. 110, closing note headed "Dazhi's commentary" (大知批曰), written by the project; not part of the Zhiyan Zhai commentary. [^s2-1]: Wang Guowei, "Zixu" ("Autobiographical Preface," 1907; commonly called "Preface at Thirty," collected in Jingan wenji xubian). Paraphrased, not quoted. [^s2-2]: Wu Shih-ch'ang, On The Red Chamber Dream: A Critical Study of Two Annotated Manuscripts of the XVIIIth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961; Chinese title Honglou meng tanyuan); Dai Bufan, "Jiekai Honglou meng zuozhe zhi mi" ("Solving the Riddle of the Author of Honglou meng"), Beifang luncong 1979, no. 1; Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), Honglou mengyan (Taipei: Crown, 1977). Arguments only are cited; no page references. [^s2-3]: Zhou Ruchang, Honglou meng xinzheng (Shanghai: Tangdi chubanshe, 1953), and other works; Liang Guizhi, Shitou ji tanyi (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1983); Cai Yijiang, Lun Honglou meng yigao (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1989). Arguments only are cited; no page references. [^s2-4]: Yu Ying-shih, Honglou meng de liangge shijie (The Two Worlds of Honglou meng; Taipei: Linking, 1978); Anthony C. Yu, Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Andrew H. Plaks, Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). [^s2-5]: Liu Zaifu, Honglou meng wu (enlarged edition, Beijing: Sanlian, 2009); Liu Zaifu and Liu Jianmei, Gongwu Honglou. Detailed comparison in paper 9.

3 Why This Project

3.1 Where the Cheng–Gao edition "turned the book into a different book"

The Cheng–Gao edition kept this book in circulation for more than two centuries, and there is no need to deny it. The project was undertaken because in three places that edition changed the book's direction: up to chapter 80 one is reading one kind of book, and from chapter 81 on it gradually becomes another. For each, one or two of the hardest passages follow.

First, burning the poems to end her love. The title of Cheng–Gao chapter 97 reads: "Lin Daiyu burns her poems to put an end to foolish love; Xue Baochai leaves her maiden chamber for the great rite."⟨M02⟩ On her deathbed Daiyu first tries to tear up the handkerchief she had written poems on, and cannot; then she "took the handkerchief she had been holding, looked at the fire, nodded, and tossed it in,"⟨M03⟩ and then throws her manuscripts on the fire as well.[^s3-1] The problem is not whether burning the poems is a moving act, but what verdict it passes on her life. The Daiyu of the first eighty chapters is a person whose standing rests on her poetry: burying the flowers, the poems on the handkerchiefs, the "Five Beauties," the "Song of the Peach Blossom." Her qing has always come to rest in written words; and the words "to put an end to foolish love" in the chapter title turn qing into something to be cut off. After the burning, her whole life is summed up as a death for love. Rec. ch. 95 does the opposite. Daiyu gives her newly written Ten Songs of the Solitary and all her poems to her maid Xueyan, telling her: "Take these back to the South with you, keep them in your own home, and don't let anyone go through them"; and she gives the two old handkerchiefs she had written poems on to Zijuan, saying only: "Give these back to him."[^s3-2] Not a word is burned.

Second, passing the examination and leaving home. The title of Cheng–Gao chapter 119 reads: "Baoyu takes a high place in the provincial examination and renounces the world of dust; the Jia family bathes in imperial favour and its line is prolonged."⟨M04⟩ Baoyu "passed the provincial examination in seventh place"⟨M05⟩ and at once disappears; in chapter 120 he takes leave of his father in the snow at Piling post-station and goes off with a Buddhist monk and a Daoist, and the court "conferred on him the Daoist title 'True Man of Wondrous Letters.'"⟨M06⟩[^s3-3] Baoyu first wins examination honours within the bounds of ritual and only then sees through the world and leaves it, so he has it both ways. On the paper's three-level model of Baoyu's awakening (§6.4), this ending stops at the second level, "seeing through." What the commentary gives, however, is "letting go" and "already awakened," and one note in the Jing manuscript says outright, "so why shave his head?" (§3.5, §6.4).

Third, the orchid and the cassia flourishing together. In Cheng–Gao chapter 120, Zhen Shiyin tells Jia Yucun: "The good are blessed and the wicked punished; so it has been in all ages. Now in the two Rong and Ning mansions, the good are cultivating their karma and the wicked repenting their wrongs; in time the orchid and the cassia will flourish together and the family will be restored to what it was. That too is only natural."⟨M07⟩[^s3-4] The sentence does two things at once: the family's fortunes are to be restored, and people's fates are to be settled according to their good and evil. The future-directed texts of the first eighty chapters, however, point steadily toward dispersal. Qin Keqing, appearing to Xifeng in a dream, says: "When the three springs are gone, all the flowers will be gone; each must find her own way out."⟨H04⟩ The chapter 5 song Fei niao ge tou lin ("The Birds Fly Off, Each to Its Wood") closes on "just like birds that, the food all gone, fly off to the woods, leaving only a vast white land, truly clean."⟨H05⟩ Rec. ch. 108 carries the family's fall all the way through; the two chapters after it are about the people after the fall, and they do not restore the house. Nor does the narrator explain anything as retribution (§4.5).

Taken together, these three are what the project means by saying the Cheng–Gao edition "turned the book into a different book": qing became a bond to be severed, awakening became withdrawal from the world after an official success, and the family became an account that could be balanced and restored. The project wants to write the ending back in the direction of the first eighty chapters. It does not want to prove that what it wrote is the original.

3.2 Why write, how, and what

The project's internal general statement divides the rationale into three layers;[^s3-5] a public summary follows.

Why write. To give the book an ending that goes in the same direction as the first eighty chapters: people are not simplified at the end, the family is not restored at the end, and qing is not severed at the end. The book opens with a passage "in the author's own words": "among the women's quarters there were people, each distinct; I must not, through my own worthlessness, let them all be lost to oblivion."⟨H06⟩ In the project base text this passage belongs to the commentary layer (§6.1), and the paper uses it only as supporting material; but what it names is exactly the word "people": the particular persons whom their age held cheap are, in themselves, not to be replaced.

How to write. The four layers, graded evidence, the rules of style and the discipline of the corpus (§4).

What to write. The thirty-chapter skeleton (§5) and the reasons in each place (§6, §7).

3.3 Boundaries

The first eighty chapters are not touched. At one point the project planned to go back and write the Tianxiang Tower episode excised from chapter 13; it later decided not to, and Qin Keqing's background is supplied in the continuation instead (§3.5).

The Cheng–Gao edition serves mainly as counter-material; where it is drawn on positively, each instance is disclosed. Two instances are known so far. The first: in Rec. ch. 95, Xia Jingui poisons one bowl of soup, her maid Baochan puts salt in the other, the bowls are swapped, and Jingui drinks the poison herself. This is the same mechanism as in Cheng–Gao chapter 103, where Baochan testifies: "I deliberately threw an extra handful of salt into one of the bowls"; "when no one was looking, I swapped it for Xiangling's bowl."⟨M08⟩[^s3-6] To that mechanism the reconstruction adds the choices of two people: Xiangling bears Baochan no grudge for past cruelty and speaks up for her in court; Baochan, in turn, tells the whole truth (§4.1). The second: in Rec. chs. 105–106 Baoyu, wearing a scarlet felt cape, bows toward a boat in the snow. The image is taken from the scene at Piling post-station in Cheng–Gao chapter 120, and its meaning is reversed. In the Cheng–Gao edition he bows farewell to his father, leaves with the monk and the Daoist, and receives a Daoist title. In the reconstruction the cape was given to him by Xichun; on the boat is his widowed sister-in-law Li Wan, escorting his grandmother's coffin south; Baoyu bows, does not board, does not become a monk, and turns and walks north.[^s3-7] Any further positive borrowings that come to light will be added in later versions.

The Guiyou manuscript is regarded as a re-creation based on Cao Xueqin's drafts, and the paper draws candidate leads from it; the position, the opposing view and the rules for adopting material are set out in §4.6.

The textual orientation is toward the Gengchen manuscript and the Zhiyan Zhai commentary. The Gengchen manuscript preserves seventy-eight chapters, one of the fuller early commentary manuscripts, and supplies the largest share of the commentary in the project base text;[^s3-12] the Jiaxu manuscript's commentary is early and acute, but only sixteen of its chapters survive. As for the weight of each manuscript's commentary, the Jiaxu and Gengchen are treated as standard-weight, the Mengfu, Qixu and Jing as reference-weight (§4.2).

3.4 The book's layered composition

The paper accepts the layered-composition thesis: Dream of the Red Chamber is not a single-layer text written at one stretch. The evidence inside the text is of several kinds. In chapter 1 the book's title passes through several hands and several names, and only The Twelve Beauties of Jinling is the title Cao Xueqin gave it himself after he had "read it over for ten years and revised it five times";⟨H01⟩ a Jiaxu upper-margin note on chapter 1 says that "Xueqin formerly had a book called A Mirror for the Romantic, with a preface by his younger brother Tangcun"; the commentary records excised drafts ("ordered Qinxi to delete the passages 'the lost hairpin' and 'changing clothes'") and lost drafts (the Prison Temple, the archery ground and others, five or six in all); the Jiaxu manuscript records that "when Zhiyan Zhai copied and commented on it again in the jiaxu year, he kept the title The Story of the Stone,"⟨H07⟩ so that a commentator changed the title back, which is itself a layer; and within the first eighty chapters there are inconsistencies of chronology and of personnel.[^s3-8] Nor did the commentary necessarily all rest on the same draft; where an individual note does not fit the text as we have it (that is, the surviving manuscripts of the first eighty chapters; so throughout), this may be the reason. The paper records such cases only as possibilities and never uses them to cancel a failure of fulfilment (§6.4).

As for how many layers there were and whose hands produced them, there is much popular speculation, including theories that attribute layers to Xu Xinggong, Fang Yizhi and others. Each has its reasons, and they have helped the project think; but this paper does no textual detective work and takes no part in that dispute. Its main thesis depends on one point only: that the book is layered, and that the one who finally fixed its centre was Cao Xueqin. The full evidence and a survey of theories are left to paper 2.

3.5 Chapter count: from 108 to 110

The project's chapter count changed twice, and the history is stated as it happened.

The first plan was twenty-seven chapters after chapter 80, 108 in all: eighty chapters, plus one chapter going back to supply the Tianxiang Tower episode, plus twenty-seven. Later the project decided to leave the first eighty chapters untouched and not to supply the Tianxiang Tower episode, supplying Qin Keqing's background in the continuation instead; so it became twenty-eight chapters after chapter 80, still making 108. Finally, once the principle that "the Roster of Feeling is alive" had been established, the project stopped making up 108 and settled on thirty chapters after chapter 80, 110 in all. Each change corresponds to one of the layers in §4: the first kept to the inviolable (what the first eighty chapters narrate is neither changed nor supplemented); the second came from the criterion.

The Tianxiang Tower. Only one thing is certain: by the commentator's own account in chapter 13, it was the commentator who ordered Qinxi (Cao Xueqin) to delete the episode, and the surviving text indeed lacks it, so Cao Xueqin did not disobey the order. Chapter 13 carries three notes. The Jing manuscript (with slight variation, also in the Jiaxu): "'Qin Keqing dies lewdly in the Tianxiang Tower': the author uses the historian's brush here … I have pardoned her for now, and so ordered Qinxi to delete it." The Jiaxu: "The Tianxiang Tower episode was suppressed because he could not bear to write it." And an upper-margin note signed "Old Tablet" (Jihu Sou): "That the whole chapter hides how Keqing died is my own great act of compassion."[^s3-9] Jihu Sou gives his reason as "pardon." Why Cao Xueqin went along with it is the paper's conjecture: he did not himself accept the "lewdness" with which the Mirror for the Romantic layer had cast Qin Keqing. The conjecture rests on three points: the title changes from A Mirror for the Romantic, given by Kong Meixi, to The Twelve Beauties of Jinling, given by Cao himself; the original chapter title "Qin Keqing dies lewdly in the Tianxiang Tower" (according to the commentary) now reads "Qin Keqing dies and is posthumously honoured as the wife of an officer of the Imperial Guard"⟨H08⟩; and in chapter 5 Jinghuan sets up "lust of the mind" as distinct from "the lust of the skin." What the Mirror for the Romantic layer left behind in the first eighty chapters is chiefly the Jia Rui episode of chapter 12.

Qin Keqing's verdict in chapter 5, "A sky of qing, a sea of qing, a body of illusory qing; once qing meets qing, it must mean lust,"⟨H09⟩ and the song Haoshi zhong ("The End of Good Things"), "Given to amorous ways, with a face like the moon: these were the root of the family's ruin,"⟨H10⟩ belong, in the classification of §4, to the "pronouncements" among the future-directed texts: pronouncements made at the moment of chapter 5, which the paper rereads. In the Roster of Feeling of Rec. ch. 110, Qin Keqing's entry records the pronouncement as "the world says," and then overturns it: "The world says she ruined the family with her beauty and calls her lewd; but her sin was not beauty but politics." The picture accompanying the verdict, "a beautiful woman hanging by the neck,"⟨H11⟩ agrees with the maid Baozhu's account in Rec. ch. 104: "The next day she took her own life." The project does not supply the episode; the audit table records it as a disclaimed item.[^s3-10]

Why no longer make up 108. The trouble lies not in the number but in the one-to-one correspondence of number and persons: 108 people for 108 chapters, each crossed off in turn, like the heavenly tablet in chapter 71 of The Water Margin that fixes the order of the 108 heroes; the Guiyou manuscript's Roster of Feeling likewise lists 108 names. These two serve only as comparisons and bear no weight of proof. The project had once treated 108 as a structural condition that had to be met, and then found that this a priori condition in turn limited how the characters could go on living, pulling the book toward "everything is foreordained"; so it was dropped. The number 110 bears no such correspondence, and so it does not close. Rec. ch. 108 carries the family's fall all the way through, yet the chapter still ends: "Where all these people went from here, you will learn in the next chapter." Rec. chs. 109 and 110 are about the people after the fall. In Rec. ch. 110 the roster Baoyu dreams of cannot be leafed through to the end: "The more names there were, the longer the roster grew, running from under his feet deep into the shadows of the cabinets … and still the paper kept hanging down"; "behind the cabinets there were yet more cabinets."

What the materials say. Four groups of notes in the commentary bear on the chapter count:

Group	Note	What it indicates	Relation to 110
A hundred chapters	Mengfu note on chapter 2, "a great text of a hundred chapters"; Gengchen upper-margin note on chapter 25, "the jade's exorcism appears only this once in all hundred chapters"	The whole book about a hundred chapters	A round number; accommodates both 108 and 110
The last thirty chapters	Chapter 21 prefatory note, "until one has seen the last thirty chapters one cannot see the subtlety of this" (labelled Mengfu in the project base text)	Thirty chapters remain after chapter 80	Two readings side by side: 110 needs no further assumption; the 108 view can count "the last thirty" from chapter 79
Over a third	Gengchen prefatory note on chapter 42, "the book has now passed the thirty-eighth chapter, which is already more than a third" (first and last sentences of the same note in §6.3)	The whole book no more than about 114 chapters	Both 108 and 110 fit; 120 does not
The last chapter	Jing note on chapter 67, "'Letting go' in the last chapter is already awakening … at Greensickness Peak the bond is ended and qing attested, still within Shiyin's dream"	The last chapters include letting go, Shiyin's dream, Greensickness Peak	In the reconstruction the letting go is in ch. 106, Shiyin's account of the dream in ch. 108, the jade's return to Greensickness Peak (Qinggeng feng) in ch. 110; "the last chapter" must be read as "the last chapters" (registered as a soft failure in §9.1)

The assessment: the materials accommodate 108 and also 110, leaning slightly toward 110; if the "last thirty chapters" note were also found in the Gengchen manuscript, this would become "leaning toward 110."[^s3-11] The step from twenty-eight to thirty chapters was fixed by the criterion and is classed as Grade C (§4.2). It is also one of the places where method and thesis share a structure (§4.7). The scholarship on the chapter count is left to paper 7.

4 Method

4.1 Criterion, the inviolable, future-directed texts, materials

The project is an interpretive reconstruction. The following four-layer relation is stated at the outset, and every later choice is placed accordingly:

Layer	What it is	How it is used
Criterion	Persons are ends in themselves	Chooses only among the readings the evidence still allows
The inviolable	What the first eighty chapters narrate (narrative text and chapter titles)	Marks out the space of possibility. May be reread; may not be violated
Future-directed texts	Verdicts, songs and prophecies (chiefly the register entries of chapter 5 and the song cycle Dream of the Red Chamber in the same chapter)	The texts themselves cannot be erased, and the reconstruction must answer each of them. The paper reads them as a "register of the ought" (a projected course, not a judgement of what anyone deserves): what they record is the temperament, situation and relations a character had come to by that moment, and where these point if things develop as they are. This is the paper's reading, not the genre the texts claim for themselves. The actual outcome may depart from them. A departure must be carried by a causal chain traceable in the text, in which people's choices are a load-bearing factor (chiefly the person's own, though others' choices may serve); the reconstructor may not change a fate without grounds. Each case is registered (§8, Table 3; full table in Appendix 5)
Materials	The commentary, the results of textual scholarship, the Guiyou manuscript, the Cheng–Gao edition	Adjust the evidential weight of each reading. What the materials identify about later events counts as a constraint (soft evidence, to be accommodated as far as possible; §9.1); the commentators' judgements, exclamations and moralizing are not material facts and do not count as constraints

Two kinds of future-directed text must be handled separately. One kind states a trajectory: where someone is going, as with Xiangling's "her fragrant soul returns to her native place"⟨H12⟩ or Miaoyu's "in the end she sinks into the mire."⟨H13⟩ A trajectory can be departed from through people's choices, or fulfilled in its letter while what it refers to is rewritten. The other kind is a pronouncement: a judgement passed on a person or an event, as with Qin Keqing's "once qing meets qing, it must mean lust,"⟨H14⟩ or, in Fei niao ge tou lin ("The Birds Fly Off, Each to Its Wood"), "plainly, it is retribution" and "parting and meeting are all fixed beforehand."⟨H15⟩ A pronouncement can be reread.

The grounds for the register of the ought. The author's understanding is this: the Roster of Feeling[^s4-1a] records the outcome that would be expected to follow from a character's essence at that moment ("ought" here names a projected course under the conditions then in place, not a judgement of what a character deserves); but characters are alive and exist (existence precedes essence), and the actual outcome can be adjusted by their growth and their choices. That is why the Roster of Feeling is said to be alive.[^s4-1] The Rhapsody on Qingqing in Rec. ch. 110 says the same: "Jinghuan's registers can record what befalls a person; they cannot seal off what comes after."

The floor. The criterion cannot override what the first eighty chapters narrate; a future-directed text may be departed from, but a departure must rest on people's choices. Hold to these two, and "not confined to textual scholarship" cannot slide into "anything goes." Readers can check each case: behind every departure, is there a person's choice?

What "not confined to textual scholarship" means precisely: textual scholarship is material, not criterion. Zhou Ruchang's and Dai Bufan's reading of a damaged commentary note may be right as textual scholarship; the project may still, by its criterion, choose the other of the two readings the damaged text allows (§4.6).

Examples.

Selection by the criterion: a damaged Jing upper-margin note on chapter 41 admits two readings, and the project follows "did not submit"; the Gengchen note on chapter 21, "cast them aside and become a monk" (standard-weight), conflicts with the Jing note on chapter 67, "so why shave his head?" (reference-weight, original lost), and by the criterion the project follows the latter, which is a case of the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight, and is registered as such (§6.4); the chapter count is set at 110.

The inviolable overriding the materials: a Gengchen note on chapter 18 says the three verdicts of the Tertiary Register are for "Qingwen, Xiren and Xiangling," which contradicts the chapter 5 text placing Xiangling in the Secondary Register; the text is followed.[^s4-2]

Transposed fulfilment, carried by the person's own choice and others' together: Xiangling's verdict, "Ever since two earths grew a lone tree, her fragrant soul returns to her native place,"⟨H16⟩ states her trajectory at the moment of chapter 5 (two "earths" 土 and a "tree" 木 make up 桂, the gui of Xia Jingui's name). In Rec. ch. 95 Jingui's poisoned soup kills Jingui herself, and Xiangling is arrested as the murderer. In court, far from shifting the blame onto Baochan, Xiangling speaks up for her: "I saw with my own eyes that what Baochan put in the soup was salt. And the salty bowl was the one I drank myself, and nothing happened to me. Madam's death has nothing to do with Baochan." Baochan "raised her head and looked at Xiangling, and only after a long while began to speak," and told the whole story of the swapped bowls, and Xiangling was released. First Xiangling bore no grudge, then Baochan told the truth in court: the choices of two people changed what actually happened. Later, in Rec. ch. 107, Zhen Shiyin finds her; father and daughter recognize each other, and Xiangling goes back with him to Suzhou. In Rec. ch. 110, when Baoyu dreams his way into the Office of the Ill-Fated, the last two lines on Xiangling's page in the Secondary Register have become "Even though a lone tree grows in two earths, this body has not perished: it returns to its native place." "Returns to her native place" has been fulfilled; the death implied by "fragrant soul" has been rewritten. So the paper records a transposed fulfilment, not a departure (Table 3, Type II).

Departure, carried chiefly by others' choices: Miaoyu's verdict, "in the end she sinks into the mire." The "sinking" is fulfilled: in Rec. ch. 99 word comes that she went south, took refuge in a convent, and was kept by the old nun "carrying water, washing clothes and pounding rice every day"; in Rec. ch. 105 she recounts, "First a sedan chair. Then a door. A bolt. Buckets." In Rec. ch. 100 at the Guazhou ferry she has been sold to an old monk. But "in the end" is rewritten. ("In the end" can also be read as "finally sinks," in which case the whole line has been fulfilled; the paper takes the reading "at the last," supported by her song Shi nan rong ("The World Will Not Have Her"), "at the last, still, in the dust and filth of the world, against her own wishes,"⟨H17⟩ and both readings are entered in Table 3, Type III.) In chapter 41 of the first eighty chapters, Miaoyu finds the little Chenghua enamelled lidded cup that Grannie Liu has drunk from too dirty to keep and means to put it outside; Baoyu asks for it and gives it to Grannie Liu, saying "she can sell it and live on it for a while."⟨H18⟩ In the reconstruction, Grannie Liu entrusts this cup to Xing Xiuyan, "to repay this debt of kindness for me"; at the ferry Xiuyan holds it out on her palm, "Master, since you say money is a vulgar thing, here is something that is not vulgar," and gets Miaoyu released in exchange; then, on the riverbank, she stops Miaoyu as she is walking into the water: "Sister, let's go home. I've kept an old quilt for you in my room." Here it is the choices of others that save her. Afterwards she turns herself around: in Rec. ch. 103 she serves Grannie Liu tea, and in Rec. ch. 105 she picks up a coarse bowl. That is a road she chose again for herself.

A pronouncement reread: in Fei niao ge tou lin, "plainly, it is retribution" and "parting and meeting are all fixed beforehand"⟨H15⟩ are pronouncements of that moment. The paper does not take them as fate, and the reconstruction's narrator does not explain anything as retribution (§4.5).

4.2 Grading the evidence

Every conclusion of the reconstruction is labelled on two counts: type of source (the text of the first eighty chapters, the future-directed texts, the commentary, textual scholarship, the Guiyou manuscript or the Cheng–Gao edition, earlier tanyi work), and grade of inference:

• Grade A · direct evidence: directly supported by the text of the first eighty chapters; or directly identified by the commentary, with no variant reading. The type of source determines authority; "A" speaks only to the strength of the inference.
• Grade B · inference: inferred from structure, foreshadowing or character logic.
• Grade C · selection by the criterion: the materials admit two or more readings, or conflict among themselves, or the commentary itself leaves the matter open, and the choice is made by "persons are ends in themselves." Examples: the reading of the damaged chapter 41 note; the choice between the notes on chapters 21 and 67; the 110-chapter count; the meaning of qingqing. This class is the core of the project's method. It is listed separately so that readers can reread each item with a different criterion.
• Grade D · authorial decision: decisions made where the materials are insufficient.

The reconstructed text serves only as a result and a stress test, never as evidence of the original. As for the weight of each manuscript's commentary, the Jiaxu and Gengchen are standard-weight; the Mengfu, Qixu and Jing are reference-weight (weights assigned by this project, not a general scholarly ranking of the manuscripts); wherever a Jing note bears weight, this is noted in place.[^s4-3]

4.3 Human–AI collaboration

Several AI systems took part in the project (Appendix 2). Their self-assessments of their own output were never accepted; the project's consolidation stage independently machine-checked everything against the same corpus. Every choice was made by the author, who bears responsibility for the text.[^s4-4]

4.4 Corpus discipline and measurement

First, what these numbers are. The numbers below serve only as guard-rails, for detecting anomalies and preventing over-archaizing; they are not a scorer of Cao Xueqin's authenticity. No number can by itself show that a sentence is Cao's. These constraints were enforced chapter by chapter during writing, so meeting them is not a test.[^s4-5]

Density of na 那 ("that"). Across the first eighty chapters the demonstrative na occurs about once every 169 characters; the median per chapter is about once every 175, and the densest chapter, chapter 24, about once every 97. Early on the project set itself a rate of once every 44 characters without checking it against the corpus, almost four times too dense. It was brought back step by step, and a working norm of once every 97 to 133 characters was adopted (based on measurements of chapters 81–90), with a warning line at once every 90 characters on the dense side and a limit at once every 140 on the sparse side. Revision proceeded round by round, and chapters revised to the new standard fell back within the band; drafts written to the old standard had reached once every 40 to 76 characters, denser than the densest chapter of the first eighty, and the paper records this as it was. The lesson: no number that has not been verified may be enforced.

The ratio of jiang 将 to ba 把. At one stage the project's language pass changed every ba (the object-marking particle) to the more literary jiang, producing a systematic distortion; in the first eighty chapters jiang occurs 780 times and ba 708, a ratio of about 1.10 to 1. Two-sided limits were then set: the jiang:ba ratio must lie between 0.5 and 3.0.

The rule of attestation. Whenever an expression is said to be "attested," a passage from the first eighty chapters must be supplied; otherwise it is marked unverified. Being unattested does not mean being unusable; and verifying the positive form does not extend to the negative form.

Chapter endings. Only eight chapters of the first eighty end with "Truly:" (zhengshi) followed by a couplet (in two more "Truly:" stands with the couplet missing); the habit of "attaching a couplet to every chapter" may be a regularization by the Cheng–Gao edition, and the reconstruction does not follow it.

Diagnostic hold-out test (planned, not yet run; this paper sets out the principles only; design and measurement belong to paper 4):

• Measures: only measures that an audit of the revision history shows were never used as targets of revision during writing. Those the project used in writing (sentence length, the proportion of four-character phrases, na density, the jiang:ba ratio, the proportion of dialogue, the ways dialogue is introduced, and others) are excluded; character- and word-frequency measures have also been touched, since the project's scans for modern usage and for attestation checked the first eighty chapters word by word. Which measures qualify has yet to be determined.
• Comparison groups: the first eighty chapters; the last forty chapters of the Cheng–Gao edition; the twenty-eight later chapters of the Guiyou manuscript, if a reliable text can be obtained, as an optional second comparison.
• Discipline: measures, comparison groups and rules of interpretation are frozen first, written up as a preregistration, and published separately before measurement; after that, no revision of any chapter may touch the listed measures; the measurement is run once, on one publicly released version of the reconstruction, and the version measured is reported with the results in paper 4; any later measurement of a newer version is for reference only and does not replace the first; results are reported in full whether favourable or not; after measurement, no measure is dropped, no threshold changed, no text revised back.
• Status: it is called "diagnostic" because it reports only which group the reconstruction lies closer to on these dimensions, and makes no judgement of authenticity. Until the test has been run, this paper does not treat it as evidence obtained.

4.5 Style as stance

Several rules of style in the reconstructed text are not aesthetic preferences; they are "persons are ends in themselves" carried out at the level of the sentence:

• The narrator does not explain events as karmic retribution. Retribution writes a person's suffering as deserved and turns the person into an item in a ledger. Uses of the character bao 报 in the sense of "report" or "announce" (announcing a death, reporting to a superior) are a different matter.
• Show, do not comment; the narrator's evaluative remarks are cut. A narrator who passes verdicts is filing people away.
• The narrator does not judge people by names of virtue. Words such as "benevolent," "kind," "compassionate" and "conscience" do not enter the narrative voice. Rec. ch. 104 shows a peasant woman letting a starving stranger sit on her doorstep while a taro cooks, and the narration never once uses the word ren 仁, "benevolence"; the four words "benevolence is loving others" occur only when, two or three li further on, Baoyu, the one who received the kindness, recalls them himself.[^s4-6]

Chapter titles follow the established practice. In the first eighty chapters it is established practice for a chapter title to prefix a person's name with an evaluative epithet: worthy Xiren, pretty Pinger, capable Tanchun, clever Zijuan, kindly Aunt Xue, artless Xiangyun, foolish Xiangling. Allusions in chapter titles are read according to their sources. In the title of Rec. ch. 104, "A benevolent village woman shelters a stranded traveller with a meal," "benevolent" is read as "benevolence is loving others"; in the title of Rec. ch. 95, "Trusting Xiangling escapes mortal danger through goodness shown even to the unkind," the phrase de shan 德善 comes from chapter 49 of the Daodejing: "Those who are good I treat as good; those who are not good I also treat as good; so goodness is obtained." The title reads it as goodness shown to the good and the not-good alike. Xiangling treats well Baochan, who once ill-treated her; Baochan tells the truth in court. It is people's choices that save a person, not heaven's reward. No chapter title is changed.[^s4-7]

Against circularity. These rules generate the reconstructed text. A text generated by them cannot then be used as independent evidence that they are right.

4.6 The Guiyou manuscript: its place and rules for its use

There is a manuscript known as the Guiyou manuscript, which contains twenty-eight chapters following chapter 80. The paper regards it as a later re-creation based on Cao Xueqin's drafts, preserving some elements of those drafts; much of the published scholarship regards it as a modern forgery, and the paper states this view, leaving the representative arguments and a direct engagement with them to paper 3. The paper treats its own judgement as a working hypothesis and draws candidate leads from the manuscript; every lead adopted must be independently checked against the first eighty chapters and the commentary, and the Guiyou manuscript never carries a conclusion alone. Even if it were eventually proved a modern forgery, the paper's thesis and method would be unaffected (§1.4).

There are three rules for adopting material from it: its political content is excluded, and its framework of mourning for the Ming is not taken over at all; at the level of plot summary only the skeleton of events is adopted, and at the level of text everything must be rewritten in the project's own manner; for punctuating and emending damaged commentary notes, the text transmitted in its line may be drawn on, but only for emendation, never for plot, and the argument's weight is lowered by one step accordingly.

Take a Jing upper-margin note on chapter 41. The note as transmitted is garbled and cannot be punctuated; Zhou Ruchang and Dai Bufan both read it as "submitted" (qucong). The project follows the punctuation transmitted in the Guiyou line: "Another day, at the Guazhou ferry, a guest shows admonition and warning: the rosy-cheeked one could indeed refuse to submit to withered bones. Is it not lamentable?"[^s4-8] The word order of the damaged text allows both readings; the project chooses "did not submit" by its criterion and classes the choice as Grade C. It is not a dispute with Zhou and Dai over textual evidence. The three readings are set out side by side in paper 3.

4.7 Method and thesis share a structure

One principle: whatever the book rejects, the reconstructor does not do.

Where	What the book rejects	What the reconstructor does not do	See
Style	A narrator who passes verdicts on people; retribution entering people into a ledger	The narrator gives no karmic explanations, shows without commenting, and does not judge people by names of virtue	§4.5
The Roster of Feeling	That a list can settle who a person is	The verdicts are future-directed texts, read as a register of the ought, not as fate; the project's own Roster does not list the full ranking, and its order can change	§4.1, §6.2
Versions	A final text (Cao revised it five times himself)	Both the paper and the reconstruction are issued as pre-releases and updated regularly	Notes on the text
Chapter count	A one-to-one match of number and persons, closing at 108	Does not close at 108; thirty chapters, and a roster that cannot be leafed through to the end	§3.5

These four correspondences show only that method and thesis are consistent; they do not prove the thesis true. Their use is that they can be tested: wherever the reconstruction fixes someone's fate for them, or lets a character depart from a verdict without grounds, a reader can use this principle to refute it.

[^s3-1]: Cheng–Gao chapter 97, quoted from an electronic text of the standard 120-chapter edition circulating online; not collated against facsimiles of the Chengjia (1791) or Chengyi (1792) printings. [^s3-2]: Rec. ch. 95. [^s3-3]: Cheng–Gao chapters 119 and 120, quoted from an electronic text of the standard 120-chapter edition circulating online; not collated against facsimiles of the Chengjia or Chengyi printings. [^s3-4]: Cheng–Gao chapter 120; source as above. [^s3-5]: The project's general statement, Parts 0 to 3. It is an internal working document, written in a different register; wherever it says things like "no one has said this before," this paper does not follow it. [^s3-6]: Cheng–Gao chapter 103, "Jingui plots to poison and burns herself; Yucun, blind to the true Chan, meets an old friend in vain," quoted from an electronic text of the standard 120-chapter edition circulating online; not collated against facsimiles of the Chengjia or Chengyi printings. [^s3-7]: Rec. ch. 105 (Xichun gives him the scarlet felt cape) and ch. 106 (he bows in the snow toward the boat carrying the coffin). For the scene at Piling post-station in Cheng–Gao chapter 120, source as in the note on chapters 119 and 120 above. [^s3-8]: Chapter 1, text and Jiaxu upper-margin note; chapter 13, Jing and Jiaxu notes; chapters 20 and 26, Gengchen upper-margin notes. [^s3-9]: Chapter 13. The Jing note is as recorded in the project base text (the original is lost); the Jiaxu note is damaged. [^s3-10]: Audit table, disclaimed item 3: deleted by the author, not lost; the project does not reconstruct it. [^s3-11]: Chapter 21. The project base text labels this as a Mengfu prefatory note; whether the Gengchen manuscript has it has not been checked against facsimiles. [^s3-12]: Counts by the manuscript named in the project base text: Gengchen 1,918 notes, Jiaxu 1,495, Mengfu 560, all others 126. The Gengchen manuscript preserves seventy-eight chapters, lacking chapters 64 and 67, according to standard descriptions; not checked against facsimiles. [^s4-1]: "Existence precedes essence" is Sartre's phrase (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris: Nagel, 1946). Sartre means that a human being first exists and that his essence is made by his subsequent choices. "Essence" in the author's own words here means exactly the temperament, situation and relations already formed at that moment; the verdict records this layer, and later choices can write it again. The two terms match at this point. The paper borrows only this phrase; it brings in neither Sartre's system nor Sartre as grounds for the register of the ought. [^s4-1a]: "Roster of Feeling" here refers loosely both to the registers of the Office of the Ill-Fated (where the verdicts stand) and to the Roster of the last chapter. These are the author's own words, annotated but not altered. The paper's watchword "the Roster of Feeling is alive" keeps this loose sense; where the Roster of the last chapter is meant specifically, it is called "the final Roster" or "the Roster of Rec. ch. 110." [^s4-2]: Chapter 18, Gengchen interlinear double-column note. A Gengchen upper-margin note by Jihu Sou on the same chapter admits: "the twelve beauties cited here are not accurate; all are casual guesses." [^s4-3]: Two places rest weight on Jing notes: the "Guazhou ferry" note on chapter 41 and the "letting go in the last chapter" note on chapter 67. The Jing manuscript itself is lost. [^s4-4]: The project's workflow: task brief; the author's approval; divergent drafting by several systems; independent machine checks at consolidation; consolidation; several rounds of rulings by the author; a language pass (Gengchen conformance); character-by-character checking; sealing (the sealed draft), with the rules adopted recorded. Two observations: AI reviewers tend to "stabilize" distinctive literary choices, against which a three-tier editorial hierarchy is the safeguard; human reviewers reliably catch errors of ritual propriety that AI misses. On the methodology of human–AI collaboration, see the author's SAE Methodology paper 8, Human-AI Symbiosis (Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19581537). [^s4-5]: Figures for the first eighty chapters in this section are measured on the project base text: commentary in 【】 removed, chapter titles included, Chinese characters only, rounded. The project's own bands and the figures for earlier drafts of the reconstruction come from the project's machine-check records. Chapter-by-chapter tables are in paper 4. [^s4-6]: Rec. ch. 104. Baoyu's own words: "Fool. You studied for years in the family school; how many times did you see those four words, 'benevolence is loving others'?" [^s4-7]: A reviewer suggested changing these two chapter titles; the author ruled against it. For epithets prefixed to names in the titles of the first eighty chapters, see the titles of chapters 21, 56, 57 and 62. [^s4-8]: Chapter 41, Jing upper-margin note. The transmitted text in the project base text reads 劝惩不哀哉屈从红颜固能不枯骨各示□ (as recorded in the audit table) and cannot be punctuated.

5 The Reconstruction in Outline

This section lets the reader see the shape of the thirty chapters; §6 and §7 then explain why they were written as they were. In this paper the reconstructed text is used only to show how the thesis takes form in writing (§1). The full list of the thirty chapter titles is in Appendix 1.

5.1 Five movements

Chapters 81–88: the house empties. Xiren marries and leaves; Grandmother Jia dies; the family's coffers are empty. Xifeng loses her power; Yingchun dies in the Sun household; Tanchun is married off far away; Xichun cuts off her hair to refuse a marriage. Baoyu and Daiyu secretly bind their hair together at the Convex Emerald Hall.

Chapters 89–95: the net closes. No sooner is the date of Baoyu and Daiyu's wedding fixed than Yuanchun dies in the palace; the Ning mansion and the senior branch of the Rong mansion are raided on the same day, and Baoyu is arrested by name at the instance of the Prince of Zhongshun and thrown into prison. Qianxue, Xiaohong, Ni Er, Jiang Yuhan, Xiren, Yun'er and others lay a plan and free him from the Prison Temple. On the third day of the third month Daiyu's tears are spent and she dies; Baoyu, hurrying back, is held back by a single city gate and does not arrive in time.

Chapters 96–103: scattering. Baoyu recovers, and on his wedding day climbs over the wall and leaves. Jia Huan provokes his father Jia Zheng to death to his face, and, with an offhand sweep of his arm, sends Lady Wang falling to her death. Baoyu leaves the capital, still wearing the jade he was born with. Qiaojie is sold by her own uncle Wang Ren into a brothel across the river from Guazhou, and Grannie Liu's party contrives to rescue her. At the Guazhou ferry Xing Xiuyan exchanges the Chenghua cup for Miaoyu, who has been sold. Baoyu begs his way south and reaches the Temple of Wisdom Understood.

Chapters 104–108: awakening and reckoning. A peasant woman, Second Girl, gives Baoyu a meal. At the Convent of True Awakening, Xichun names Baoyu "the Lay Disciple Empty-and-Frugal." Baoyu throws the jade into the snow and meets the widowed Xiangyun. Baochai marries Jia Yucun to save her brother; Yucun is convicted, and Baochai, following him into exile in the north, dies in the snow. Zhen Shiyin and Jia Yucun debate the way of heaven.

Chapters 109–110: gathering and dream. Six years later, the Sanhe troupe rehearses The Peach Blossom Fan, and five old friends play the "maidens" drinking game once more. Baoyu dreams his way into the Office of the Ill-Fated and leafs through the Roster of Feeling; on waking he writes the Rhapsody on Qingqing. A Buddhist monk and a Daoist return the jade to the foot of Greensickness Peak.

5.2 Eight turning points

Eight chapters change the whole: chapter 91 (the raid); chapter 95 (Daiyu's tears spent); chapter 97 (the chongxi wedding, held in the hope that its good fortune would restore the groom's health, loses its groom; Baoyu leaves); chapter 105 (the Lay Disciple Empty-and-Frugal); chapter 106 (the jade thrown away; Xiren constant to the end); chapter 108 (Yucun convicted; Shiyin tells the dream); chapter 109 (five friends play the maidens' game again); chapter 110 (dream of the Roster; the jade returns to Greensickness Peak).

5.3 Where the characters end

Only those relevant to this paper's thesis are listed; details by character and chapter are left to papers 6 and 7.

Character	Endpoint
Daiyu	Tears spent in ch. 95; refuses the ginseng pills sent by the senior household; hangs her father's jade belt on the bamboo; entrusts her poems to Xueyan to take back to Suzhou and returns the old handkerchiefs to Baoyu
Baoyu	Leaves in ch. 97; becomes a lay disciple in ch. 105, without taking the tonsure; throws away the jade in ch. 106; thereafter lives his life out with Xiangyun
Baochai	The thread of status: in ch. 97 the groom leaves on the wedding day, and the elders afterwards fix on her the status of "Second Mistress Bao who never made her bows"; in ch. 107 she receives the title "Commandery Lady of Huzhou"; in ch. 108, on the road into exile, she has both the status and the title struck from her travel pass and writes only "Xue Baochai," and does not take her last Cold Fragrance pill
Xichun	Becomes a nun in ch. 99, taking the religious name Huijue
Qiaojie	Chooses in ch. 101 to go with Grannie Liu; later marries Banr
Miaoyu	Redeemed in ch. 100; picks up a coarse bowl in ch. 105; departs from the "in the end" of her verdict "in the end she sinks into the mire"⟨H13⟩
Xiangling	Released from prison in ch. 95; recognized by her father in ch. 107 and returns to Suzhou; her verdict "her fragrant soul returns to her native place"⟨H12⟩ becomes a transposed fulfilment
Li Wan	Dies of illness in ch. 109 soon after receiving an imperial patent; on her deathbed she does not decide for Li Wen and Li Qi, asking only whether they themselves are willing
Qin Keqing	Her death recounted by Baozhu in ch. 104; appears in Baoyu's dream in ch. 105; given the epithet "sinful qing" in the Roster of ch. 110

6 Interpretation: People Have Qing

6.1 What qing is: anchors in the first eighty chapters

Lust of the mind and the lust of the skin. In chapter 5 Jinghuan defines "the lust of the skin" as "delighting in faces and in song and dance, never tiring of banter, making love at all hours, wishing only that all the beautiful women in the world might serve my pleasure for an hour," and "lust of the mind" as "a strain of infatuation born into one's nature," adding that "the two words 'lust of the mind' can be grasped only by the heart, not conveyed by the mouth; reached by the spirit, not put into words."⟨H19⟩[^s6-1] The paper reads this as saying: the former treats people as things for my use; the latter does not. A Jiaxu marginal note on the same chapter explains "lust of the mind" through titie, attentive care: "Baoyu's whole temperament comes down to these two words, attentive care; hence 'lust of the mind.'" A Jiaxu upper-margin note on chapter 8 adds that toward "all the unknowing, unfeeling things of the world, he has an infatuated feeling of attentive care." The two notes use the same word, and both use it in praise.

The two epithets of the Roster. In a Gengchen interlinear note on chapter 19, the commentator first admits that "in truth I cannot judge what kind of people these two finally are," and then cites the Roster: "Later, looking at the Roster of Feeling, I found its judgements: 'Baoyu: feeling for the unfeeling (qing bu qing)'; 'Daiyu: feeling for those who feel (qingqing).' These two judgements stand above any judgement of infatuation, and they too are beyond comprehension. Marvellous!" The two epithets are set side by side, neither ranked above the other, and the commentator does not explain them.

Qingqing: the paper's meaning-shifting choice, which must be acknowledged openly. In the commentary, qingqing mostly falls on Daiyu. A Jiaxu marginal note on chapter 27 reads "this completes the proper text of 'qingqing'." Jiaxu marginal notes on chapter 28 read "the original face of 'qingqing'" and "'qingqing': she cannot bear to utter the character de 的." A Gengchen marginal note there reads "the heart of 'qingqing'." A Gengchen note on chapter 31 reads "hence Pin'er is called 'qingqing'." In these notes the sense is that her qing is fixed on those who themselves have qing. Yet the Mengfu concluding note on chapter 43 applies the word to Baoyu's private offering for the dead maid Jinchuan: "Abounding in feeling, he does not forget the dead; where feeling gathers it must yield to such as these. This is what is called qingqing." The commentator uses the same word of Baoyu. Add to this the chapter 19 commentator's admission that he cannot judge, and the commentary itself leaves the question open here. At this opening the project, by its criterion, reads qingqing as "respecting others as one respects oneself, and letting each thing follow its own nature": the first half joins Kant, the second Zhuangzi (§7). This shifts the meaning and is classed as Grade C. The ranking "feeling for the unfeeling is the illness, feeling for those who feel is the cure" likewise has no basis in the first eighty chapters, where the two epithets stand side by side; it too is the project's choice, and it runs against the praising direction of the word "attentive care." The cost is registered in §9.2.

"Among the women's quarters there were people, each distinct." The opening passage "in the author's own words" reads: "Among the women's quarters there were people, each distinct; I must not, through my own worthlessness, let them all be lost to oblivion."⟨H06⟩ The heart of this passage is the word "people." But in the project base text it belongs to the commentary layer (the "General Principles" of the Jiaxu manuscript; at the head of chapter 1 in the Gengchen), so the paper uses it only as supporting material, and says so whenever it quotes it. (In the Cheng–Gao line of editions, which Hawkes's translation follows here, the passage stands at the opening of chapter 1 as part of the text.)

Chapter 58 on offerings. Here the argument must proceed from the scene, not from the words. The actress Ouguan is caught by an old serving-woman burning paper money for her dead companion Diguan; Baoyu shields her and, through Fangguan, sends word that in sacrifice "sincerity alone is what matters," and that it "lies in reverence, not in empty forms."⟨H20⟩ The "reverence" (jing 敬) here is the sincerity of sacrifice, not the same sense as the respect for persons that Kant speaks of. What can be joined to respect for persons is what Baoyu does in this scene: he does not go along with the old woman in punishing Ouguan, and he acknowledges her feeling; yet in the message he sends he still advises her not to burn paper money in future, but to burn incense instead. The scene contains an acknowledgement of qing, and it still contains Baoyu's own rule; it does not abolish all norms. The same word with different referents must be checked by meaning, not joined by its letters (§9.3).

6.2 Setting up the Roster, and denying its finality

The first eighty chapters leave a tension open to rereading. In chapter 5 Baoyu does not finish looking at the registers: Jinghuan, "fearing that the secrets of heaven would leak out, closed the registers."⟨H21⟩ The registers have no effect on the one who reads them; three times Baoyu "looked and still did not understand" or "looked and did not understand," and Jinghuan sighs, "The foolish boy has not yet woken."⟨H22⟩ The two epithets of the Roster judge the quality of a person's qing, not the reckoning of their fate. Within the commentary, the order of the registers is not fixed either: the three names that a Gengchen note on chapter 18 assigns to the Tertiary Register contradict the chapter 5 text, and an upper-margin note by Jihu Sou admits that "the twelve beauties cited here are not accurate; all are casual guesses." But the same note goes on: "only at the end, with Jinghuan's Roster of Feeling, will one know the names of the principal, secondary, tertiary and further registers." The commentator expected the final Roster to fix the ranking. This must be stated as it stands; Jihu Sou must not be made into someone who rejects the Roster.

The future-directed texts, read as a register of the ought. A verdict records where a character's temperament, situation and relations, as formed at that moment, were pointing. People are alive (§4.1); what actually happens later can differ through their growth and their choices.

The reconstruction carries this potential through to the end. In Rec. ch. 110 Baoyu dreams his way into the Office of the Ill-Fated, and the pictures in the old registers have each changed. On the first page of the Principal Register, "beside the far end of the jade belt there was now a scroll of paper, its corners worn from turning, unburnt"; the golden hairpin under the snow "looked as though a hand had pressed it in, bit by bit"; on Qiaojie's page "a cradle now stood beside the spinning wheel"; and the last two lines on Xiangling's page in the Secondary Register now read "Even though a lone tree grows in two earths, this body has not perished: it returns to its native place." Baoyu leafs on, register after register, until a shout behind him rings out: "What feeling-for-the-unfeeling is this, that dares to leaf through every fate in the Office of the Ill-Fated!" He wakes before he has finished. The Rhapsody on Qingqing he writes on waking says: "Jinghuan's registers can record what befalls a person; they cannot seal off what comes after." Two earlier passages can serve as side evidence. In Rec. ch. 106 Xiangyun says: "Sister Lin was a person like that, all flesh and blood and spirit and soul. Whether it's the immortals in heaven or the officials on earth, who is fit to take a tattered ledger and rank her, and fix her high or low?" And in Rec. ch. 96, in his coma, Baoyu dreams of Daiyu refusing the envoy from the Moon Palace: "Nothing welcomes me, and the spirit is whole of itself; nothing seals me, and the true is clear of itself."

Writing what befalls them, without exhausting the persons. To say "fulfilling" here means that the reconstruction realized these fates according to the future-directed texts; the rate of fulfilment is not treated as independent evidence. "The Roster of Feeling is alive" does not depend on the registers guessing wrong. On checking Table 3, most verdicts are fulfilled at the level of events in the reconstruction: Baochai is indeed buried in the snow, Tanchun is indeed married far away and does not return, Xifeng is indeed divorced and dies of illness at the old farmstead outside the city. What is fulfilled is what befalls them; how people answer what befalls them is not in the registers, and cannot be written there. On the road into exile Baochai strikes out both her status and her title and writes only "Xue Baochai"; Tanchun, once over there, changes the regulations for mooring ships herself. When the Rhapsody on Qingqing says "Jinghuan's registers can record what befalls a person; they cannot seal off what comes after," this is the layer it means. A trajectory changed by people's choices is one of the possible cases (Table 3, Type III); it is not the only ground for "the Roster of Feeling is alive."

The project's own Roster is alive too. Rec. ch. 110 writes a Roster of Feeling but does not list the full ranking, and its order can change.[^s6-2] A Roster fixed once and for all is a filing system; if the reconstructor treated the Roster it drew up as final, it would be committing again the very move the book sets out to reject. Nor does chapter 110 repeat the "who can grasp its true flavour?"⟨H23⟩ of chapter 1, as a framing poem that would close the book.

6.3 Daiyu and Baoyu: the true protagonists; Daiyu the core, Baoyu the viewpoint

The paper's reading is that the book's true protagonists are Daiyu and Baoyu together, and that of the two Daiyu is the true core and Baoyu the viewpoint.

Anchors in the first eighty chapters. In chapter 1 the monk tells the Daoist of the Crimson Pearl Flower's wish: "Since he is going down into the world as a man, I shall go down as well, and if I repay him with all the tears of a lifetime, that may repay my debt."⟨H24⟩ He goes on: "Because of this one affair, many a romantic soul has been drawn in, to go down with them and settle the case."⟨H25⟩ Right under "Because of this one affair, many a romantic soul has been drawn in," a Jiaxu marginal note says: "I do not name a single one of them, because the masters of the whole book are only the two Jades."[^s6-3] This directly attests that the two are the masters of the book. Everyone else in the book has come to "go down with them" for this one case; the repayment of tears is the Crimson Pearl Flower's wish, which is to say, Daiyu's act. The note names the two Jades together; "Daiyu the core, Baoyu the viewpoint" is the paper's reading on top of it, classed as Grade B.

The chain of titles. In chapter 1 the book's title is changed from hand to hand: the Daoist Kongkong changes The Story of the Stone to The Record of the Passionate Monk, Wu Yufeng calls it Dream of the Red Chamber, Kong Meixi calls it A Mirror for the Romantic; the last to fix a name is Cao Xueqin, who titles it The Twelve Beauties of Jinling. At the very least this shows the group of women pushed to the centre of the title, in tension with the line of the stone and Baoyu that The Story of the Stone looks to.[^s6-4b] Immediately afterwards, Zhiyan Zhai "kept the title The Story of the Stone." The contest over the book's centre is visible in the chain of titles itself.[^s6-4]

The other reading must be set beside it. A Gengchen prefatory note on chapter 42 says: "Chai and Yu are two in name, but one in person: this is a brush of illusion. The book has now passed the thirty-eighth chapter, which is already more than a third, so this chapter is written to make the two into one. Look at the writing about Baochai after Daiyu's death, and you will see I do not speak falsely." The commentator reads Baochai and Daiyu as one person, which does not point the same way as "Daiyu the core"; the paper sets it beside its own reading and still takes Daiyu as the core, classed as Grade B. The note's last sentence is a forward reference to events after Daiyu's death that the project's audit table missed; it has been filed for paper 1. In Rec. ch. 108 Daiyu appears in Baochai's dream ("That wasn't the wind carrying you. That was written by you. This stroke, no one put down for you."), which could serve as a candidate response, but it is not used to prove the commentator right about anything. In chapter 1 Yucun extemporizes, "The jade in the casket seeks a good price; the hairpin in the box awaits its time to fly,"⟨H26⟩ and a Jiaxu marginal note under the line reads it as Daiyu and Baochai ("having introduced Daiyu, it goes straight on to Baochai"), while an interlinear note at the same place says "earlier the two Jades were written as a joint biography, now the two Baos; this is the true eye of the book," belonging with the chapter 42 note to the type that pairs Baochai with Daiyu, or the two Baos together. These too are set side by side as they stand.

The viewpoint. First the first eighty chapters. In chapter 22 Baoyu composes a Chan verse ending "where nothing can be attested, there is the place to stand"; Daiyu adds "no place to stand: only that is clean," and Baochai says "this is truly thorough awakening."⟨H27⟩ Baoyu's verse is completed for him by Daiyu. Having completed it, Daiyu at once says, "only from now on no more talk of Chan"; Baoyu thinks to himself, "so they had understood before me," and laughs it off: "Who's doing Chan? It was only a moment's joke."⟨H28⟩ In chapter 32 Baoyu says in front of Xiren and Xiangyun: "Has Miss Lin ever talked such rubbish? If she ever had, I'd have broken with her long ago." What Daiyu, outside, hears is "Cousin Lin doesn't talk such rubbish; if she did, I'd break with her too," and she rejoices that "her judgement had not been wrong: she had always thought him a true friend."⟨H29⟩ What Baoyu measures himself and others by is Daiyu. In chapter 2 Leng Zixing repeats what Baoyu said as a child: "Girls are made of water, men are made of mud."⟨H30⟩ He places himself on the side of the mud.[^s6-4a]

The paper's interpretation begins here. The author's view is that the others in our eyes are ourselves: the Daiyu in Baoyu's eyes, heart and memory is the self Baoyu truly admires and wants to become. "Viewpoint" here does not mean the sole focal character in the narratological sense; it means a path of understanding that the paper reconstructs: the reader enters the book's ethical question through how Baoyu sees, how he misreads, and how he gives up his own way of seeing. That sentence names the starting point of the path: Baoyu first sees in Daiyu what he wants to become. It does not say that the two are a single subject.

Starting point and end point. Admiration is the starting point; standing side by side is the end point. The reconstruction carries this arc through. The Rhapsody on Qingqing Baoyu writes in Rec. ch. 110 says: "All because you are complete in yourself, and in no way my reflection … You are yourself, not my ultimate end; I too am myself, and do not wait on you to see clearly." And again: "I respect your solitary purity as I respect my own heart." Baoyu comes step by step toward the place where Daiyu had long been standing; and the end of that approach is not to take Daiyu in as his own mirror, but to acknowledge that she is complete in herself.

The constant. In the first eighty chapters, the ground on which Daiyu stands has always been within herself. In chapter 20 she tells Baoyu, "I do it for the sake of my heart," and Baoyu answers, "And I do it for the sake of mine."⟨H31⟩ In the "Flower Burial Song" of chapter 27: "Clean I came and clean I go, rather than sink in the foul gutter."⟨H32⟩ In chapter 64 she writes the "Five Beauties," poems on five women of antiquity. The paper reads from this that Daiyu changes in situation, relations and body, not in the ground of her values. The reconstruction carries this through. In Rec. ch. 95, hearing that she is to be sent into a prince's household, she coughs up blood and says only: "This body is not theirs to dispose of." When the senior household sends her ginseng pills, she returns them untouched: "The medicine came with words attached; the words go back, so does the medicine." The Ten Songs of the Solitary she copies out on her last night has a preface that speaks of "replacing 'beauty' with 'solitary'"; she has changed one word of the "Five Beauties." Daiyu's entry in the Roster of Rec. ch. 110 reads: "This person never borrowed the eyes of others to settle what was true of herself."

6.4 Baoyu's awakening: three levels

Level	Content	Anchor
1 · Learned awakening	Reading Zhuangzi, practising Chan, writing verses; stops at "the place to stand"	Chapter 22: Baoyu's verse ends "where nothing can be attested, there is the place to stand"; Daiyu adds "no place to stand: only that is clean"⟨H33⟩
2 · Lived awakening	Awakening to emptiness amid the ruin of the family and a beggar's life	Rec. ch. 102, the Temple of Wisdom Understood; Rec. ch. 105, the Convent of True Awakening
3 · Responsibility after awakening	Having seen through, still living; still treating others as ends	Rec. ch. 106, letting go; thereafter living his life out with Xiangyun

On this three-level model, the ending of the Cheng–Gao edition and Wang Guowei's reading of liberation both fall chiefly on the second level; what the paper writes is the third.

Three commentary notes.

A Gengchen interlinear note on chapter 21 says Baoyu has "the poison of utmost feeling," "hence later there is the chapter 'letting go at the cliff's edge.' If anyone else had Baochai for a wife and Sheyue for a maid, how could he cast them aside and become a monk?" The project splits this note into two propositions.[^s6-5]

First, having them and casting them aside. The paper records this as a transposed fulfilment. In Rec. ch. 97 the marriage has been agreed; Sheyue and others keep watch over Baoyu in two shifts, day and night; in the fourth watch before dawn on the wedding day Sheyue happens to be called away by Lady Wang to report, the room stands empty for the better part of an hour, and Baoyu climbs over the wall and leaves. At dawn the groom is gone; after much discussion the elders tell the outside world only that the young master is gravely ill and the great rite cannot be performed, and fix her status first: Baochai becomes a Second Mistress Bao who never made her bows. What Baoyu casts aside is the agreed betrothal and the wedding at hand; the status of "wife" was fixed on her after he left. The paper considers the note fulfilled. By the classification of Appendix 4 it is a transposed fulfilment, in two respects: the letter of "having her as wife" lands on the status fixed after he left, while at the moment of leaving he had only the betrothal; and "casting aside" has been moved from after the marriage to before the wedding. A reader who takes "having her as wife" to mean a marriage actually entered into, rather than a status conferred afterwards, will record the note as unfulfilled; both readings are entered. Baochai's greatest problem of fate thereafter is precisely this status, not her actual daily life (§7.2).

Second, becoming a monk. The paper records this as the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight. The sentence conflicts with the Jing note on chapter 67: "'Letting go' in the last chapter is already awakening; though he still yearns, he has broken through the gate of delusion; so why shave his head?" The former is in the Gengchen manuscript (standard-weight), the latter in the Jing (reference-weight, original lost). By its criterion the project follows the latter: in Rec. ch. 105 Xichun tells Baoyu, "With the Dharma in your heart, why leave home? You may be the Lay Disciple Empty-and-Frugal," and Baoyu bows and accepts, without taking the tonsure. The criterion's grounds here extend only to Baoyu's relations with others: returning, after awakening, to bear responsibility among people is the third level; it does not extend to leaving home as such. The reconstruction writes Xichun's becoming a nun in a positive light (§6.5). This choice is recorded as it stands; the conditions under which it would be overturned are in §9.4.

The prefatory note on chapter 28 (Gengchen; the same text at the end of the chapter in the Jiaxu) says of the actor Qiguan that "later, with Xiren, he looks after Master Jade and Baochai, together to the end; this is not idle writing." The paper records it as half fulfilled.[^s6-6] The half "looks after Master Jade" is fulfilled: in Rec. ch. 97 Baoyu hides in the Jinxiang Pavilion and Jiang Yuhan and Xiren often bring him things; in Rec. ch. 106 Baoyu moves into Zitanbao, under the chapter title "Hua Xiren proves constant to the end." The half "Baochai together to the end" is not fulfilled. Here the reconstruction takes several other readings. Yucun's extemporized line in chapter 1, "the hairpin in the box awaits its time to fly," together with the verdict "the golden hairpin buried in the snow,"⟨H34⟩ the paper reads as Baochai marrying Yucun and dying in the snow (Table 1, row 14, Grade B); the chapter 31 title "Through the unicorn is foreshadowed the white-haired pair of stars"⟨H03⟩ the paper reads as Baoyu ending his days with Xiangyun (row 13, Grade B); and Baoyu's leaving on his wedding day is the transposed fulfilment of the chapter 21 note above. These readings cannot be satisfied together with "Baochai together to the end." The paper takes the former, and records this half, as it stands, as soft evidence not accommodated (§9.1); it does not claim a logical incompatibility with the verdicts. Baoyu had that road open to him; he did not take it.

Where the reconstruction lands. In Rec. ch. 102 Baoyu, set on by robbers, does not dodge, and Liu Xianglian names it: "Just now it wasn't that you couldn't get out of the way; you wouldn't." That night Liu breaks his own sword: "This measuring-rod once measured a clean person to her death. Now it's broken. From now on I save only those who still have breath." At the Temple of Wisdom Understood the old monk preaches nothing; he only sends Baoyu out to gather dry firewood and to clear the ashes from the stove; when the fire catches, Baoyu, holding a bowl of gruel, says of his own accord, "No place to stand: only that is clean." In Rec. ch. 104 an illiterate peasant woman lets him sit on her doorstep and wait for a taro, without asking who he is; only two or three li on does he realize: "Today you sat half a day in front of an illiterate woman's stove, waiting for a taro." He has been treated as an end by someone who did not know him. In Rec. ch. 105 Xichun names him the Lay Disciple Empty-and-Frugal. In Rec. ch. 106 he writes four characters in the snow, "no attestation, no attachment," smooths them away, and throws the jade into the snow; thereafter he lives out his life with Xiangyun, and in Rec. ch. 109 he teaches her twins their characters, "teaching them only to read, never taking up the ruler." In Rec. ch. 110 he says he has kept to "feeling for the unfeeling" (qing bu qing, three characters in Chinese) all his life, and Xiangyun, not raising her head, says: "Second brother, you've thrown away the jade; why can't you let go of these three characters?"

6.5 Grief is in living on

Speaking only of the arc of Baoyu that this paper reconstructs: if leaving home as a monk is set as the final completion, the character stops at the level of withdrawal from the world. The third level that the paper writes, returning after the awakening to emptiness to bear responsibility within human relations, is harder, and sadder. The paper passes no judgement on leaving home as such; Xichun's becoming a nun is written in a positive light in the reconstruction. Textually, the Cheng–Gao edition and Wang Guowei both stop at leaving home; the commentary gives "letting go" and "already awakened."

6.6 Against the realm as a family estate: a political inference

This section is registered as belonging to the inferential layer; it is not load-bearing for the central argument. The Grand View Garden offers a local, fragile and incomplete space in which people treat one another as ends; it was never a kingdom of ends, for within it there remain master and servant, dismissals and abuse, so it is only an unfinished experiment. The search of the Garden and the raid on the family are interventions of the power of the realm-as-family-estate. In Rec. ch. 108, Jia Yucun, under escort into exile, says that Lin Ruhai kept himself clean and still died in office: "Since cleanness can't protect you, what's so strange about scheming?" Zhen Shiyin answers him: "The difference isn't whether you can escape the drowning. The difference is only whether, as you went under, your hand was pressing someone else's head down." And again: "You think you're playing chess; you are the piece." Graded blows, the fictionalized dynasty and the map of political forces are left to paper 8.

For §§6.2–6.4, this paper gives only conclusions and one or two of the hardest anchors; the arguments by character and chapter are left to papers 5 and 6.

7 Qingqing Joins the Kangzhuang: Kant and Zhuangzi

7.1 Principles and procedure

No equation. Kant lays down law, valid for all rational beings; this book shows particular persons acting in particular straits. Each comparison says only "they meet here."

The two-column method. Every comparison has two columns: "Anchor in the first eighty chapters and the commentary" and "What the reconstruction writes." Sentences about Cao Xueqin may draw only on the first column; the second says only "the project carried this direction through and wrote it like this." Where the first column is empty, this is stated: there is no anchor in the first eighty chapters, and the entry is only how the reconstruction writes it.

7.2 The Kantian strand: person and person

Comparison	Anchor in the first eighty chapters and the commentary	What the reconstruction writes
Formula of Humanity (GMS 4:429)	The chapter 5 distinction between lust of the mind and the lust of the skin (read by the paper as: not treating people as things for my use)	Rhapsody on Qingqing: "I respect your solitary purity as I respect my own heart," corresponding to "in your own person as well as in the person of every other"
Pathological love and practical love (GMS 4:399)	The two Roster epithets set side by side in the chapter 19 commentary	The self-critique of "feeling for the unfeeling," Rhapsody on Qingqing: "I prided myself on this and called it feeling for the unfeeling … what I called universal love was in truth arrogance; what I called shared grief was in truth self-pity. I reduced all things to footnotes to myself alone"
Respect (KpV 5:73 ff.; GMS 4:401 note)	Chapter 58, reached only through the transition of the scene (§6.1)	"Only two points of solitary light remain, facing each other from afar, neither clinging nor apart"
Love draws near, respect keeps apart (MS 6:449)	No anchor in the first eighty chapters	"Neither clinging nor apart": love draws people near, respect keeps them at a distance. Only how the reconstruction writes it

The centre of the Kantian strand is the first row: its anchor in the first eighty chapters is the most direct; the anchors of the second and third rows have to pass through a reading or through a scene, and the fourth row has no anchor. The other rows show several things. First, Kant does not take sensible inclination as the ground of the moral law, but he distinguishes pathological love (love from inclination; "pathological" is not meant in the medical sense) from practical love as duty; that distinction, if anything, gives "love and respect united" a place to land. The Rhapsody on Qingqing's self-critique of "feeling for the unfeeling" corresponds to what Kant says about beneficence: that one should do good without humiliating the one who receives it (MS 6:453 and context): if the one who gives love treats the other as an object of pity, universal love becomes arrogance. Second, respect: Kant calls it "a feeling self-wrought by a concept of reason" (GMS 4:401 note), "the only feeling which we can cognize completely a priori" (KpV 5:73), and, as respect for the moral law, "the sole and at the same time undoubted moral incentive" (KpV 5:78 and context); the Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue further lists four items, moral feeling, conscience, love of one's neighbour and respect for oneself, as the aesthetic preconditions (conditions on the side of feeling, not aesthetics in the artistic sense) of the mind's receptivity to concepts of duty (MS 6:399 ff.). So one cannot say that respect is "the only moral feeling Kant acknowledges."[^s7-1]

Baochai: from borrowed strength to writing for herself. The paper does not use the pair heteronomy and autonomy here: Kant's autonomy is the will giving itself universal law, whereas Baochai writing her own name back on her travel pass is her no longer letting others write for her; the two are not the same. The anchor in the first eighty chapters is Baochai's willow-catkin lyric in chapter 70: "a good wind, lending its strength again and again, sends me up to the blue clouds."⟨H35⟩[^s7-5] In Rec. ch. 108, on the road into exile, only one Cold Fragrance pill is left; she tips it into her palm, looks at it a long while, and puts it back in the bottle. A woman guard brings her travel pass: in the space for her name, "Mrs Jia née Xue" has been written first, and then the old title "Commandery Lady of Huzhou" added; the guard asks which to keep. "Strike them both out. Write Xue Baochai." That night Daiyu comes into her dream and says: "That wasn't the wind carrying you. That was written by you. This stroke, no one put down for you." Read together with the thread of status in §5.3.

7.3 The Zhuangzian strand: person and thing

Comparison	Anchor in the first eighty chapters and the commentary	What the reconstruction writes
"Nourishing a bird with what nourishes oneself, not nourishing a bird as a bird" (caring for a bird by one's own measure rather than the bird's) (Zhuangzi, "Perfect Happiness"; the passage also appears in "Mastering Life")	Jiaxu upper-margin note on chapter 8, "toward all the unknowing, unfeeling things of the world, he has an infatuated feeling of attentive care": it supports only the scope, i.e. that qing reaches unknowing, unfeeling things; "attentive care" was originally a word of praise	Rhapsody on Qingqing: "The great fault of qing is to measure others by oneself, and to confuse the true with desire. When I used to weep at falling flowers, I did not understand that falling flowers have their own will to become soil; when I grieved for flying birds, I did not know that flying birds have their own joy in riding the wind"
Not transformed along with things	No anchor in the first eighty chapters	Xiangyun's Rhapsody on a Humble Dwelling in Rec. ch. 110, "This compass is my true nature, which seeks nothing outside and is not transformed along with things," set beside the Rhapsody on Qingqing. Only how the reconstruction writes it

Zhuangzi's own "being without qing" must be accounted for. In "The Sign of Virtue Complete," Huizi asks, "Are people then without qing?" and Zhuangzi answers: "When I speak of being without qing, I mean that a person does not let likes and dislikes injure him within, but always goes along with what is so of itself and does not try to add to life." In "Nourishing Life," Qin Shi, mourning Lao Dan, says: "Content with the time and dwelling in accord, sorrow and joy cannot get in."[^s7-2] What Zhuangzi speaks of is not letting likes and dislikes injure oneself within; what this paper speaks of is qingqing; the two are not equated. The paper's Zhuangzian strand borrows only "nourish the bird as a bird," that is, not measuring things by oneself; it does not borrow Zhuangzi's theory of qing.

Kant's "end" extends only to rational beings; toward animals he recognizes only indirect duties (MS 6:443). Carrying "not measuring them by oneself" on to falling flowers and flying birds is the work of the Zhuangzian strand. The reconstruction also has a Zhuangzian thread: in Rec. ch. 82 Daiyu says of Zhuangzi, "He just keeps talking bigger and bigger, till he's off the edge of everything … when he writes, he doesn't care whether people believe him or not."

7.4 A bridge: Schiller

Schiller's On Grace and Dignity (1793) puts forward the "beautiful soul." Daiyu's "simply being what she is" comes close to a Chinese beautiful soul, though again they are not equated. The rest is left to paper 9.

7.5 A divergence: taking one's own life

The reconstruction writes the deaths of Yingchun, Yuanyang, Yuanchun and Baoqin (抱琴, Yuanchun's maid, not Xue Baoqin). Kant explicitly opposes suicide (GMS 4:422; MS 6:422–423). This is a divergence, and the paper records it as such. The paper's way of writing puts the weight on the structures that drove these women to that step, the "wolf of Zhongshan," the palace, master and servant; it shows every other choice taken from them, and does not present the step itself as a desirable autonomy. The paper does not on this account change Yingchun's entry in the reconstruction's Roster; what it changes is only its own way of writing. This divergence belongs to the philosophical comparison and is not listed among the failures of joint satisfiability in §9.

7.6 Two further matters

Contemporaries. A Jiaxu upper-margin note on chapter 1 says: "On New Year's Eve of the renwu year, the book not yet finished, Qin [Cao Xueqin], his tears spent, passed away." Renwu is the twenty-seventh year of the Qianlong reign, and its New Year's Eve falls early in 1763 by the Western calendar; there are other views, such as guiwei (New Year's Eve of the twenty-eighth year, early 1764). On any of them Cao Xueqin died more than twenty years before Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). There is no known contact between the two. The paper states this fact only; speculation about routes by which Western learning reached China in the late Ming and early Qing is kept to a note and bears no argumentative weight.[^s7-3]

The place of SAE. The author has a separate philosophical framework, SAE (Self-as-an-End), which also takes "persons are ends" as its starting point.[^s7-4] This paper's argument depends only on Kant, Zhuangzi and the texts, not on SAE.

[^s6-1]: Chapter 5. On "the lust of the skin" (pifu yinlan; standard edition lanyin), see the note to §1.2. The project's internal general statement at one point quoted the passage as "can be grasped by the heart" (ke xinhui) and "not what the world calls qing" (fei shi zhi yan qing zhe); neither is the wording of the project base text, and this paper does not use them. [^s6-2]: Audit table, disclaimed item 1: the Roster does not list the full ranking of principal, secondary, tertiary and further registers, and does not adopt the Guiyou manuscript's practice of listing the full ranking. [^s6-3]: Chapter 1, Jiaxu marginal note. [^s6-4]: According to the standard critical edition's collation notes, the sentence "Wu Yufeng called it Dream of the Red Chamber" appears only in the Jiaxu manuscript; not checked against facsimiles. [^s6-4b]: The Daoist Kongkong changes The Story of the Stone to The Record of the Passionate Monk; the "passionate monk" is Kongkong himself, renamed, not Baoyu. [^s6-4a]: Chapters 22, 32 and 2. The chapter 2 sentence is Leng Zixing's report of what Baoyu said at the age of seven or eight, not something Baoyu says in the scene. [^s6-5]: Chapter 21, Gengchen interlinear double-column note. The project first recorded it as "fulfilled"; on re-examining the reconstruction, the chronology was found to be wrong: the status was fixed only after Baoyu left, and at the moment he left, Sheyue had been called away. It was therefore split into two items: "having them and casting them aside," a transposed fulfilment; "becoming a monk," the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight. [^s6-6]: Chapter 28, prefatory note; merged into disclaimed item 6 and recorded as half fulfilled. When it was first recorded as disclaimed, the reason given was only the reconstruction's plot (Baoyu leaves on his wedding day; Baochai does not become his wife). This is not circular: that the reconstruction fails to satisfy a note is exactly the kind of failure the joint-satisfiability test should register; the fault lay in not stating the reading on which that plot rests. It is now traced back to the readings the reconstruction adopts and registered as soft evidence not accommodated. The note can also be punctuated otherwise: "later, with Xiren, he looks after Master Jade and Baochai; together to the end," in which Master Jade and Baochai are both objects of the looking-after and "together to the end" refers to Qiguan and Xiren. On that reading, the unfulfilled half is "looks after Baochai"; conclusion and reason are unchanged, and the main text keeps "Baochai together to the end" as shorthand. Further, since the book was "read over for ten years and revised five times," the commentator may not have seen the same draft as our text, and this note may refer to another draft (the author's view; §3.4). This is registered only as a possibility and is not used to cancel the unfulfilled half. [^s7-1]: Kant is cited by volume and page of the Academy edition (AA). Translations are the author's own from the German (the Chinese version of this paper consulted the Chinese edition edited by Li Qiuling); for complete English translations see Mary J. Gregor's in the Cambridge Edition (References). [^s7-2]: Zhuangzi is quoted from a standard electronic text; chapter locations follow Guo Qingfan, Zhuangzi jishi, ed. Wang Xiaoyu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961); not collated word for word against a printed edition. Translations are the author's own. [^s7-3]: The project once discussed, as background to "contemporaneous and independent," the Western works translated by Jesuits in the late Ming and early Qing and the syncretism of Fang Yizhi's circle. These are only conjectures, and the paper builds nothing on them. [^s7-4]: The SAE methodology series and related papers are on the author's Zenodo page. [^s7-5]: Chapter 70. The project base text reads pin 频 ("again and again"); the standard edition reads ping 凭 ("relying on").

8 Tables of Conclusions

All three tables in this section are first editions, to be updated with the topical papers and with further checking.

8.1 Table 1: Principal conclusions of the reconstruction

The table lists the principal conclusions of the reconstruction one by one, with the type of source, the grade of inference, and a comparison. Grades are as in §4.2: A, direct evidence; B, inference; C, selection by the criterion; D, authorial decision. Where different parts of one conclusion have different grades, each is marked. "Rec. ch." gives the chapter(s) of the reconstruction.

#	Conclusion	Rec. ch.	Source and anchor	Grade	Comparison
1	The raid comes after chapter 80: the Ning mansion and the senior branch of the Rong mansion are raided; the second branch is sealed and held for questioning	91	Gengchen upper-margin note on ch. 27: "this was because [the earlier commentator] had not seen the 'Confiscation,' the 'Prison Temple' and other episodes"	A (raid); D (scope)	Cheng–Gao also has a raid
2	Yuanchun dies in the palace	91	Verdict: "when tiger meets rhinoceros, she returns from the great dream"⟨H36⟩; Gengchen note on ch. 18: "The Palace of Eternal Youth foreshadows the death of the Imperial Consort"	A (death); D (manner of death)	Cheng–Gao: dies of illness
3	Baoyu is imprisoned; Qianxue, Xiaohong and others rescue him at the Prison Temple	91–94	Notes on chs. 20, 26 and 27; note on ch. 42: "the day of the meeting at the Prison Temple"	A	—
4	Daiyu dies with her tears spent; she does not burn her manuscripts; she entrusts her poems to Xueyan to take back to Suzhou	95	The repayment of tears; Gengchen note on ch. 22: "in future, her tears spent, she dies young"; verdict: "the jade belt hangs in the wood"⟨H37⟩	A (tears spent); C (manuscripts not burnt); D (details)	Cheng–Gao: she burns her manuscripts (opposite)
5	Zhen Baoyu returns the jade	96	Gengchen note on ch. 18: "The Handan Dream foreshadows Zhen Baoyu returning the jade"	A	—
6	On the wedding day the groom leaves; Baochai's status is fixed after the fact	97	Gengchen note on ch. 21: "Baochai for a wife, Sheyue for a maid"	D; with respect to this note, a transposed fulfilment in this paper's view (§6.4)	Cheng–Gao: "she leaves her chamber for the great rite" (different)
7	Baoyu leaves home and begs his way	97–104	Gengchen note on ch. 19: "in the cold of winter choking on sour pickles, on snowy nights wrapped in a torn felt"	A	—
8	Qiaojie is sold by her own uncle and rescued by Grannie Liu's party; she chooses to go with Grannie Liu and marries Banr	99–103	Verdict: "by chance, having once helped a woman named Liu, / by good fortune she meets one who repays her"⟨H38⟩; the song Liu yuqing ("Blessings Left Behind")⟨H39⟩: "do not be like my cruel uncle and treacherous brother, who loved silver and forgot their own flesh and blood"⟨H40⟩; Gengchen note on ch. 41: "a child's ordinary feelings become a thread laid a thousand li ahead"	A (sold, rescued); B (marries Banr)	Cheng–Gao: married elsewhere (different)
9	Miaoyu is sold at Guazhou, redeemed, and does not submit	99–100, 105	Verdict: "in the end she sinks into the mire"⟨H13⟩; Jing upper-margin note on ch. 41 (fragmentary)	C (collated reading); departure, see Table 3	Cheng–Gao: carried off by robbers (different)
10	Xichun becomes a nun	99, 104–105	Verdict: "alone she lies beside the ancient Buddha by the blue lamp"⟨H41⟩; Gengchen note on ch. 22: "this is the prophecy of Xichun becoming a nun"	A	Cheng–Gao: also becomes a nun
11	Baoyu lets go; he is not tonsured, and becomes a lay disciple	105–106	Jing note on ch. 67: "so why shave his head?"; conflicts with the Gengchen note on ch. 21, "cast them aside and become a monk"	C (the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight)	Cheng–Gao: passes the examination and becomes a monk (opposite)
12	Xiren marries Jiang Yuhan, and with him looks after Baoyu	81, 97, 106	Verdict: "to be lamented, the actor's good fortune"⟨H42⟩; Gengchen upper-margin note on ch. 20: "Hua Xiren, constant from beginning to end"; the note on ch. 28	A	Cheng–Gao: also marries Jiang Yuhan
13	Baoyu lives out his life with Xiangyun	106–110	Title of ch. 31: "Through the unicorn is foreshadowed the white-haired pair of stars."⟨H03⟩ A Gengchen note in the same chapter, "the unicorn that Ruolan wears at the archery ground some dozens of chapters later is this very unicorn," explicitly connects the unicorn's sequel to Wei Ruolan (fulfilled in Rec. ch. 87), and so puts pressure on this row; the paper still takes Baoyu and Xiangyun, and leaves the reasons to paper 6	B	Zhou Ruchang's view points the same way
14	Baochai marries Jia Yucun, is convicted and exiled with him, and dies in the snow	103, 107–108	Jia Yucun's extemporized line in ch. 1, "the hairpin in the box awaits its time to fly"⟨H43⟩ (Jiaxu marginal note: "having introduced Daiyu, it goes straight on to Baochai"; for another interlinear note at the same place see §6.3); verdict: "the golden hairpin buried in the snow"⟨H34⟩	B	—
15	Xifeng is divorced and dies of illness; her coffin is kept at the farmstead awaiting return to Jinling	90, 92, 93, 94, 96	Verdict: "first following, then commanding, then 'man-and-tree' [人木, i.e. 休, 'divorced']; weeping toward Jinling, her plight the more to be grieved"⟨H44⟩ (Jiaxu note: "the method of splitting characters")	B	—
16	Yingchun dies in the Sun household	86, 92	Verdict: "in the golden chamber, a frame frail as flower and willow; / within a year she goes to the Yellow Millet dream"⟨H45⟩	A	Cheng–Gao: also dies
17	Tanchun is married far away overseas, and does not return	85, 109	Verdict: "a thousand li on the east wind, a dream far away"⟨H46⟩; Gengchen note on ch. 22: "this is the prophecy of Tanchun marrying far away"	A (married far away); D (overseas, as a royal consort)	Cheng–Gao: married far away, but returns on a visit (different)
18	Jia Lan passes the provincial examination; Li Wan receives an imperial patent and dies	109	Verdict: "peach and plum in the spring wind have set their fruit, and are done"⟨H47⟩; the song Wan shaohua ("Late Splendour")⟨H48⟩: "yet this pearl-set coronet and phoenix robe cannot hold off the impermanence of life"⟨H49⟩	A	Cheng–Gao: Jia Lan passes the examination
19	Xiangling is released from prison, recognized by her father, and returns to Suzhou	95, 107, 109	Verdict: "her fragrant soul returns to her native place"⟨H12⟩ (trajectory); Jiaxu marginal note on ch. 1: "these eight characters describe precisely the Xiangling of later days"	C (transposed fulfilment; see Table 3)	Cheng–Gao: Xiangling dies in childbirth (different)
20	Qin Keqing: "her sin was not beauty but politics"	104–105, 110	Verdict: "once qing meets qing, it must mean lust"⟨H14⟩ (pronouncement); the notes on ch. 13 on the deletion of the Tianxiang Tower episode	C (pronouncement reread); inferential layer	Liu Xinwu's view (similarities and differences in paper 8)
21	The jade returns to Greensickness Peak; Zhen Shiyin tells the dream	108, 110	Jing note on ch. 67: "at Greensickness Peak, the bond concluded and qing attested, it still does not go beyond Shiyin's dream"	A	—
22	Rec. ch. 110 writes the Roster of Feeling, without the full ranking	110	Gengchen upper-margin note on ch. 18: "only at the end, with Jinghuan's Roster of Feeling, will one know the names of the principal, secondary, tertiary and further registers"	A (there is a Roster); C (without the full ranking)	The Guiyou manuscript lists the full ranking (opposite)
23	The whole book has 110 chapters	—	Four groups of commentary notes (§3.5)	C	The 108-chapter view
24	Jia Huan provokes his father's death and causes the death of his legal mother	98	—	D	—

The Cheng–Gao column is based on an electronic text of the standard 120-chapter edition.[^s8-1]

8.2 Table 2: Summary of the commentary audit

The full table appears in paper 1, with the data released alongside.

• Base count. The first eighty chapters carry 4,099 commentary notes. Forward-reference candidates were first separated out by keyword and ruled on one by one; the rest were checked by sampling, and the whole body was given a further targeted screening. The audit table has been revised round by round; the exact figures are those of paper 1.
• Tier 1 (hard forward references). Some twenty-odd notes. Most are fulfilled or are transposed fulfilments; the rest are half fulfilled, or not adopted, or subject to the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight, and each has its reason registered.
• Tier 2 (forward-reference candidates). Some two hundred-odd notes, all ruled on except one, which is kept because the person it points to is nameless and cannot be anchored.
• Tier 3 (the remaining notes). A sample of 382 notes turned up two that had slipped through; those caught by the targeted screening mostly fell within groups already ruled on. Further omissions continue to be found and entered in the course of checking, such as the prefatory note on chapter 42 (§6.3); each is passed to paper 1.
• Six explicitly disclaimed items, each with its reason.[^s8-3] The sixth of these (chapter 28, "Baochai together to the end") has been narrowed to half an item.
• Examples of constraints satisfied together (not called "the weightiest fulfilments"). A note on chapter 13 says that Qin Keqing, appearing to Xifeng in a dream, entrusted her with "two matters of the Jia family's future," and that "though the matters were not carried out …"; in Rec. ch. 92, Xifeng, ill, repeats the two matters to Pinger, and at once says, "I never bought a single mu of land," and then, in a low voice, "Even if I'd understood it properly then, I probably wouldn't have gone along with it," so that "the matters were not carried out" is fulfilled as well. The positive wording of this item was corrected by the reverse audit (§9.3); it is a case of passing by construction. Again, in chapter 3 Lady Wang asks Xifeng whether "the monthly allowances have been paid out yet,"⟨H50⟩ and a Jiaxu marginal note says, "without seeing the later text, one cannot see the subtlety of this stroke"; eighty-three chapters later this comes to rest in Lady Xing's audit of the accounts in Rec. ch. 86. Two further items must be flagged and are not listed as evidence of fulfilment. The fourteen characters cited by the prefatory note on chapter 21, "Xue Baochai uses words to veil her admonition; Wang Xifeng, knowing fate, forces herself to be heroic," are taken over directly as the title of Rec. ch. 90, which is direct adoption. The four plays that Yuanchun chooses in chapter 18 each foreshadow an event; the reconstruction makes all four events happen, but the names of the four plays hardly appear in its text: this is an example of technique, and what is foreshadowed is the event, not the play's name.

8.3 Table 3: Register of responses to future-directed texts

Responses to future-directed texts are of four types: I, fulfilled in event, answered by persons; II, transposed fulfilment; III, departure; IV, pronouncement reread. The body of the paper lists only representative cases of each type; the full table, covering the verdicts for fifteen persons in chapter 5 and the fourteen songs of the Dream of the Red Chamber cycle, is in Appendix 5. This table is a first-check version and will be replaced by a new version once the full table has been settled.

Type I · Fulfilled in event, answered by persons: the reconstruction realized what befalls them according to the verdicts; how the persons answer it cannot be written in the registers

Person	Original line	What happens in the reconstruction	How the person answers it	Rec. ch.
Baochai	"the golden hairpin buried in the snow"⟨H34⟩	Dies in the snow on the road into exile	Pulls out her own golden hairpin, breaks open the frozen snow and buries it; strikes out both her status and her title on her travel pass and writes "Xue Baochai" herself; does not take her last Cold Fragrance pill	108
Tanchun	"At Qingming, in tears, she is seen off, gazing from the riverbank; / a thousand li on the east wind, a dream far away"⟨H51⟩	Married overseas; does not return	The distant marriage was not her choice; once there she takes her government into her own hands, changes the regulations for mooring ships, and opens weaving workshops	85, 109
Xifeng	"first following, then commanding, then 'man-and-tree'; / weeping toward Jinling, her plight the more to be grieved"⟨H44⟩	Divorced, dies of illness; her coffin kept at the farmstead, awaiting return to the Wang family in Jinling	Refuses to press her handprint on the letter of divorce; in her illness entrusts her orphaned daughter; in her last account, leaves Qiaojie clothes and jewellery she can take with her	90, 92, 93, 94, 96
Qiaojie	"When power fails, speak not of rank; / when the house falls, speak not of kin. / By chance, having once helped a woman named Liu, / by good fortune she meets one who repays her"⟨H52⟩	Sold by her own uncle; rescued by Grannie Liu's party	Going with Grannie Liu and marrying Banr is what she herself wants: "Granny never told me to go. I wanted to go myself"	99–103

Type II · Transposed fulfilment: the letter of the original line is fulfilled, but what it refers to is rewritten

Person or song	Original line	The trajectory at that moment	What happens in the reconstruction	What is rewritten	Choices that bear it	Rec. ch.
Xiangling	"Ever since two earths grew a lone tree, / her fragrant soul returns to her native place"⟨H16⟩	Done to death at Xia Jingui's hands	Jingui's poisoned soup strikes Jingui herself by mistake; Xiangling is released from prison, recognized by her father, and returns to Suzhou	"Returns to her native place" is fulfilled; the death signalled by "fragrant soul" is rewritten; in Rec. ch. 110 the last line in the old register reads "this body has not perished: it returns to its native place"	The person herself and others together: Xiangling holds no grudge for Baochan's old wrongs and speaks in her defence before the court; Baochan tells the truth before the court	95, 107
Zhongshen wu ("A Life Gone Wrong")⟨H53⟩	"All say it is the match of gold and jade; / I remember only the old vow of wood and stone. / In vain I face the crystal snow of the recluse on the hill … / Even though she lifts the tray level with her brows, / still the heart is not at peace"⟨H54⟩	Gold and jade marry; the heart remains with wood and stone	Her status is fixed by the elders after the fact, and Baochai becomes "Second Mistress Bao who never made her bows"; the wedding does not take place; Baoyu leaves; "the heart is not at peace" is fulfilled	"All say" is read as a name fixed by others, and "even though" as concessive. If "lifts the tray level with her brows" is read as an actual event, this is a departure; both readings are entered	Baoyu himself: he leaves on the wedding day	97

Type III · Departure: the trajectory rewritten by persons' choices

Person	Original line	The trajectory at that moment	What happens in the reconstruction	Choices that bear it	Rec. ch.
Miaoyu	Verdict: "Alas, that substance of gold and jade / in the end sinks into the mire"⟨H55⟩; Shi nan rong ("The World Will Not Have Her")⟨H56⟩: "At the last, still, in the dust and filth of the world, against her own wishes"⟨H17⟩	In the end sunk in the mire	"Sinks" is fulfilled: her sedan chair is stopped, she is sold and set to menial work; "in the end" is rewritten: she is redeemed at Guazhou	Others first: Grannie Liu entrusts the Chenghua cup to Xing Xiuyan, Xiuyan exchanges the cup for her and holds her back at the river's edge; then she herself turns back, and picks up a coarse bowl	99–100, 103, 105

Zhong 终 ("in the end") can also be read as "eventually" ("she eventually sinks into the mire"); on that reading the whole line has already been fulfilled, and this row belongs under Type I. The paper takes the reading "at the last," as in the song's daotoulai, that is, zhong as the final state, and enters both readings.

Type IV · Pronouncement reread

Person	Original line	The pronouncement at that moment	The reconstruction's rereading	Rec. ch.
Qin Keqing	"A sky of qing, a sea of qing, a body of illusory qing; / once qing meets qing, it must mean lust"⟨H09⟩; Haoshi zhong ("The End of Good Things")⟨H57⟩: "Given to amorous ways, with a face like the moon: / these were the root of the family's ruin"⟨H10⟩	Her beauty ruins the family	The Roster records this as "what the world says," and overturns it: "her sin was not beauty but politics"	104–105, 110

Result of the first check. Twenty-nine items in the full table: twenty-one fulfilled in event (three of the songs among them also contain words of fixed fate or retribution, and those lines are separately treated as pronouncements reread); two transposed fulfilments; departures in two texts but a single personal event (Miaoyu's verdict and The World Will Not Have Her); four pronouncements reread. "The Roster of Feeling is alive" is not staked on how many departures there are (§6.2). Once the full table has been settled, if the numbers change, this paragraph will be rewritten accordingly.

9 Limits, and Where the Paper Can Be Falsified

9.1 Circularity, and two kinds of test

The reconstructed text was written under the criterion, and is not evidence of the original (§1). The constraint measures were enforced chapter by chapter during writing; meeting them is not a test. There are only two tests the paper can honestly claim.

The test of joint realizability of the constraints (hereafter "the joint-satisfiability test"; not a SAT decision in the sense of formal logic): whether the groups of constraints can all be satisfied at once within one complete thirty-chapter text. Constraints are of two kinds. Hard constraints must all be satisfied: the events, persons and chronology written in the first eighty chapters; and every future-directed text must have a response, whether fulfilment or a registered transposed fulfilment, departure or rereading. Soft evidence is to be accommodated as far as possible: the commentary, textual scholarship, variant manuscripts, earlier tanyi work; whatever cannot be accommodated is disclosed item by item.

This test can fail, and where it has failed the failures are listed as they stand, in two groups.

One group is constraint conflicts, where the materials cannot all be satisfied together, whether with one another, with the criterion, or with the readings the reconstruction adopts. These are recorded as they stand:

• the six disclaimed items (the sixth narrowed to half an item);
• the chapter 21 "cast them aside and become a monk" against the chapter 67 "why shave his head," resolved by the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight;
• the chapter 28 "Baochai together to the end," which could not be accommodated with the paper's readings of "the hairpin in the box awaits its time to fly"⟨H43⟩ and "the white-haired pair of stars,"⟨H03⟩ and is recorded as half fulfilled;
• the note on chapter 20 saying that after Xiren's marriage "there is still one person at the side of Baoyu and Baochai," of which the reconstruction realizes only the Baoyu half, the Baochai half landing only on her status; also recorded as half fulfilled;
• the order of the registers in the chapter 18 commentary, which contradicts the chapter 5 text; the text is followed;
• one soft failure: the chapter 67 note's "the last chapter's 'letting go'," which has to be read as "the last few chapters," since the letting go in the reconstruction comes in Rec. ch. 106.

The other group is procedural errors, which have been found and corrected. Two examples: the fulfilment of one note on Qin Keqing's dream-visit once took word frequencies concerning the Lin family's ancestral graves as evidence about the Jia family's ancestral graves; and for one item on chapter 28, only the first half of A Life Gone Wrong was once quoted, missing the same song's "Even though she lifts the tray level with her brows, still the heart is not at peace."⟨H58⟩ There are further cases of fragmentary text forced into a verdict, fulfilment sites and chronology misrecorded, sources left unrecorded, and forward references missed. The root causes and the procedures instituted in response are in §9.3; the items one by one are in paper 1.

The diagnostic hold-out test is planned: the qualifying measures have yet to be determined and the test has not been run; the principles are in §4.4, and the measurement belongs to paper 4.

9.2 The criterion is a norm; each of its applications can be checked

"Persons are ends in themselves" is a normative criterion that this paper openly adopts; it is not an empirical proposition that the paper sets out to establish from the materials of Dream of the Red Chamber. What can be examined is whether, in each selection, the criterion overstepped its authority or came into conflict with the inviolable. The paper therefore registers every use of it: Grade C items are listed one by one, and a reader who does not accept this criterion can reread them item by item with another.

The project's own selections above all must be registered. The ranking "feeling for the unfeeling is the illness, feeling for those who feel is the cure" is not in the first eighty chapters; the Jiaxu marginal note on chapter 5 explains "lust of the mind" by "attentive care," and the Jiaxu upper-margin note on chapter 8 says that toward unknowing things Baoyu "has an infatuated feeling of attentive care"; both are words of praise, and this selection runs against their direction. That is its cost. To explain qingqing as "respecting others as one respects oneself, and letting each thing follow its own nature" shifts the meaning. Both are Grade C.

Every response to a future-directed text is registered in Table 3 and Appendix 5; the reader can check them item by item: where there is fulfilment, whether the persons' responses have been written; where there is transposed fulfilment or departure, whether a person's choice lies behind it.

9.3 The reverse audit and procedure

A forward audit asks "does the note have a place where it lands?"; it searches with anchors, and judges a note fulfilled if the person and the event are present, which errs on the side of leniency. A reverse audit breaks a note into falsifiable propositions and then tries to falsify them against the text of the reconstruction. The project has run targeted tests on the forward references most likely to be contradicted, six groups of propositions in all, shown in the table below. Several instances of loose wording in the forward audit have already been found in these groups, so all the other items judged fulfilled must be tested in turn; the full further testing is in paper 1. Notes with no specific content to break down are registered as "no falsifiable proposition."

Group	Proposition	Source note	Outcome
1	Qin Keqing's two dream-matters: "though the matters were not carried out"	Ch. 13	Passed (passed by construction)
2	Miaoyu does not submit to the withered bones	Jing upper-margin note on ch. 41	Passed (passed by construction; per the selection in §4.6)
3	Xifeng's short life; the root of her illness	Gengchen notes on chs. 43 and 44	Passed
4	Sheyue at their side after Xiren's marriage; "looks after Master Jade and Baochai, together to the end"	Chs. 20 and 28	Sheyue: the Baoyu half realized, the Baochai half landing only on her status; recorded as half fulfilled. "Baochai": first recorded as disclaimed, now recorded as half fulfilled
5	The three verdicts of the Tertiary Register	Gengchen note on ch. 18	The commentary's own error; the text is followed
6	"Cast them aside and become a monk" against "why shave his head"	Gengchen note on ch. 21; Jing note on ch. 67	Internal conflict in the commentary; the reference-weight overrides the standard-weight

Passed by construction: the reconstruction was written according to the note in question; its passing is a result of the construction, and is not evidence.

The misjudgements in the audit share a single root cause: taking fragmentary text as settled text, word frequency as meaning, the rhetoric of a note as a practical specification, and reading only half of a song when quoting it. The procedures instituted in response: collate fragmentary text before ruling on it; check same-name, different-referent cases by meaning (ancestral graves, convents, unicorns, registers); do not read a note's rhetoric as a practical specification (for example, the Gengchen note on chapter 22, "a daughter of a ducal house reduced to black robes and begging for food," is checked only for whether her status and situation are fulfilled, not for whether "begging for food" is realized item by item); when quoting verdicts, songs or the text of the first eighty chapters as reasons, read the whole song or passage before quoting. The procedures continue to be added to as the audit proceeds; see paper 1.

9.4 Conditions for overturning

• The third level of Baoyu's awakening. The existing standard-weight note on chapter 21, "cast them aside and become a monk," already runs against it, and the paper resolves this by the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight. If a further standard-weight note were found stating plainly that Baoyu became a monk, corroborating the chapter 21 note, the third level in §6.4 would lose its ground.
• The rationale for the project. If newly found commentary stated plainly that Daiyu's burning of her manuscripts, or Baoyu's passing the examination and becoming a monk, belonged to the original, §3.1's "turned the book into a different book" would have to be rewritten; this would not automatically overturn "people have qing" (§1.4).
• Table 3. If, once the full table has been settled, every transposed fulfilment and every departure were shown to be plain fulfilment after all, "the Roster of Feeling is alive" would still stand on "the registers can record what befalls a person; they cannot seal off what comes after"; whether there are departures is not load-bearing. If even the column "answered by persons" were refuted, that is, if the reconstruction were shown not to have written the persons' responses where there is fulfilment, §6.2 would have to be rewritten.

9.5 Other limits

Of the biases that AI participation brings, one known bias is that AI reviewers tend to "stabilize" distinctive literary choices; the safeguards are the three-tier editorial hierarchy and human review (§4.3). The paper takes no part in determining the specific layers of the layered composition (§3.4); the main thesis depends only on there being layers. The paper uses philosophy to illuminate literature, not to absorb literature into philosophy (§7.1); where it differs from Kant, this is recorded as it stands (§7.5). This paper and the reconstruction are both pre-release versions; readers' comments and new understandings will be taken up in new versions.

10 Conclusion: A Belated Conversation

The conversation was opened by Cao Xueqin, and is answered by those who come after.

The paper's conclusion can be put in a single sentence: a reading that starts from "people have qing" and takes "persons are ends in themselves" as its criterion has been written through to the end under public constraints. This does not prove that the original was so; it shows only that the reading holds, and that every choice made in it can be checked.

The reconstruction wrote this reading into a commentary note of its own composing. It stands at the very end of the book; the project wrote it; it is not Zhiyan Zhai commentary:

Twelve Beauties of Jinling: qingqing joins the kangzhuang. Blood held in the mouth, dripping ten years: Master Cao's name for a thousand years.

Inside the book, kangzhuang is the broad highway; outside the book, it is Kant and Zhuangzi.

[^s8-1]: The Cheng–Gao entries (Yuanchun dying of illness, Qiaojie married elsewhere, Miaoyu carried off by robbers, Tanchun's return visit, Xiangling dying in childbirth, and so on) are based on an electronic text of the standard 120-chapter edition circulating online, not collated against facsimiles of the Chengjia or Chengyi editions. [^s8-3]: The six disclaimed items: (1) the Roster of Feeling does not list the full ranking; (2) the original form of the lost drafts, such as the Prison Temple episode; (3) the deleted "lost hairpin" and "changing clothes" passages; (4) the counterfactual supposition in the note on chapter 22, "had this person not gone far away, then when things fell apart later, the sons and grandsons would not have been scattered"; (5) the moralizing about cause and effect in the Mengfu concluding note on chapter 35; (6) the chapter 28 "Baochai together to the end." [^s8-4]: Chapter 5, "long life or early death arises mostly from slander"⟨H59⟩: the project base text reads huibang 毁谤. At the time of writing, the old register and the Roster in the dream of Rec. ch. 110 read feibang 诽谤, and Xiren's page reads "to be envied, the actor's good fortune" (kanxian), whereas the project base text reads "to be lamented" (kantan). The chapter says these two pages were "not a word changed," yet what it records does not match the project base text; this has been passed to the revision of the reconstruction. This paper quotes all verdicts according to the project base text; what Appendix 5 registers is the choice of rereading, which does not depend on the wording of the Roster.

Appendix 1 Titles of the Thirty Chapters

As at the time of writing; later rounds of revision may change them. The English renderings are the author's working translations.

Ch.	Title	Translation
81	痴公子讨情遣旧婢　花袭人含泪别芳群	The infatuated young master begs leave to send an old maid away; / Hua Xiren, in tears, takes leave of her fair companions
82	贾宝玉佯捧万章篇　林黛玉梦承椿庭笔	Jia Baoyu makes a show of poring over the "Wan Zhang" chapter; / Lin Daiyu, in a dream, receives her father's brush
83	史太君含笑嘱心肝　静琥珀一语传遗命	The Lady Dowager, smiling, gives her last charge to her darlings; / quiet Hupo (Amber) passes on her last wishes in a single sentence
84	昧心人偏办昧心事　鸳鸯女终全鸳鸯誓	Those who have darkened their hearts do heart-darkened deeds; / the maid Yuanyang keeps at last her Yuanyang vow
85	敏探春扬帆赴南溟　慧惜春剪发拒西宁	Capable Tanchun sets sail for the southern sea; / clever Xichun cuts off her hair to refuse the house of Xining
86	懦迎春命断中山狼　执邢氏查账翻旧恶	Timid Yingchun's life is ended by the wolf of Zhongshan; / stubborn Lady Xing audits the accounts and turns up old wrongs
87	凤辣子失势尝世冷　痴公子有问立菱洲	Hot-Pepper Feng, fallen from power, tastes the world's coldness; / the infatuated young master, with a question, stands at Caltrop Isle
88	明翻旧案夫妻反目　暗结青丝儿女同心	Openly, an old case reopened: husband and wife fall out; / secretly, black hair bound: the young pair of one heart
89	联新韵湘黛续寒塘　警天伦元春诉幽梦	Linking new rhymes, Xiangyun and Daiyu continue the "cold pond"; / to warn her own flesh and blood, Yuanchun tells a dark dream
90	薛宝钗借词含讽谏　王熙凤知命强英雄	Xue Baochai uses words to veil her admonition; / Wang Xifeng, knowing her fate, forces herself to be heroic
91	锦衣军查抄宁荣府　忠顺王指名锁玉郎	The Embroidered Guard raid the Ning and Rong mansions; / the Prince of Zhongshun names the jade boy to be chained
92	哀绣桔风尘报噩信　病凤姐榻前托孤雏	Grieving Xiuju, road-worn, brings the dreadful news; / sick Xifeng, at her bedside, entrusts her orphaned chick
93	烈茜雪带冤慰旧主　慈姨妈含苦劝病颦	Spirited Qianxue, still wronged, comforts her old master; / kindly Aunt Xue, swallowing her own bitterness, counsels the ailing Pin'er
94	众义士计赚狱神庙　痴公子冒死奔潇湘	The loyal band trick their way into the Prison Temple; / the infatuated young master risks death to run to the Xiaoxiang Lodge
95	绛珠仙泪尽完夙债　信香菱德善免命灾	The Crimson Pearl fairy, her tears spent, pays off her old debt; / trusting Xiangling escapes mortal danger through goodness shown even to the unkind
96	贾宝玉一恸昏故馆　甄宝玉双手送通灵	Jia Baoyu, in one burst of grief, faints in her old lodge; / Zhen Baoyu returns the jade with both hands
97	薛宝钗冲喜失新郎　赵姨娘多行受沉沦	Xue Baochai's chongxi wedding loses its groom; / Aunt Zhao, her many wrongs done, sinks to her ruin
98	贾存周含恨别尘世　孤宝玉衔玉别京华	Jia Cunzhou leaves the world with a bitter grievance; / lonely Baoyu leaves the capital, the jade still with him
99	决堂姑出家辞故府　孤侄女信舅堕奸谋	The resolute aunt takes vows and leaves the old mansion; / the orphaned niece trusts her uncle and falls into a wicked plot
100	村姥姥津渡施巧计　成窑钟瓜洲赎玉人	The village granny plays a clever trick at the ferry; / a Chenghua cup redeems the lady of jade at Guazhou
101	刘姥姥三进荣国府　贾巧姐二哭大观园	Grannie Liu enters the Rong mansion a third time; / Jia Qiaojie weeps a second time in the Grand View Garden
102	冷二郎仗剑救痴人　空王座说法度迷士	Cold Liu, sword in hand, saves the infatuated one; / at the seat of the King of Emptiness, the Law is preached to bring a lost man across
103	薛文起锁系待勘狱　贾雨村假贺谋良姻	Xue Wenqi, in chains, awaits trial; / Jia Yucun, under cover of congratulations, schemes for a fine match
104	仁村姑一饭护羁客　俏春燕半瓢活断枝	A benevolent village woman shelters a stranded traveller with a meal; / pretty Chunyan revives a broken branch with half a gourd of water
105	慧觉师一言点痴弟　廉虚士五更识铁槛	Master Huijue, with one word, awakens her infatuated brother; / the Lay Disciple Empty-and-Frugal, at the fifth watch, understands the Iron Threshold
106	贾宝玉参无执无著　花袭人信有始有终	Jia Baoyu grasps "no grasping, no attachment"; / Hua Xiren proves constant to the end
107	呆香菱开口认旧事　薛宝钗就奁待时飞	Foolish Xiangling speaks and recognizes the past; / Xue Baochai takes to the box, awaiting her time to fly
108	贾雨村获罪辩天道　甄士隐说梦了红楼	Jia Yucun, convicted, disputes the way of heaven; / Zhen Shiyin tells the dream and brings the Red Chamber to a close
109	三和班新排桃花扇　五知交再续女儿令	The Sanhe troupe newly rehearses The Peach Blossom Fan; / five close friends once more play the "maidens" game
110	情不情居士梦情榜　通未通灵玉返青峰	The lay disciple of feeling-for-the-unfeeling dreams of the Roster of Feeling; / the jade, whether or not it understood, returns to Greensickness Peak

Appendix 2 Acknowledgements and Use of AI

I thank Zesi Chen and Zhen Zhang for a great deal of analysis and help in the course of the project.

The project used AI assistance from several providers, including Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), DeepSeek, GLM (Zhipu), Meta AI and Grok (xAI), for drafting and revising the reconstructed text, for reviewing, for machine-check scripts, and, for this paper, for organizing the outline and verifying quotations. The English version is a rewriting of the Chinese version for English-speaking readers, drafted with AI assistance and checked against the Chinese; where the two differ in substance, the Chinese is authoritative. All choices were decided by the author, who bears responsibility for the text.

Appendix 3 Versions of the Reconstruction

Chapters 81–110 of the reconstruction are still being revised round by round, and this paper does not rest on any specific round's drafts. Quotations from the reconstruction give its wording at the time of writing, and serve only to show how a reading takes form in text; what Table 1, Table 3 and Appendix 5 register are choices at the level of plot. If later revisions change these choices, a new version of this paper will be issued with the corresponding entries updated; changes of wording alone will not lead to a revision of this paper. For the reconstructed text quoted here, the drafts used at the time of writing are separately archived (chapter, draft identifier, checksum) and can be provided on request. If the diagnostic hold-out test is carried out, the version measured will be reported with the results in paper 4. The reconstruction is written in Chinese; the English renderings of it in this paper are the author's, and the Chinese is authoritative.

Appendix 4 Glossary

Term	Chinese	Meaning in this paper
interpretive reconstruction	诠释性复原	Building, under public constraints, an ending that can be tested, with each choice marked for the layer it stands on; no claim to restore the original word for word
the reconstruction; Rec. ch. n	复原本	Chapters 81–110 as written by the project; cited as "Rec. ch. n"
sealed draft	封稿	The finalized draft of a chapter of the reconstruction in a given round; the reconstruction is revised round by round, and this paper is tied to no round (Appendix 3)
project base text	项目底本	The collated electronic base text of the first eighty chapters used by the project, prepared from the Perfect Edition PDF made by Jiangshange Yin; commentary attributed to the manuscripts as marked (note to "Notes on the text," item 3)
the criterion	判准	"Persons are ends in themselves": a normative criterion openly brought in by the reconstructor, used only to select among readings that the evidence permits
the inviolable	不可违	What the first eighty chapters narrate (narrative text and chapter titles); may be reread, may not be violated
future-directed texts	未来指向文本	Verdicts, songs, prophecies; the reconstruction must respond to each
register of the ought	应然之册	The paper's reading of future-directed texts: they record where a person's temperament, situation and relations, as formed at that moment, were pointing
trajectory; pronouncement	走向、断语	The two kinds of future-directed text: a trajectory can be departed from through persons' choices; a pronouncement can be reread
fulfilled in event, answered by persons	事件兑现，回应由人	Table 3, Type I: the reconstruction realized what befalls a person according to the verdict (fulfilment here means a generative constraint has been satisfied, and is not independent evidence); how the person answers it cannot be written in the registers
transposed fulfilment (Table 3)	改兑现	The letter of a future-directed text is fulfilled while its referent is rewritten; e.g. Xiangling's "returns to her native place" is fulfilled, while the death signalled by "fragrant soul" is rewritten
departure	偏离	What actually happens does not follow the trajectory; must be carried by a causal chain traceable in the text, with persons' choices as the load-bearing factor
materials	材料	Commentary, textual scholarship, the Guiyou manuscript, the Cheng–Gao edition; they adjust the evidential weight of the various readings
Grades A, B, C, D	甲、乙、丙、丁	Grades of inference: direct evidence, inference, selection by the criterion, authorial decision
Tiers 1, 2, 3	甲层、乙层、丙层	Tiers of the commentary audit (§8.2): hard forward references; forward-reference candidates; the remaining notes. Distinct from Grades A–D and from the Types I–IV of Table 3
standard-weight, reference-weight	准级、参级	The weight this project assigns to commentary by manuscript (not a general scholarly ranking of the manuscripts): the Jiaxu and Gengchen are standard-weight; the Mengfu, Qixu and Jing are reference-weight
the reference-weight overriding the standard-weight	以参压准	Following, by the criterion, a reference-weight note rather than a standard-weight note that conflicts with it; registered case by case
fulfilled, transposed fulfilment, half fulfilled, not adopted	已兑现、改兑现、半兑现、不取	The ruling categories of the commentary audit
soft evidence not accommodated	软证据未能兼容	Soft evidence, such as commentary, that cannot be satisfied together with the readings the reconstruction adopts; recorded as it stands, and counted among the constraint conflicts of the joint-satisfiability test
disclaimed items	不承账	Notes whose content the reconstruction explicitly does not realize, or realizes only in part, each with its reason; not a claim that the note is spurious
forward audit, reverse audit	正向审计、反向审计	Forward: does a note have a place where it lands? Reverse: break the note into falsifiable propositions and try to falsify them against the reconstruction
joint-satisfiability test	可满足性检验	Short for the test of joint realizability of the constraints; not a SAT decision in the sense of formal logic: all hard constraints satisfied and soft evidence accommodated as far as possible, asking whether everything can hold at once within one complete thirty-chapter text
diagnostic hold-out test	诊断性留出检验	Planned. Uses only measures that an audit of the revision history shows were not targets of revision during writing; preregistered separately before measurement; run once against a single publicly released version of the reconstruction, which is reported with the results in paper 4; reports only relative distance
passed by construction	主动通过	A test result that follows from the reconstruction having been written to satisfy the note in question; recorded, but not counted as evidence (§9.3)
load-bearing, non-load-bearing	承重、非承重	If it falls, the whole paper falls; if it falls, only a part is damaged (§1.4)
two-column method	两栏法	Comparisons are split into two columns, "anchor in the first eighty chapters and the commentary" and "what the reconstruction writes"; sentences about Cao Xueqin draw only on the first
Gengchen conformance pass	庚辰化	Revising the narrative language of the reconstruction to the usage of the Gengchen manuscript's corpus; direct speech and locked poems and rhapsodies are left untouched
machine checks	机测	Character-by-character checks by script against the same corpus; no system's self-assessment is accepted
qingqing, qing bu qing	情情、情不情	The two epithets of the Roster of Feeling recorded in the commentary; the paper reads qingqing, with a shift of meaning, as "respecting others as one respects oneself, and letting each thing follow its own nature" (Grade C)
Dazhi's commentary	大知批	The commentary note at the end of the reconstruction, composed by the project; not Zhiyan Zhai commentary

Appendix 5 Full Register of Responses to Future-Directed Texts (Chapter 5)

Scope: the verdicts for fifteen persons in the Principal, Secondary and Tertiary Registers (正册、副册、又副册) of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling in chapter 5, and the fourteen songs of the Dream of the Red Chamber cycle (Prelude, twelve songs, Envoi): twenty-nine items in all. Other prophecies (lantern riddles, the willow-catkin lyrics, flower lots, drinking games and so on) are registered in paper 5. Verdicts and songs follow the project base text, with variants from the standard edition noted.[^a5-1] For the types, see Table 3 in §8. This table is a first-check version.

Type I · Fulfilled in event, answered by persons

The Prelude is the song that introduces the whole cycle; only fulfilment in event is recorded for it, and no individual response is entered.

Source	Original line (excerpt)	What happens in the reconstruction	How the person answers it	Rec. ch.
Principal Register · Daiyu	"the jade belt hangs in the wood"⟨H37⟩	Dies with her tears spent; her father's jade belt hangs on the bamboo at the Xiaoxiang Lodge	On her deathbed she herself has Zijuan hang it, writes the character min 敏 (her mother's name) with a stroke omitted and lays it under the belt, and, holding on to the window frame, bows once; her poems entrusted to Xueyan to take back to Suzhou, not a word burnt	95
Principal Register · Baochai	"Alas for her virtue of the halted loom … / the golden hairpin buried in the snow"⟨H60⟩	Dies in the snow on the road into exile	Pulls out her own golden hairpin, breaks open the frozen snow and buries it; strikes out both her status and her title on her travel pass and writes "Xue Baochai" herself; does not take her last Cold Fragrance pill	108
Principal Register · Yuanchun	"How could the three springs match the first spring's splendour? / When tiger meets rhinoceros, she returns from the great dream"⟨H61⟩	Dies in the palace	Writes, "I will not wait for the butcher's knife; I decide for myself whether I go or stay," and that night slips quietly away (the text does not state the manner of death, which shows through this line; for the divergence from Kant see §7.5)	91
Principal Register · Tanchun	"At Qingming, in tears, she is seen off, gazing from the riverbank; / a thousand li on the east wind, a dream far away"⟨H51⟩	Married overseas; does not return	The distant marriage was not her choice; once there she takes her government into her own hands, changes the regulations for mooring ships, and opens weaving workshops	85, 109
Principal Register · Xiangyun	"In the blink of an eye she mourns the slanting sun; / the Xiang's waters flow away, the clouds of Chu fly"⟨H62⟩	Wei Ruolan dies; Xiangyun is widowed	Alone she gives birth to posthumous twins; thereafter lives out her life with Baoyu	106–110
Principal Register · Yingchun	"Your husband is a wolf of Zhongshan / who, once he has his way, runs wild. / In the golden chamber, a frame frail as flower and willow; / within a year she goes to the Yellow Millet dream"⟨H63⟩	Dies in the Sun household	The Roster: "by her own intent she owned her own death" (for the divergence from Kant see §7.5)	86, 92
Principal Register · Xichun	"Alas, the daughter of an embroidered house and a noble gate / lies alone beside the ancient Buddha by the blue lamp"⟨H64⟩	Becomes a nun, with the religious name Huijue	She herself wants to go: "What I can't endure is in here"	99, 104–105
Principal Register · Xifeng	"first following, then commanding, then 'man-and-tree'; / weeping toward Jinling, her plight the more to be grieved"⟨H44⟩	Divorced, dies of illness; her coffin kept at the farmstead, awaiting return to the Wang family in Jinling	Refuses to press her handprint on the letter of divorce; in her illness entrusts her orphaned daughter; in her last account, leaves Qiaojie clothes and jewellery she can take with her	90, 92, 93, 94, 96
Principal Register · Qiaojie	"When power fails, speak not of rank; / when the house falls, speak not of kin. / By chance, having once helped a woman named Liu, / by good fortune she meets one who repays her"⟨H52⟩	Sold by her own uncle; rescued by Grannie Liu's party	Going with Grannie Liu and marrying Banr is what she herself wants: "Granny never told me to go. I wanted to go myself"	99–103
Principal Register · Li Wan	"Peach and plum in the spring wind have set their fruit, and are done; / at the last, who is like the potted orchid?"⟨H65⟩	Jia Lan passes the examination; Li Wan receives an imperial patent and soon dies of illness	On her deathbed she does not decide for Li Wen and Li Qi: "only ask whether they themselves are willing"	109
Tertiary Register · Xiren	"In vain gentle and compliant, / in vain likened to cassia and orchid. / To be lamented, the actor's good fortune; / who knew the young master had no such luck?"⟨H66⟩	Marries Jiang Yuhan	The Roster: "Going or staying, gain or loss, it was in the end her own choice, not something others drove her to"	81, 106
Prelude⟨H67⟩	"and so is performed this Dream of the Red Chamber, cherishing the gold and mourning the jade"⟨H68⟩	Baochai and Daiyu both die	The opening song of the cycle; no individual response is entered	95, 108
Wang ning mei ("Knitted Brows in Vain")⟨H69⟩	"If you say there was a wondrous bond, / why must the heart's wish in the end come to nothing? … / how could they bear it, flowing from autumn to winter's end, from spring through to summer?"⟨H70⟩	The two never marry; Daiyu's tears are spent	Binding their hair together in secret at the Convex Emerald Hall; on her deathbed she does not burn her manuscripts	88, 95
Hen wuchang ("Grief at Impermanence")⟨H71⟩	"Just as she rejoices in glory at its height, / impermanence, hateful, comes again … / and so she seeks out her parents in their dreams to tell them"⟨H72⟩	Dies in the palace. The dream-telling falls in two chapters: in Rec. ch. 89, while still alive, she enters her father's dream: "Father, it is better to be farther away"; in Rec. ch. 92, after her death, she enters Baoyu's dream: "I can't protect any of you now." The timing and the recipient differ, but what is referred to is fulfilled; if a posthumous telling to her parents is required, then by the definition in Appendix 4 this should be recorded as a transposed fulfilment; both readings are entered	See the row for Yuanchun's verdict	89, 91, 92
Fen gurou ("Flesh and Bone Parted")⟨H73⟩	"A single sail through wind and rain, three thousand li … / I am going; do not be bound to me"⟨H74⟩	Married far away	See the row for Tanchun's verdict. The lines "since ancient times, failure and success have been fixed; / how can parting and meeting be without their cause?"⟨H75⟩ are words of fixed fate and are separately treated as a pronouncement reread: the reconstruction does not explain events by fixed fate (counted under both)	85
Le zhong bei ("Sorrow amid Joy")⟨H76⟩	"In the end the clouds disperse from Gaotang, / the waters of the Xiang run dry"⟨H77⟩	Wei Ruolan dies	See the row for Xiangyun's verdict. The lines "this is the waxing and waning fated for the world of dust; / why grieve in vain?"⟨H78⟩ are words of fixed fate and are separately treated as a pronouncement reread (counted under both)	106
Xi yuanjia ("Wedded Foe")⟨H79⟩	"Wolf of Zhongshan, unfeeling beast … / alas, that fragrant soul, that lovely spirit, / within a year drifts away"⟨H80⟩	Dies in the Sun household	See the row for Yingchun's verdict	86
Xuhua wu ("Awakening from Illusion")⟨H81⟩	"Seeing through the three springs, / what are peach-red and willow-green to her?"⟨H82⟩	Becomes a nun	See the row for Xichun's verdict	99
Congming lei ("Undone by Cleverness")⟨H83⟩	"Too clever by far in all her schemes, / she schemed away her own dear life"⟨H84⟩	Divorced, dies of illness; the family ruined, its people scattered	The Roster: "At the very end there was one thing she never put into her reckoning: Qiaojie"	90, 92, 93, 94, 96
Liu yuqing ("Blessings Left Behind")⟨H39⟩	"Blessings left behind, blessings left behind: / suddenly she meets one who repays her … / do not be like my cruel uncle and treacherous brother, / who loved silver and forgot their own flesh and blood"⟨H85⟩	Sold by her own uncle; rescued by Grannie Liu's party	See the row for Qiaojie's verdict. The lines "happily her mother, happily her mother, laid up hidden merit" and "truly, it is subtraction and addition, with the blue heaven above"⟨H86⟩ are words of retribution and are separately treated as a pronouncement reread: the reconstruction writes Grannie Liu's coming as a chance encounter, and the narrator does not present it as the reward of hidden merit (counted under both)	99–103
Wan shaohua ("Late Splendour")⟨H48⟩	"yet this pearl-set coronet and phoenix robe / cannot hold off the impermanence of life"⟨H49⟩	Receives the patent and dies	See the row for Li Wan's verdict	109

Type II · Transposed fulfilment

Source	Original line	What is rewritten	Choices that bear it	Rec. ch.
Secondary Register · Xiangling	"Ever since two earths grew a lone tree, / her fragrant soul returns to her native place"⟨H16⟩	"Returns to her native place" is fulfilled; the death signalled by "fragrant soul" is rewritten; in Rec. ch. 110 the last line in the old register reads "this body has not perished: it returns to its native place"	The person herself and others together: Xiangling holds no grudge for Baochan's old wrongs and speaks in her defence before the court; Baochan tells the truth before the court	95, 107
Zhongshen wu ("A Life Gone Wrong")⟨H53⟩	"All say it is the match of gold and jade; / I remember only the old vow of wood and stone. / In vain I face the crystal snow of the recluse on the hill; / never can I forget the lonely wood of the fairy maid beyond the world … / Even though she lifts the tray level with her brows, / still the heart is not at peace"⟨H87⟩	Her status is fixed by the elders after the fact, and the wedding does not take place; "all say" is read as a name fixed by others, and "even though" as concessive; "the heart is not at peace" is fulfilled. If "lifts the tray level with her brows" is read as an actual event, this is a departure; both readings are entered	Baoyu himself: he leaves on the wedding day	97

Type III · Departure

Source	Original line	What happens in the reconstruction	Choices that bear it	Rec. ch.
Principal Register · Miaoyu	"She longed for purity, but when was she pure? / She called all things empty, yet they may not be empty. / Alas, that substance of gold and jade / in the end sinks into the mire"⟨H88⟩	"Sinks" is fulfilled: her sedan chair is stopped, she is sold and set to menial work; "in the end" is rewritten: she is redeemed at Guazhou	Others first: Grannie Liu entrusts the Chenghua cup to Xing Xiuyan, Xiuyan exchanges the cup for her and holds her back at the river's edge; then she herself turns back, and picks up a coarse bowl	99–100, 103, 105
Shi nan rong ("The World Will Not Have Her")⟨H56⟩	"At the last, still, in the dust and filth of the world, against her own wishes; / just like flawless white jade sunk in the mud"⟨H89⟩	As in the row above. "At the last" (daotoulai) supports the paper's reading of the verdict's zhong ("in the end") as the final state; if zhong is read as "eventually sinks," both rows belong under Type I	As above	As above

Type IV · Pronouncement reread

Source	Original line	The pronouncement at that moment	The reconstruction's rereading	Rec. ch.
Principal Register · Qin Keqing	"A sky of qing, a sea of qing, a body of illusory qing; / once qing meets qing, it must mean lust. / Do not say that the unworthy all come from Rong: / the source of the trouble truly lies in Ning"⟨H90⟩	Her beauty ruins the family	The Roster records this as "what the world says," and overturns it: "her sin was not beauty but politics"; the ruin of the Ning mansion referred to in the last line is fulfilled	104–105, 110
Haoshi zhong ("The End of Good Things")⟨H57⟩	"Given to amorous ways, with a face like the moon: / these were the root of the family's ruin … / old sins all spring from qing"⟨H91⟩	Her beauty ruins the family; the sin arises from qing	As in the row above	110
Tertiary Register · Qingwen	"long life or early death arises mostly from slander"⟨H59⟩	Early death from slander	The Roster: "The register says she died young of slander; in truth she would rather break than bend, and how could slander kill her?"	110[^s8-4]
Fei niao ge tou lin ("The Birds Fly Off, Each to Its Wood")⟨H92⟩	"The unfeeling: plainly, it is retribution … / wrong repaid for wrong is no light matter; / parting and meeting are all fixed beforehand … / just like birds that, the food all gone, fly off to the woods, / leaving only a vast white land, truly clean"⟨H93⟩	Retribution and predestination	The scattering of the family is fulfilled; the narrator gives no explanation by retribution, and people's going and staying are written as their own choices	Whole book

[^a5-1]: In Wang ning mei, the project base text reads zhong xu hua 终须化 ("must in the end come to nothing"), the standard edition zhong xu hua 终虚化 ("in the end comes to emptiness"); in Xuhua wu, the base text reads qing dan tian he 情淡天和, the standard edition 清淡天和; the song title Fen gurou 分骨肉 is miswritten in the base text as 鄯骨肉. On the difference between huibang in Qingwen's verdict and feibang in Rec. ch. 110, see the note to the Qingwen row of this table.

References

Primary sources and editions

• Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹. Zhiyan Zhai chongping Shitou ji 脂砚斋重评石头记 (The Story of the Stone, with Zhiyan Zhai's Repeated Commentary). Manuscripts: Jiaxu, Jimao, Gengchen, Mengfu (Mongol Prince's Mansion), Qixu (Qi Liaosheng preface); commentary of the Jing manuscript (original lost; known from transcriptions).
• Jiangshange Yin 江山阁隐, maker. Honglou meng zhipi ben wanmei ban 红楼梦脂批本完美版 (Honglou meng with the Zhiyan Zhai Commentary: The Perfect Edition). Electronic edition circulating online (PDF; according to its maker, based on the Gengchen manuscript, incorporating commentary from the Jiaxu, Wangfu, Qixu and other manuscripts). The paper's "project base text" was prepared from it (note to "Notes on the text," item 3).
• Cao Xueqin and Gao E 高鹗. Honglou meng, 120-chapter edition (Chengjia and Chengyi editions). Quoted from an electronic text of the standard 120-chapter edition circulating online, not collated against facsimiles.
• Cao Xueqin. Honglou meng 红楼梦. Annotated by the Institute of Honglou meng Studies, Chinese National Academy of Arts. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe.
• Hawkes, David, trans. The Story of the Stone. Vol. 1, The Golden Days; vol. 2, The Crab-Flower Club; vol. 3, The Warning Voice. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 1977, 1980.
• Minford, John, trans. The Story of the Stone. Vol. 4, The Debt of Tears; vol. 5, The Dreamer Wakes. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982, 1986.
• Zhuangzi 庄子: chapters "Zhile" 至乐, "Dasheng" 达生, "Dechongfu" 德充符, "Yangsheng zhu" 养生主. Guo Qingfan 郭庆藩, Zhuangzi jishi 庄子集释, ed. Wang Xiaoyu 王孝鱼. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961.
• Daodejing 道德经, chapter 49.
• Shi Nai'an 施耐庵. Shuihu zhuan 水浒传 (The Water Margin), chapter 71.
• Kant, Immanuel. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785); Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788); Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797). Cited by volume and page of the Akademie-Ausgabe (Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900–). English translation: Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Chinese translation: Li Qiuling 李秋零, ed., Kangde zhuzuo quanji 康德著作全集. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe.
• Schiller, Friedrich. Über Anmut und Würde (1793).
• Sartre, Jean-Paul. L'existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Nagel, 1946. English translation: Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Studies

• Cai Yijiang 蔡义江. Lun Honglou meng yigao 论红楼梦佚稿. Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1989.
• Chang, Eileen (Zhang Ailing 张爱玲). Honglou mengyan 红楼梦魇. Taipei: Crown, 1977.
• Dai Bufan 戴不凡. "Jiekai Honglou meng zuozhe zhi mi" 揭开《红楼梦》作者之谜. Beifang luncong 1979, no. 1.
• Han Qin 秦汉. Human-AI Symbiosis (SAE Methodology, paper 8). Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19581537.
• Hu Shi 胡适. "Honglou meng kaozheng" 红楼梦考证. 1921.
• Li Zehou 李泽厚. Pipan zhexue de pipan: Kangde shuping 批判哲学的批判：康德述评. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1979.
• Liang Guizhi 梁归智. Shitou ji tanyi 石头记探佚. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1983.
• Liu Xinwu 刘心武. Liu Xinwu xu Honglou meng 刘心武续红楼梦. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2011.
• Liu Zaifu 刘再复. Honglou meng wu 红楼梦悟. Enlarged ed. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing, 2009. Liu Zaifu and Liu Jianmei 刘剑梅. Gongwu Honglou 共悟红楼.
• Plaks, Andrew H. Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
• Wang Guowei 王国维. Honglou meng pinglun 红楼梦评论 (A Critique of Dream of the Red Chamber). 1904. "Zixu" 自序 (Preface, 1907; commonly called "Sanshi zixu," collected in Jing'an wenji xubian 静安文集续编).
• Wu Shih-ch'ang. On The Red Chamber Dream: A Critical Study of Two Annotated Manuscripts of the XVIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. (Chinese title Honglou meng tanyuan 红楼梦探源.)
• Yu, Anthony C. Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
• Yu Pingbo 俞平伯. Honglou meng bian 红楼梦辨. Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan, 1923.
• Yu Ying-shih 余英时. Honglou meng de liangge shijie 红楼梦的两个世界 (The Two Worlds of Honglou meng). Taipei: Linking, 1978.
• Zhang Zhi 张之. Honglou meng xinbu 红楼梦新补. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1984.
• Zhou Ruchang 周汝昌. Honglou meng xinzheng 红楼梦新证. Shanghai: Tangdi chubanshe, 1953.

说明

1. 本文是预发布版。此后有了新的理解、收到读者意见，都会出新版本；本项目的复原文本同样是可改的预发布文本。曹雪芹“披阅十载，增删五次”，书本来就是一版一版改出来的。
2. 本论文系列与复原全本各自独立发布；本文不以读者另行取得全本为前提。凡引复原正文，都注明回次，补足上下文，引文自足。复原本仍在逐轮修订，本文所引是写作时的字句，后轮或有改动；本文的论点立在复原本的情节取舍与逐条登记上，不系于任何一轮的具体稿件（附录三）。全本可应请求提供。
3. 前八十回正文与脂批，均据本项目所用的前八十回汇校电子底本（下称“项目底本”），批语依底本所标本名著录[^s0-1]。凡与通行校本异文之处随文注出；影印本逐条复核列为待办，结果随新版本更新。
4. 复原正文中女性人物的代词，沿前八十回用“他”；本文自己的叙述用“她”。复原正文不用顿号，并列与小顿处以“·”隔开，引文照录。
5. 本项目内部的编号（审计条目号、裁定号等）不入正文，一律放在脚注；术语见附录四。
6. 本文另有英文重写版（People Have Qing），与本文同在一个 concept DOI 之下。英文版为英文读者补写了若干背景，论证、表格与登记与本文一致；二者有实质出入时，以中文为准。

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1 引言

本文所谓“复原”，不是恢复一部已经遗失的逐字原稿，而是在公开约束下构造一个可受检验的结局。复原文本可以证明一种读法能够一路写到底；它不能反过来证明曹雪芹当年的原稿就是如此。这是本文的第一方法原则，全文每一处都受它约束。凡引本项目自己写的文字，一律称“复原本第×回”，不称“曹雪芹写道”。

1.1 为什么还要复原

前八十回以后的故事，曹雪芹生前写到了哪里，写成什么样子，至今没有定论。脂批提到“后三十回”，提到狱神庙、卫若兰射圃、悬崖撒手、警幻情榜等若干回目和情节，又说其中五六稿“被借阅者迷失”[^s1-1]。乾隆五十六年（1791），程伟元、高鹗刊行一百二十回本，后四十回从此随书流传；自胡适以来，学界多数认为后四十回不出曹雪芹之手。二百多年间，续书与探佚没有断过，写成全文的续作也已有多部。

所以本项目要回答的，不是“能不能写出后三十回”，这件事前人做过；而是能不能把每一笔的理由都摆出来，让读者看得见哪一句有前八十回的直接根据，哪一句是推断，哪一句是复原者依自己公开的判准在几种读法之间做的选择，哪一句只是创作上的决定。本文称这种做法为诠释性复原。续书是接着写；诠释性复原是在写的同时标明每一笔站在哪一层（4.2 节）。它和续书的区别在理由公开，不在每一笔都是曹意。

1.2 论点、判准与相遇处

本文从这部书里读出的命题是：人是有情的。

这里的“有情”，不是说每个人都善良、多情，而是说每个人都有从自己这里出发的感受、关系、欲求与方向，不能被化约成别人故事里的一个功能。贾雨村、贾环也在其内。情不可仅仅化约为要解脱的缚：王国维以叔本华读此书，落在“解脱”；程高本让宝玉中举之后出家。人的遭遇也不可仅仅化约为报应账簿上的一项：程高本第一二〇回借甄士隐之口说“福善祸淫，古今定理”。还泪、太虚幻境、因缘劫数，前八十回里都有，这些读法各有文本根据；本文只主张它们没有穷尽这部书。这部书以情显出一个人的不可替代。

需要先说清前八十回最硬的文本锚在哪里。第五回警幻把“意淫”与“皮肤淫滥”分开：后者是“悦容貌，喜歌舞……恨不能尽天下之美女供我片时之趣兴”，前者是“天分中生成一段痴情”[^s1-2]。本文据此读为：皮肤淫滥把人收成供我之物；意淫里的人，不能被这样穷尽；也就是说，情使一个人不能被“供我之物”穷尽。这是在文本锚上的诠释，不是原句；“人是有情的”也是在这些锚上的文学诠释。

复原者另外带入一条判准：人是目的，即康德人性公式所说，无论自己还是他人，都不可只被当作手段[^s1-3]。这条判准不是从材料里考出来的，是复原者公开带入的读法；本项目用它在证据仍然允许的几种读法之间择读，也用它约束复原文本的写法（4.1 节）。“不可只被当作手段”是判准把前一句推到了实践结论。二者方向一致，不是同一句话。

“有情”并不能逻辑地推出“目的”。本文只主张二者方向一致，把这部书从情出发的伦理方向，读作与康德人性公式在“情情”处相遇。“情情”本是脂批所记情榜给黛玉的评语，本文对它的用法是一种改义择读，须正面交代（6.1 节）。三个词在全文的分工如下，不混用：

词	身份	说明
人是有情的	论点：本文从这部书里读出的文学命题	这部书以情显出一个人的不可替代
人是目的	判准：复原者公开带入的读法	只在证据允许的读法之间择读，并约束复原的写法；不是从材料里考出来的
情情	相遇处	本文以“人是目的”的判准读取这种不可替代；二者方向一致，在此相遇

复原本的落点也照此分开：第一〇九回写聚与暖，落在“人是有情的”；第一一〇回宝玉梦翻情榜、醒写《情情赋》，落在“人是目的”。复原本书末有一段项目自撰的批语，末四句是：“金陵十二钗，情情合康庄。血噙沥十载，曹公千古名。”[^s1-4] 书内，“康庄”即大道，文从字顺；书外，本文读作康德与庄子。这段批语是本项目自己写的，不是脂批，下文每次引用都这样注明。

文学不是哲学。本文不把曹雪芹与康德、庄子画等号；对照只是互相照见，有分歧照实登记（7.5 节）。

1.3 四类读者的第一问

本文预想四类读者，各有一个会先问的问题。

红学读者会问：“凭什么叫复原？”本文的回答是：这是诠释性复原，约束、判准和创作裁定都公开，不声称恢复逐字原稿。

哲学读者会问：“有情怎么就是目的？这是康德吗？”回答是：不等于。“有情”是文学读法，“目的”是公开判准，“情情”是交会处；康德是对话者，不是这部书的秘密理论。

方法读者会问：“自己定下带宽，再把文章改进带宽，不是过拟合吗？”回答是：这些数字只作护栏，不作真实性的评分器；约束达标不算检验。本文能诚实主张的检验只有两种，一是可满足性，二是拟作的诊断性留出，后者尚未做（4.4 节、9.1 节）。

续书读者会问：“这和程高本、张之、刘心武有何不同？”回答是：不同不在写成了全文，而在理由是否公开分级，判准是否可以替换，约束达标是否被拿来冒充检验。

1.4 哪些倒了全文倒，哪些倒了只伤局部

为了让读者知道该从哪里反驳本文，先把承重与非承重分开：

承重（倒则全文倒）	非承重（倒则只伤局部）
诠释性复原的方法：公开判准、四层关系、证据分级、偏离登记	层累的具体层次（本文本不参与）
“人是有情的”的前八十回读法，只承前八十回锚点最硬的一处：第五回意淫之分，本文读为“情使一个人不能被‘供我之物’穷尽”。其余锚点：第十九回情榜两评、第八回“体贴”之批、第五十八回论祭	癸酉本为“底稿再创作”之说
复原文本只作压力测试，不作原作证据	天香楼删节之由（推测）
	由一〇八回改为一一〇回的解释
	秦可卿“其孽非色，乃政”的重读
	“情情”的改义择读与“康庄”的书外读法
	康德、庄子、席勒各处对照
	反家天下的政治推论
	辅助材料：“闺阁中本自历历有人”（文本身份在批语层，6.1 节）

即使右栏某些工作假说后来被推翻，“人是有情的”与本文的诠释性复原方法仍可成立。反过来，左栏任何一条倒了，本文就得重写。

1.5 本文的结构与系列

第 2 节交代学术史与本文的位置。第 3 节说明立项：程高本在哪几处“换了一本书”，本项目的边界，文本的层累，以及回数为什么定在一一〇。第 4 节是方法。第 5 节概览复原本。第 6 节是诠释。第 7 节把诠释与康德、庄子对照。第 8 节列出结论表。第 9 节交代限度与可证伪处。第 10 节是结语。

本文是一个论文系列的总篇，只立到“缘起、方法、结论”这一层；细部在本篇各给一段结论，论证下放专题。系列先发材料篇，后发诠释篇：

序	篇	内容
〇	总篇（本篇）	缘起、方法、结论
一	脂批审计	数据论文。4,099 条全表随发，正向审计、反向全量续测、不承账、工序
二	成书层累	认可层累说的全部文本证据；民间诸说综述，不裁断
三	癸酉本辨	底稿再创作说的证据、采信清单、与伪托说的正面对话
四	语料与文体	庚辰化、机测实测、诊断性留出检验（指标经修订史核查后选定，实测前单独预注册）、文体即立场
五	情榜	立而否；未来指向文本与应然之册；回应登记（全表见本文附录五）的逐条论证
六	人物（三至四篇）	按论题分篇，候选：黛玉与宝玉、宝钗与名分、凤姐与元春、妙玉与惜春
七	剧情结构	三十回骨架、伏线兑现链、时间锚定；回数的学术史
八	政治背景	反家天下、架空朝代；秦可卿身世与诸家之说的同异
九	康德与庄子	两栏对照写足，面向哲学读者

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2 学术史与本文的位置

2.1 哲学读法的奠基：王国维

以一套系统哲学框架解释《红楼梦》，王国维《红楼梦评论》（1904）是奠基性的起点。他借叔本华的意志哲学，把此书读作写生活之欲与痛苦、指向解脱的书。本文把他当作主要的对手，理由有二。其一，他读的是一百二十回本，宝玉中举之后出家，恰好成全了“解脱”的读法；若后四十回不出曹雪芹之手，这一读法的文本根据就要重新检查（3.1 节）。其二，本文要把哲学读法的中心从“解脱”移到“主体、敬与目的的关系”，这一移动须从他那里起步。

有一件事实值得记下。王国维自述，他初读康德《纯理批评》，到《先天分析论》几乎全不能解，遂辍读，转而读叔本华；二十九岁时再回头读康德，兼及其伦理学与美学[^s2-1]。《红楼梦评论》正写于他读康德受阻、转宗叔本华的那几年。本文只陈述这一事实，不作“替他接上”一类的推论。

2.2 考证与成书

胡适、俞平伯的考证，使“后四十回非曹雪芹原作”成为现代红学最有影响的判断之一；本文采用这一工作判断。成书研究一线，吴世昌、戴不凡等从文本内部的参差推断此书有过旧稿与改写，张爱玲《红楼梦魇》（1977）逐本比勘各本异文，也在这一脉络之中[^s2-2]。本文认可层累说，是接着这一线说，不自居首创（3.4 节）。

2.3 探佚与续书

从形式上看，本项目属于探佚。周汝昌、梁归智《石头记探佚》、蔡义江《论红楼梦佚稿》等，都从脂批与前八十回的伏笔推求八十回后的情节[^s2-3]。本文复原中宝玉与湘云相守一条，与周汝昌的湘云“白首双星”之说方向相同，须注明。

写成全文的续作，前有张之《红楼梦新补》，近有刘心武续八十一至一〇八回，共二十八回。关于刘心武，须照实交代两件事。第一，作者知道刘心武有秦可卿影射废太子之女一说，但没有参考他的“秦学”诸书，也没有参考他的续书；复原本对秦可卿身世一层的写法与诸家之说有何同异，留待专题八讨论，本篇不作比较。第二，本项目按一〇八回口径工作时，曾定为后二十八回，那是一〇八减八十得出的数，与刘心武续书同数，来路不同（3.5 节）。

2.4 两个世界与解脱的现代读法

余英时把大观园读作与园外现实相对的理想世界，这一“两个世界”之分，本文 6.6 节会用到，但本文把大观园看作一次未完成的互为目的的实验，不看作已成的理想国。余国藩《重读石头记》（1997）对情、欲与虚构的讨论深受佛教问题意识牵引，与本文“情不可只化约为待解之缚”一论直接对话[^s2-4]。

浦安迪（Andrew H. Plaks）《〈红楼梦〉的原型与寓意》（1976）以“二元补衬”“多项周旋”读此书的布局：对立者在同一宇宙中交替、复现。本文不争这一结构读法，问的是另一件事：未来指向文本怎样约束它所写的人，而不穷尽这个人。

2.5 主体性一路：最近的前人

最近的前人是刘再复。他承李泽厚的主体性哲学，在《红楼梦悟》《共悟红楼》等书中以主体、心灵与审美读此书，已经用到康德的句式[^s2-5]。本文落在实践理性，并且用一部完整的复原文本作压力测试；与他的具体异同，留待专题九逐处比较，本文不作总评。

2.6 本文的位置

一句话：本文把王国维以来以“解脱”为中心的哲学读法，转向以主体、敬与目的关系为中心的读法；康德与庄子是这一转向的主要对话者。

本文与前人真正的区别，不在“写成了全文”，而在四件事：证据逐条分级；复原正文逐字机测，并对前八十回语料做在案检查；对脂批作正向审计（前指候选逐条裁定，其余抽样补筛）与定向反向审计；判准公开，且每一次运用都登记在案。

本文吸收考据成果作材料，不以考据为判准。与周汝昌、梁归智等的分歧，多数不是考据之争，而是判准不同：考据上可以成立的一种读法，本文仍可能依判准择取另一种读法（4.1 节）。凡本文不同于前人之处，都只说“本文这样读，理由在此”，不说“前人都没说过”。

[^s0-1]: 项目底本据江山阁隐制作的《红楼梦脂批本完美版》PDF（网络流传本；据制作者介绍，以庚辰本为底本，吸取甲戌、王府、戚序等本的批语并标本名）整理为文本。归一化后的文件为 999_归一化全文.txt（md5 06d87cd765c8ba133976722331b06b2b）。批语以【】标出，依所标本名著录；统计时以“【”计条，共 4,099 条；去批即整块去除【】内文字。影印本未核。 [^s1-1]: 第二十回庚辰眉批（畸笏叟，丁亥夏）：“茜雪至‘狱神庙’方呈正文。袭人正文标目曰‘花袭人有始有终’，余只见有一次誊清时，与‘狱神庙慰宝玉’等五六稿，被借阅者迷失，叹叹！”第二十六回甲戌批“惜‘卫若兰射圃’文字迷失无稿”，庚辰眉批“惜‘卫若兰射圃’文字无稿”；第二十一回回前批“未见后三十回犹不见此之妙”（项目底本标蒙本）。逐条见专题一。 [^s1-2]: 第五回。“皮肤淫滥”，据项目底本；通行校本（中国艺术研究院红楼梦研究所校注本，北京：人民文学出版社；庚辰底本）作“滥淫”；影印本未核。 [^s1-3]: Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten（1785），AA 4:429。中文据原文译述，参李秋零主编《康德著作全集》（北京：中国人民大学出版社）。 [^s1-4]: 复原本第一一〇回书末【大知批曰】，本项目自撰，不是脂批。 [^s2-1]: 王国维《自序》（1907；通称《三十自序》，收入《静安文集续编》）。此处转述其意，不作直接引用。 [^s2-2]: 吴世昌说见 Wu Shih-ch'ang, On The Red Chamber Dream: A Critical Study of Two Annotated Manuscripts of the XVIIIth Century（Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961；中文书名《红楼梦探源》）；戴不凡说见《揭开〈红楼梦〉作者之谜》（《北方论丛》1979 年第 1 期）；张爱玲《红楼梦魇》（台北：皇冠出版社，1977）。只引论点，不注页码。 [^s2-3]: 周汝昌《红楼梦新证》（上海：棠棣出版社，1953）等；梁归智《石头记探佚》（太原：山西人民出版社，1983）；蔡义江《论红楼梦佚稿》（杭州：浙江古籍出版社，1989）。只引论点，不注页码。 [^s2-4]: 余英时《红楼梦的两个世界》（台北：联经出版事业公司，1978）；Anthony C. Yu, Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber（Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997）。英文版另论 Andrew H. Plaks, Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber（Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976）。 [^s2-5]: 刘再复《红楼梦悟》（增订本，北京：生活·读书·新知三联书店，2009）；刘再复、刘剑梅《共悟红楼》。具体段落的比较见专题九。

3 立项

3.1 程高本在哪几处“换了一本书”

程高本让这部书流传了二百多年，这一点不必否认。本项目立项的理由，是它在三处把书的方向换了；读到第八十回是一种书，从第八十一回起渐渐成了另一种书。下面各举最硬的一两处文本。

其一，焚稿断痴情。程高本第九十七回回目是“林黛玉焚稿断痴情　薛宝钗出闺成大礼”。黛玉临终先要撕诗帕，撕不动，后“将方才的绢子拿在手中，瞅着那火，点点头儿，往上一撂”，又把诗稿撂在火上[^s3-1]。问题不在焚稿这一动作是否动人，而在它给黛玉的一生下了什么结论。前八十回的黛玉是以诗立身的人，葬花、题帕、《五美吟》《桃花行》，她的“情”一直落在字上；回目的“断痴情”三字，又把情写成了要断掉的东西。焚稿之后，她的一生被收束成一场情死。复原本第九十五回反其道：黛玉把新写的《十独吟》与平生诗稿交给雪雁，叮嘱“这些，带回那南边去，收在你自己家里，别叫人翻动了”；两条题过诗的旧帕，交给紫鹃，只说一句“这个，还给他”[^s3-2]。一字不焚。

其二，中举出家。程高本第一一九回回目“中乡魁宝玉却尘缘　沐皇恩贾家延世泽”，宝玉“中了第七名举人”，随即走失；第一二〇回在毗陵驿雪中拜别贾政，随一僧一道而去，朝廷“便赏了一个‘文妙真人’的道号”[^s3-3]。宝玉先在礼教之内把功名做完，再看破出家，两头都得了。放在本文的宝玉悟性三层（6.4 节）里，这一结局停在第二层“看破”；脂批所给的，却是“撒手”“已悟”，而且靖本一条明说“是何必削发”（3.5 节、6.4 节）。

其三，兰桂齐芳。程高本第一二〇回，甄士隐对贾雨村说：“福善祸淫，古今定理。现今荣、宁两府，善者修缘，恶者悔祸，将来兰桂齐芳，家道复初，也是自然的道理。”[^s3-4] 这一句同时做了两件事：家道要复初，人的遭遇要按善恶结账。前八十回的未来指向文本却一路指向散：秦可卿托梦给凤姐，说“三春去后诸芳尽，各自须寻各自门”；第五回《飞鸟各投林》收在“好一似食尽鸟投林，落了片白茫茫大地真干净”。复原本第一〇八回写尽家族之倒，此后两回写倒后之人，不写家道复初；叙述者也不作报应的解释（4.5 节）。

这三处合起来，是本项目说程高本“换了一本书”的意思：情成了要断的缚，悟成了功名之后的出世，家成了可以复初的账。本项目要把结局写回前八十回的方向上，不是要证明自己写的才是原稿。

3.2 为何写、怎么写、写什么

项目内部的总论把立项分成三层[^s3-5]，这里给出公开的简本。

为何写。让这部书的结局与前八十回同一方向：人不在结局处被简化，家不在结局处复初，情不在结局处被断掉。开卷有一段“作者自云”：闺阁中本自历历有人，万不可因我不肖，则一并使其泯灭也。这段文字在项目底本里属批语层（6.1 节），本文只作辅助材料，但它说出的正是“人”字：那些被时代看轻的具体的人，本身就不可替代。

怎么写。四层关系、证据分级、文体规则与语料纪律（第 4 节）。

写什么。三十回的骨架（第 5 节）与各处的理由（第 6、7 节）。

3.3 边界

不动前八十回。项目一度打算回头补写第十三回删去的天香楼一节，后来定为不补，秦可卿的背景改在续书中补足（3.5 节）。

程高本主要作反向材料，正向采用之处逐条披露。目前所知有两处。第一处，复原本第九十五回金桂下毒、宝蟾撒盐、两碗对换、金桂自食，与程高本第一〇三回是同一机关：程高本中宝蟾供称“我故意的一碗里头多抓了一把盐”“眼错不见，就把香菱这碗汤换了过来”[^s3-6]。复原本在这一机关上加了两个人的选择：香菱不记宝蟾旧恶，当堂替她开脱；宝蟾于是一五一十直陈（4.1 节）。第二处，复原本第一〇五至一〇六回，宝玉披大红猩猩毡斗篷，在雪中向一只船下拜，取的是程高本第一二〇回毗陵驿一幕的形象，而把意思反过来用：程高本是拜别父亲、随僧道而去、受道号；复原本的斗篷是惜春给的，船上是送祖母灵柩南下的寡嫂李纨，宝玉拜过，不上船，也不出家，转身往北走了[^s3-7]。此后若再查出正向采用之处，随新版本补入。

癸酉本视为基于曹雪芹底稿的再创作，本文借它提出候选线索；立场、对立说与采信纪律见 4.6 节。

版本取向以庚辰本与脂批为主。庚辰本存七十八回，是存回较多的早期脂本，项目底本所录批语也以庚辰为最多[^s3-12]；甲戌本批语早而精，但仅存十六回。脂批本名的权重，定为甲戌、庚辰为准，蒙府、戚序、靖藏为参（4.2 节）。

3.4 文本的层累

本文认可层累说：《红楼梦》不是一次写成的单层文本。文本内部的证据有这样几类。第一回的题名串，书名换过几次，题者也换过几人，唯有《金陵十二钗》是曹雪芹“披阅十载，增删五次”之后亲题的；第一回甲戌眉批说“雪芹旧有《风月宝鉴》之书，乃其弟棠村序也”；脂批记下了删稿（“命芹溪删去‘遗簪’、‘更衣’诸文”）与迷失稿（狱神庙、射圃等五六稿）；甲戌本记“至脂砚斋甲戌抄阅再评，仍用《石头记》”，评者又把书名改了回去，这本身就是一层；前八十回内部还有年序与人事的参差[^s3-8]。脂批所据也未必都是同一稿；个别批语与今本（今存前八十回诸本，下同）不合，可能由此而来，本文遇此只作可能登记，不拿来销去不兑现（6.4 节）。

至于具体分几层、各层出于何人之手，民间多有猜测，其中包括徐兴公、方以智等说。这些猜测各有缘由，对本项目的思考也有帮助；但本文不做考据，不参与这一争论。本文的主论点只依赖一层：书有层累，而最后按下中心的是曹雪芹。证据全编与诸说综述，留给专题二。

3.5 回数：由一〇八到一一〇

本项目的回数改过两次，经过照实写出。

最初的打算是后二十七回，合计一〇八：八十回，加回头补写的天香楼一回，再加二十七回。后来定下前八十回不动，天香楼不补，秦可卿的背景改在续书里补足，于是改为后二十八回，仍凑一〇八。最后，立“情榜是活的”之后，不再凑一〇八，定为后三十回，合计一一〇。两次改动各对应第 4 节的一层：第一次守的是“不可违”，前八十回所写之事不改不补；第二次出于判准。

天香楼。能确定的只有一件：据第十三回批者自述，是批者命芹溪删去；今本也确不存此节，可见曹雪芹没有违背此命。第十三回有三条批：靖本批（甲戌本同文小异）“‘秦可卿淫丧天香楼’，作者用史笔也……姑赦之，因命芹溪删去”；甲戌本批“隐去天香楼一节，是不忍下笔也”；笏叟眉批“通回将可卿如何死故隐去，是余大发慈悲也”[^s3-9]。畸笏自述其由是“赦之”。曹雪芹为什么从之，是本文的推测：他本不认可《风月宝鉴》一层给秦可卿的“淫”的设定。推测所据有三处：题名由孔梅溪所题《风月宝鉴》换成曹雪芹亲题《金陵十二钗》；原回目“秦可卿淫丧天香楼”（据批）今作“秦可卿死封龙禁尉”；第五回警幻另立“意淫”，与“皮肤淫滥”相分。《风月宝鉴》一层在前八十回留下的，主要是第十二回贾瑞一段。

第五回秦可卿的判词“情天情海幻情身，情既相逢必主淫”，《好事终》“擅风情，秉月貌，便是败家的根本”，在第 4 节的分类里属于未来指向文本中的“断语”，那是第五回那一刻下的断语，本文重读。复原本第一一〇回情榜秦可卿条把它记作“世谓”，再翻过来：“世谓其以色败家，目之为淫；然其孽非色，乃政。”判词所配之画“美人悬梁自缢”，与复原本第一〇四回宝珠所述“第二日，他就自尽了”相合。项目不补此节，在审计表中记为不承[^s3-10]。

为什么不再凑一〇八。病不在数，在数与人的一一对应：一百〇八人对一百〇八回，逐一销号，像《水浒传》第七十一回石碣天书排定座次；癸酉本的情榜也列了一百〇八人。这两处只作对照，不承担证明。项目曾把一〇八当作必须满足的结构条件，后来发现，这一先验条件会反过来限制人物还能怎样活下去，把书拉向“一切注定”，于是撤掉。一一〇不承担这种对应，所以不闭合。复原本第一〇八回写尽家族之倒，回末仍是“不知这一干人自此各归何处，且听下回分解”；一〇九、一一〇两回写倒后之人。第一一〇回宝玉梦里的榜翻不尽：“名字越多，榜纸越长，从脚下一直铺进橱影深处……纸却仍往下垂”，“橱后却仍有橱”。

材料怎么说。脂批里与回数有关的有四组：

组	批语	所示	与一一〇的关系
百回	第二回蒙本批“以百回之大文”；第二十五回庚辰眉批“通灵玉除邪，全部百回只此一见”	全书约百回	概数，一〇八、一一〇皆可容
后三十回	第二十一回回前批“未见后三十回犹不见此之妙”（项目底本标蒙本）	八十回后尚有三十回	两读并列：一一〇读来不必另作假设；一〇八说亦可把“后三十回”从第七十九回起算
三分之一有余	第四十二回庚辰回前批“今书至三十八回时已过三分之一有余”（同批首末句见 6.3 节）	全书不过约一一四回	一〇八、一一〇皆合；一二〇不合
末回	第六十七回靖本批“末回‘撒手’，乃是已悟……青埂峰时缘了证情，仍不出士隐梦”	末数回含撒手、士隐梦、青埂峰	复原本撒手在一〇六，士隐说梦在一〇八，玉返青埂在一一〇；“末回”须读作末数回（9.1 节登记为软失败）

定性是：材料容得下一〇八，也容得下一一〇，略偏一一〇；若“后三十回”一批庚辰本亦有，改作“偏一一〇”[^s3-11]。由二十八回改为三十回这一步，是判准定的，归丙类（4.2 节）。这也是方法与论点同构的一处（4.7 节）。回数的学术史留给专题七。

4 方法

4.1 判准、不可违、未来指向文本、材料

本项目是诠释性复原。以下四层关系，本文开头讲清，后面每一条取舍都照此归位：

层	是什么	怎么用
判准	人是目的	只在证据仍然允许的几种读法之间择读
不可违	前八十回所写之事（叙事正文、回目）	划定可能的空间。可以重读，不可以违背
未来指向文本	判词、曲文、谶语（以第五回册页与《红楼梦曲》为主）	文本本身不可抹去，复原必须逐条回应。本文读作“应然之册”：它记的是人物在那一刻已成的性情、处境与关系，照此发展下去所指向的走向；这是本文的读法，不是文本自称的体裁。实然可以偏离；偏离须由正文中可追踪的因果链承担，其中人的选择是承重因素（本人为主，他人的选择亦可），不得由复原者无凭据地改命；每一处逐条登记（第 8 节表三；全表见附录五）
材料	脂批、考据成果、癸酉本、程高本	调整各读法的证据分量。材料对后文之事的指认，计入约束（软证据，求最大兼容，9.1 节）；批者的评议、感叹与说教不是材料事实，不计入

未来指向文本里有两类，要分开处理。一类是走向：某人往哪里去，如香菱“致使香魂返故乡”，妙玉“终陷淖泥中”。走向可以因人的选择而偏离，或字面兑现而所指被改写。一类是断语：对某人某事下的判语，如秦可卿“情既相逢必主淫”，《飞鸟各投林》“分明报应”“分离聚合皆前定”。断语可以重读。

应然之册的根据。笔者的理解是：情榜[^s4-1a]写的是人物在那一刻的本质所带来的、应然发展下去的结果（这里的“应然”，指当时条件下的走向，不是说人物应得此命）；但人物是活的、存在的（存在先于本质），后来真正的实然结果，可以随人物的成长与选择而调整。所以说情榜是活的[^s4-1]。复原本第一一〇回《情情赋》说的也是这个意思：“警幻册籍，可志其遭逢，不能封其后来。”

底线。判准压不过前八十回所写之事；未来指向文本可以偏离，但偏离必须有人的选择作凭据。守住这两条，“不局限于考据”就不会滑成“怎么写都行”。读者可以逐条去查：每一处偏离背后，有没有人的选择。

“不局限于考据”的准确意思是：考据是材料，不是判准。周汝昌、戴不凡对某条残批的校读，在考据上可以是对的；本项目仍可依判准，在残文容得下的两种读法之间择取另一种（4.6 节）。

实例。

判准择读：第四十一回靖本眉批残文容两读，本项目从“不屈从”；第二十一回庚辰批“弃而为僧”（准级）与第六十七回靖本批“是何必削发”（参级，原件已佚）相冲，依判准从后者，这是以参压准，照实登记（6.4 节）；回数取一一〇。

不可违压过材料：第十八回庚辰批说又副册三断词是“晴雯、袭人、香菱三人”，与第五回正文香菱在副册相抵，从正文[^s4-2]。

改兑现，本人与他人的选择并在：香菱的判词“自从两地生孤木，致使香魂返故乡”，是第五回那一刻的走向。复原本第九十五回，金桂毒汤误中自身，香菱被当作凶犯锁了去；堂上香菱不但不把罪推给宝蟾，反替她开脱：“我亲见宝蟾撒在汤里的是盐。那一碗咸汤，又是我自己吃下去的，并不曾怎样。奶奶没了，与宝蟾不相干。”宝蟾“抬头看了香菱一眼，半日方开口”，把换碗的经过一五一十说了，香菱这才出狱。先有香菱不记旧恶，后有宝蟾当堂直陈，是两个人的选择改了实然。此后第一〇七回甄士隐寻来，父女相认，香菱随父回姑苏。第一一〇回宝玉梦入薄命司，副册香菱一页的末两句已经改为“纵使两地生孤木，此身未灭返故乡”。“返故乡”兑现了，“香魂”所示的死被改写，所以本文记为改兑现，不记偏离（表三乙）。

偏离，他人的选择为主：妙玉的判词“终陷淖泥中”。“陷”是兑现了的：第九十九回传来她南去投庵、被老尼“日日使他挑水·洗衣·舂米”的消息；第一〇五回她自述“先是一顶轿。后来一扇门。门闩。桶。”第一〇〇回在瓜洲渡口，她已被卖给一个老和尚。“终”却被改写了。（“终”也可读作“终于陷入”，那样全句都已兑现；本文取“到头来”一读，旁证是同一人的曲文《世难容》“到头来，依旧是风尘肮脏违心愿”，两读并登于表三丙。）前八十回第四十一回，妙玉嫌刘姥姥吃过的成窑五彩小盖钟脏，要撂在外头，宝玉讨了去给刘姥姥，说“他卖了也可以度日”。复原本里，刘姥姥把这只钟托给邢岫烟，“替我还了这一注人情罢”；邢岫烟在渡口把它托在掌心递过去，“师父既说钱是俗物，这里倒有一件不俗的”，换下了妙玉，又在江边把要往水里走的她拉住：“姐姐，咱们回去罢。我那屋里，还给你留着一床旧被子呢。”这是他人的选择救了她。此后她回身，第一〇三回给刘姥姥奉茶，第一〇五回端起粗碗，是她自己再拣的路。

断语重读：《飞鸟各投林》“分明报应”“分离聚合皆前定”，是那一刻的断语；本文不以之为定命，复原本的叙述者也不作报应的解释（4.5 节）。

4.2 证据分级

每一条复原结论标两项：来源类型（前八十回正文、未来指向文本、脂批、考据、癸酉本或程高本、探佚前人），与推理等级：

• 甲 · 直证：前八十回正文直接支持；或脂批直接指认，且无异读。来源类型决定权威高低，“甲”只说推理强度。
• 乙 · 推断：由结构、伏线、人物逻辑推出。
• 丙 · 判准择读：材料容两读以上，或材料内部冲突，或脂批自己留有开放，由“人是目的”择定。如第四十一回残批的校读，第二十一回与第六十七回两批的取舍，回数一一〇，“情情”之义。这一类是本项目方法的核心，单列出来，读者可以逐条换一个判准重读。
• 丁 · 创作裁定：材料不足之处的主创决定。

复原文本只作结果与压力测试，不作原作证据。脂批本名的权重，甲戌、庚辰为准，蒙府、戚序、靖藏为参；凡以靖本批承重之处，逐处注明[^s4-3]。

4.3 人机协作

本项目有多家 AI 参与（附录二）。各家对自己产出的自评一律不采，由项目的归并环节在同一语料上独立机测；取舍由作者裁定，文责作者自负[^s4-4]。

4.4 语料纪律与实测

定性先行。以下数字只作异常侦测与防止仿古过度的护栏，不是曹作真实性的评分器；任何数字都不能独立证明一句话是曹作。这些约束写作时就逐回执行，所以达标不算检验[^s4-5]。

“那”字密度。前八十回全书约每 169 字出现一个“那”字，逐回中位数约每 175 字，最密的第二十四回约每 97 字。项目早期曾自定每 44 字一处，没有对过语料，过密近四倍；此后逐步回调，改以每 97 至 133 字为成例（据第八十一至九十回实测），密侧警戒线每 90 字，疏侧界每 140 字。修订逐轮进行，按新口径重修过的各回回落到带内；旧口径下的稿子曾密到每 40 至 76 字一处，比前八十回最密的一回还密，本文照实登记。教训是：未经验证的数字不得执行。

“将”“把”之比。项目一度在语言校订中把“把”一律改作“将”，造成系统性失真；前八十回“将”780 见、“把”708 见，约 1.10 比 1。此后立双侧限，将把之比须在 0.5 至 3.0 之间。

引证律。凡称某语“在案”，须附前八十回原文片段，否则标未验。不在案不等于不可用；正形得到验证，不能推及负形。

回末收束。前八十回以“正是”加对联收回者只有八回（另有两回存“正是”而缺联），“回回必缀对联”疑是程高本的规整之习，复原本不照此办。

诊断性留出检验（拟作，尚未做；本篇只立原则，设计与实测放专题四）：

• 指标：只取经修订史核查、确未参与写作期定向修订的指标。项目在写作中用过的句长、四字句比例、“那”字密度、将把之比、引语占比、对白领话方式等，都不在其列；字频、词频一类，今语扫、在案扫已逐词逐字查过前八十回，也已被触及。合格指标尚待核定。
• 对照组：前八十回；程高本后四十回；癸酉本后二十八回，若能取得可靠文本，作可选的第二对照组。
• 纪律：指标、对照组、判读规则先冻结，写成预注册文件，在实测前单独公开；此后各回修订不得触碰所列指标；实测择复原本一个公开发布的版本一次性进行，所测版本随结果报于专题四；此后新版若再测，只作参照，不替换首测；结果无论好坏全报；测后不删指标，不换阈值，不回改正文。
• 身份：称“诊断性”，只报告复原本在这些维度上离哪一组更近，不作真实性判定。检验做成之前，本篇不把它当作已得的证据。

4.5 文体即立场

复原正文的几条文体规则，不是审美偏好，是“人是目的”在句子层面的执行：

• 叙述者不作因果报应的解释。报应把人的苦难写成应得，把人变成账本里的一项。“报”字用于报丧、禀报等通报义项的，另论。
• 只演不论，删去叙述者的评语。叙述者下判语，就是替人归档。
• 叙述者不以名相评人。仁、善良、慈悲、良知一类字眼不入叙述层。复原本第一〇四回写一个农妇让一个饿极的陌生人坐在门槛上等一块芋头熟，叙述层通篇不着一个“仁”字；“仁者爱人”四个字，只在宝玉走出二三里后，由受者自己想起[^s4-6]。

回目另依成例。前八十回回目以评语冠人名是成例：贤袭人、俏平儿、敏探春、慧紫鹃、慈姨妈、憨湘云、呆香菱。回目用典，按其出处读。复原本第一〇四回回目“仁村姑一饭护羁客”之“仁”，读作“仁者爱人”；第九十五回回目“信香菱德善免命灾”之“德善”，出《道德经》第四十九章“善者吾善之，不善者吾亦善之，德善”：香菱善待曾作践她的宝蟾，宝蟾当堂直陈，是人的选择救了人，不是天报。回目一律不动[^s4-7]。

防循环。这些规则是复原文本的生成规则。由它们生成的文本，不能再拿来当作这些规则正确的独立证据。

4.6 癸酉本的位置与采信纪律

有一部称为癸酉本的抄本，存有八十回后二十八回的文字。本文视之为后人基于曹雪芹底稿的再创作，保存了底稿的部分成分；公开研究中多有视之为今人伪托者，本文写明这一意见，代表论述与正面对话下放专题三。本文把这一判断作为工作假说，借它提出候选线索；被采线索须回到前八十回与脂批独立复核，癸酉本本身不单独承担结论。即使癸酉本最终被证为今人伪托，本文的主论点与方法不受影响（1.4 节）。

采信纪律有三条：涉政之处剔除，其悼明框架整体不取；梗概层只采事件骨架，正文层须经本项目笔法重写；残损脂批的句读校字可以借其一系所传的文本，只及校字，不及情节，论证分量相应降一格。

以第四十一回一条靖本眉批为例。原批残乱，不可句读；周汝昌、戴不凡两家都读作“屈从”。本项目从癸酉本一系的句读，作“他日瓜州渡口，客示劝惩，红颜固能不屈从枯骨，不哀哉”[^s4-8]。残文的字序两读都容得下，本项目依判准择“不屈从”，归丙类，不是与周、戴争考据。三种校读并列，留给专题三。

4.7 方法与论点同构

一条原则：书里否定什么，复原者自己就不做什么。

处	书里否定的	复原者自己不做的	见
文体	叙述者替人下判语，报应把人记成账	叙述者不作报应解释，只演不论，叙述层不以名相评人	4.5 节
情榜	一张榜能定下一个人	判词作未来指向文本，读作应然之册，不作定命；项目自己的情榜不列全谱，册次可改	4.1 节、6.2 节
版本	定本（曹雪芹自己增删五次）	论文与复原本都以预发布版发出，定期更新	卷首说明
回数	数与人一一对应，一〇八闭合	不闭合在一〇八；三十回，榜翻不尽	3.5 节

这四处同构，只说明方法与论点一致，不证明论点为真。它的用处在于可检验：复原本若在哪里替人定死了命，或让人物无凭无据地偏离判词，读者就可以拿这条原则反驳复原本。

[^s3-1]: 程高本第九十七回，据网络流传的一百二十回通行本电子文本引，未与程甲、程乙本影印本对校。 [^s3-2]: 复原本第九十五回。 [^s3-3]: 程高本第一一九回、第一二〇回，据网络流传的一百二十回通行本电子文本引，未与程甲、程乙本影印本对校。 [^s3-4]: 程高本第一二〇回，所据同上。 [^s3-5]: 项目总论 Part 0 至 Part 3。总论是内部工作文件，语言温度与本文不同；凡总论中“前人没有说过”一类表述，本文一概不用。 [^s3-6]: 程高本第一〇三回“施毒计金桂自焚身　昧真禅雨村空遇旧”，据网络流传的一百二十回通行本电子文本引，未与程甲、程乙本影印本对校。 [^s3-7]: 复原本第一〇五回（惜春赠大红猩猩毡斗篷）、第一〇六回（雪中向送灵船下拜）。程高本第一二〇回毗陵驿一段，出处同本节注“程高本第一一九回、第一二〇回”条。 [^s3-8]: 第一回正文与甲戌眉批；第十三回靖本批、甲戌本批；第二十回、第二十六回庚辰眉批。 [^s3-9]: 第十三回。靖本批据项目底本所录，原件已佚；甲戌本批为残批。 [^s3-10]: 审计表“不承”第三条：作者自删，非迷失，本项目不复原。 [^s3-11]: 第二十一回此批，项目底本标为蒙本回前批；庚辰本中有无，影印本未核。 [^s3-12]: 项目底本按所标本名计：庚辰 1,918 条，甲戌 1,495 条，蒙本 560 条，其余合计 126 条。庚辰本存七十八回、缺第六十四、六十七回，据通行著录；影印本未核。 [^s4-1]: “存在先于本质”是萨特语（L'existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris: Nagel, 1946；中译参周煦良、汤永宽译《存在主义是一种人道主义》）。萨特的意思是：人先存在，其本质由其后的选择造成。笔者原话里的“本质”，指的正是那一刻已经造成的性情、处境与关系；判词所记是这一层，后来的选择可以再写。两个词在这里对得上。本文只借此一语，不引入萨特的体系，也不以萨特为应然之册成立的理由。 [^s4-1a]: 此处“情榜”泛指薄命司册籍（判词所在）与末回情榜。系笔者原话，只注不改。本文口号“情榜是活的”沿用此泛指；专指末回之榜处，称“末回情榜”或“第一一〇回情榜”。 [^s4-2]: 第十八回庚辰双行夹批。同回庚辰眉批（畸笏）自承“是处引十二钗总未的确，皆系漫拟也”。 [^s4-3]: 以靖本批承重者两处：第四十一回“瓜州渡口”一批，第六十七回“末回撒手”一批。靖本原件已佚。 [^s4-4]: 项目流程为：任务书，作者批准，多家发散起草，归并环节独立机测，归并，作者多轮裁定，语言校订（庚辰化），逐字核对，封稿并立法留档。两条观察：AI 审稿方倾向于把独特的文学选择“稳定化”，三层编辑等级是防线；人类评审稳定地捕到 AI 漏掉的礼制错误。人机协作的方法论另见作者的 SAE 方法论第八篇《Human-AI Symbiosis》（Zenodo，DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19581537）。 [^s4-5]: 本节前八十回诸数据项目底本实测：去【】内批语，回目计入，只计汉字，四舍五入。项目自定的带宽与复原本旧稿之数，出自项目机测记录。逐回表附于专题四。 [^s4-6]: 复原本第一〇四回。宝玉的原话是：“蠢物。你在家塾里念了几年书，仁者爱人四个字见过多少回。” [^s4-7]: 有审稿方建议改动这两个回目，作者裁定不改。前八十回回目冠字诸例，见第二十一、五十六、五十七、六十二诸回回目。 [^s4-8]: 第四十一回靖本眉批。项目底本所录传文作“劝惩不哀哉屈从红颜固能不枯骨各示□”（据审计表所录），不可句读。

5 复原本概览

这一节让读者看见三十回是什么形状，第 6、7 节再讲为什么这样写。复原正文在本文只用来展示论点怎样落成文本（第 1 节）。三十回回目全表见附录一。

5.1 五段

第八十一至八十八回，家空。袭人出嫁，贾母去世，内囊已空；凤姐失势，迎春死于孙家，探春远嫁，惜春剪发拒婚；宝玉与黛玉在凸碧堂私下结发。

第八十九至九十五回，网收。宝黛婚期方定，元春死于宫中，宁府与荣府长房同日被抄，宝玉被忠顺王府指名锁拿下狱；茜雪、小红、倪二、蒋玉菡、袭人、云儿等人设计，从狱神庙救出宝玉；黛玉在三月初三泪尽而逝，赶回的宝玉隔着一道城门，没有赶上。

第九十六至一〇三回，散。宝玉醒来，婚日翻墙出走；贾环当面气死贾政，又顺手一带，使王夫人跌倒撞死；宝玉衔玉离京；巧姐被亲舅王仁卖入瓜洲对岸的娼家，刘姥姥一行设计救出；邢岫烟在瓜洲渡口以成窑钟换下被卖的妙玉；宝玉一路乞食南下，到智通寺。

第一〇四至一〇八回，悟与清算。农妇二丫头一饭；正觉庵中惜春点宝玉为“廉虚居士”；宝玉掷玉入雪，遇见寡居的湘云；宝钗为救兄嫁贾雨村，雨村获罪，宝钗随流放北行，死在雪地；甄士隐与贾雨村论天道。

第一〇九至一一〇回，聚与梦。六年后，三和班排演《桃花扇》，五个旧友再行女儿令；宝玉梦入薄命司，翻情榜，醒后写《情情赋》；一僧一道把通灵玉送回青埂峰下。

5.2 八个节点

改变全局的是八回：第九十一回（查抄）；第九十五回（黛玉泪尽）；第九十七回（冲喜失新郎，宝玉出走）；第一〇五回（廉虚居士）；第一〇六回（掷玉，袭人有始有终）；第一〇八回（雨村获罪，士隐说梦）；第一〇九回（五知交再续女儿令）；第一一〇回（梦情榜，玉返青峰）。

5.3 人物落点

这里只列与本篇论点相关者，逐人逐回的细节下放专题六、专题七。

人物	落点
黛玉	第九十五回泪尽；拒上房参丸；挂父亲的青玉带于竹上；诗稿托雪雁带回姑苏，旧帕还宝玉
宝玉	第九十七回出走；第一〇五回为居士，不剃度；第一〇六回掷玉；此后与湘云相守
宝钗	名分一线：第九十七回婚日新郎出走，长辈事后追定“没有拜过堂的宝二奶奶”之名；第一〇七回得“湖州郡夫人”之名；第一〇八回流放路上，路引上两个名分都划去，只写“薛宝钗”，最后一丸冷香丸不服
惜春	第九十九回出家，法号慧觉
巧姐	第一〇一回自己选择随刘姥姥去；后嫁板儿
妙玉	第一〇〇回获赎；第一〇五回端粗碗；偏离判词“终陷淖泥中”之“终”
香菱	第九十五回出狱；第一〇七回父女相认，回姑苏；判词“致使香魂返故乡”改兑现
李纨	第一〇九回受诰后病逝，临终不替李纹、李绮作主
秦可卿	第一〇四回宝珠述其死；第一〇五回入宝玉梦；第一一〇回情榜“孽情”

6 诠释：人是有情的

6.1 情是什么：前八十回之锚

意淫与皮肤淫滥。第五回，警幻以“悦容貌，喜歌舞，调笑无厌，云雨无时，恨不能尽天下之美女供我片时之趣兴”定“皮肤淫滥”，以“天分中生成一段痴情”定“意淫”，又说“‘意淫’二字，惟心会而不可口传，可神通而不可语达”[^s6-1]。本文读为：前者把人当供我之物，后者不是。同回甲戌侧批以“体贴”释意淫：“按宝玉一生心性，只不过是体贴二字，故曰‘意淫’。”第八回甲戌眉批又说宝玉“凡世间之无知无识，彼俱有一痴情去体贴”。两处“体贴”同字，都是褒语。

情榜两评。第十九回庚辰双行夹批，批者先自承“实亦不能评出此二人终是何等人物”，再引情榜：“后观《情榜》评曰‘宝玉情不情’，‘黛玉情情’，此二评自在评痴之上，亦属囫囵不解，妙甚！”两评并列，不分高下，批者也不说破。

“情情”：本文的改义择读，须正面交代。脂批里的“情情”，大多落在黛玉身上：第二十七回甲戌侧批“了却‘情情’之正文也”；第二十八回甲戌侧批“‘情情’本来面目也”“‘情情’，不忍道出‘的’字来”，庚辰侧批“‘情情’衷肠”；第三十一回庚辰批“故颦儿谓‘情情’”。这几条的意思，是她的情专注于有情之人。第四十三回蒙本回末总批却落在宝玉私祭金钏一事上：“写多情不漏亡人，情之所钟必让若辈。此所谓情情者也。”同一个词，批者也用在宝玉身上。再加上第十九回批者自承评不出，脂批自己在这里留了开放。本项目在这个开放处，依判准把“情情”读作“敬人如敬己，任物各适其性”：前半接康德，后半接庄子（第 7 节）。这是改义，归丙类。“情不情为病，情情为愈”这一等差，前八十回也没有，两评本是并列的；这同样是本项目的择读，与“体贴”一语的褒义方向相左，代价在 9.2 节登记。

“闺阁中本自历历有人”。开卷“作者自云”：“闺阁中本自历历有人，万不可因我不肖，则一并使其泯灭也。”这段话的核心是“人”字。但它在项目底本中属批语层（甲戌本凡例；庚辰本在第一回回首），所以本文只作辅助材料，引时注明文本身份。

第五十八回论祭。这一处须从场景立论，不从字面。藕官为死去的菂官烧纸，被婆子拿住；宝玉护下她，借芳官传话，说祭奠“只一‘诚心’二字为主”，“只在敬不在虚名”。这里的“敬”是祭祀之诚，与康德所说对人之敬不是一个字义。能接到敬人上去的，是宝玉在这一场里所做的事：他没有顺着婆子去处置藕官，承认她这一片情；传的话里，也仍劝她以后不用纸钱，改作焚香。这一场有对情的承认，也仍有他自己的规矩，不是取消一切规约。同名异指，须以语义复核，不能拿字面相接（9.3 节）。

6.2 立情榜而否情榜

前八十回留有可供重读的张力。第五回，宝玉看册没看完，警幻“恐把仙机泄漏，遂掩了卷册”；册对看册的人不起作用，宝玉三次“看了仍不解”“看了不解”，警幻叹“痴儿竟尚未悟”。情榜两评评的是情之质，不是命之数。批语系统里，册次也不一定：第十八回庚辰批所列又副册三人，与第五回正文相抵，畸笏眉批自承“是处引十二钗总未的确，皆系漫拟也”。但同一条批接着说“至回末警幻情榜方知正、副、再副及三四副芳讳”，批者是期待末回情榜定谱的。这一点须照实写，不能把畸笏写成否榜的人。

未来指向文本，读作应然之册。判词记的是人物在那一刻已成的性情、处境与关系所指向的走向；人是活的（4.1 节），后来的实然可以因成长与选择而不同。

复原本把这一潜势写到底。第一一〇回宝玉梦入薄命司，旧册画面已各自改变：正册第一页“玉带那一头旁边多出一卷纸，卷角有翻过的旧痕，不曾烧”，雪下金簪“倒像被人拿手一分一分按进去的”，巧姐一页“纺车旁多一只摇篮”；副册香菱一页的末两句改为“纵使两地生孤木，此身未灭返故乡”。宝玉一册一册翻下去，身后一声断喝：“何方情之不情，敢翻尽满司的薄命！”他翻册未尽而醒。醒后所写《情情赋》说：“警幻册籍，可志其遭逢，不能封其后来。”此前两处可以旁证：第一〇六回湘云说，“林姐姐这样一个人，活生生一身血肉性灵，天上的神仙也好·地上的官府也好，谁配拿一本破账簿替他排座次·定高低！”第九十六回宝玉昏迷中梦见黛玉拒月府使者：“无所迎而灵自圆，无所印而真自明。”

写中遭逢，写不完人。这里说“写中”，是指复原本依未来指向文本落成了这些遭逢，不把兑现率当作独立证据。“情榜是活的”，不靠册子猜错。表三核下来，复原本里多数判词在事件层兑现了：宝钗真的埋在雪里，探春真的远嫁不归，凤姐真的被休，病死在城外旧庄。兑现的是遭逢；遭逢之中人怎样回应，册上没有，也写不下：宝钗在流放路上划去两个名分，只写“薛宝钗”；探春到了那边，自己改泊船的章程。《情情赋》说“警幻册籍，可志其遭逢，不能封其后来”，说的就是这一层。走向被人的选择改掉，是其中一种情形（表三丙），不是“情榜是活的”唯一的凭据。

项目自己的情榜也是活的。第一一〇回写了情榜，但不列全谱，册次可改[^s6-2]。一张定死的榜就是归档；复原者若把自己排出的榜当定论，就重犯了书里要否定的那一笔。第一回的“谁解其中味”也不在第一一〇回复诵，不作首尾题诗的闭合。

6.3 黛玉与宝玉：真主角；黛玉为核心，宝玉为视角

本文的读法是：这部书的真主角是黛玉与宝玉两人；两人之中，黛玉是真核心，宝玉是视角。

前八十回之锚。第一回，那僧对道人讲起绛珠的心愿：“他既下世为人，我也去下世为人，但把我一生所有的眼泪还他，也偿还得过他了。”接着说：“因此一事，就勾出多少风流冤家来，陪他们去了结此案。”就在“因此一事，就勾出多少风流冤家来”之下，甲戌侧批写道：“余不及一人者，盖全部之主惟二玉二人也。”[^s6-3] 这一条直证二人是全书之主。全书众人是“陪”这一桩公案来的；还泪是绛珠的愿，是黛玉的行动。批是二玉并称；“黛玉为核心，宝玉为视角”，是本文在此之上的读法，归乙类。

题名串。第一回的书名一路被人改，空空道人改《石头记》为《情僧录》，吴玉峰题《红楼梦》，孔梅溪题《风月宝鉴》；最后按下名字的是曹雪芹，他题作《金陵十二钗》，至少说明女性群像被推到了书名中心；这与《石头记》所着眼的石头与宝玉一线形成张力[^s6-4b]。紧接着，脂砚斋又“仍用《石头记》”。中心之争，在题名串里就看得见[^s6-4]。

另一读须并列。第四十二回庚辰回前批说：“钗玉名虽两个，人却一身，此幻笔也。今书至三十八回时已过三分之一有余，故写是回使二人合而为一。请看黛玉逝后宝钗之文字便知余言不谬矣。”批者把钗黛读作一身，与本文“黛玉为核心”不同向；本文照实并列，仍取黛玉为核心，归乙类。末句是一条指向黛玉死后的前指，项目的审计表漏收，归档交专题一。复原本第一〇八回黛玉入宝钗梦（“那不是风送你的。那是你自己写的。这一笔，没有人替你落。”）可作回应的候选，但不拿它来证明批者说对了什么。第一回雨村口占“玉在匮中求善价，钗于奁内待时飞”，句下甲戌侧批作黛钗读（“表过黛玉则紧接上宝钗”），同处夹批却说“前用二玉合传，今用二宝合传，自是书中正眼”，与第四十二回批同属钗黛、二宝并提一类，一并照实并列。

视角。先看前八十回。第二十二回宝玉参禅，偈末一句“无可云证，是立足境”，黛玉续上“无立足境，是方干净”，宝钗说“实在这方悟彻”：宝玉的偈，是黛玉替他补完的。补完之后，黛玉随即说“只是以后再不许谈禅了”；宝玉自想“原来他们比我的知觉在先”，笑说“谁又参禅，不过一时顽话罢了”。第三十二回宝玉当着袭人、湘云说：“林姑娘从来说过这些混帐话不曾？若他也说过这些混帐话，我早和他生分了。”黛玉在外听见的是“林妹妹不说这样混帐话，若说这话，我也和他生分了”，所喜者“果然自己眼力不错，素日认他是个知己”。宝玉拿来衡量自己、也衡量旁人的，是黛玉。第二回冷子兴转述宝玉幼时的话：“女儿是水作的骨肉，男人是泥作的骨肉。”他把自己放在泥这一边[^s6-4a]。

本文的解释从这里起。笔者的看法是：我们眼中的他人，才是我们自己。宝玉眼中、心中、记忆中的黛玉，才是宝玉真正羡慕、想成为的自己。这里的“视角”，不是叙事学上的唯一焦点人物，而是本文重建的一条认识路径：读者经由宝玉怎样看、怎样误看、怎样放下自己的看法，进入全书的伦理问题。这句话说的是这条路径的起点：宝玉先在黛玉身上看见自己想成为的样子。它不是说二人是同一个主体。

起点与终点。羡慕是起点，并立是终点。复原本把这条弧写到底：第一一〇回宝玉所写《情情赋》说：“此皆因尔本自具足，绝非吾之倒影……尔自为尔，非为吾之宗极；吾亦自为吾，不待尔而后明。”又说：“敬尔之孤洁，如敬吾之本心。”宝玉一路趋近黛玉早已站定之处；趋近的终点，不是把黛玉收成自己的镜子，而是承认她本自具足。

恒量。前八十回里，黛玉立身的根据一直在她自己这里。第二十回她对宝玉说：“我为的是我的心。”宝玉答：“我也为的是我的心。”第二十七回《葬花吟》：“质本洁来还洁去，强于污淖陷渠沟。”第六十四回她题《五美吟》，写古来五个女子。本文据此读为：黛玉的变化在处境、关系与身体，不在价值根据。复原本把这一点写到底：第九十五回，她听说自己要被送进王府，呕血之后只说一句：“这副身子，不归他们安排。”上房送来参丸，她原样退回：“药连着话来的，话退了，药也退。”她在最后一夜誊清的《十独吟》，小序说“以‘独’易‘美’”，把《五美吟》改了一个字。第一一〇回情榜黛玉条：“此人从不借他人之目，以定己之真。”

6.4 宝玉的悟：三层

层	内容	锚点
一 · 学来的悟	读庄子、参禅、写偈，停在“立足境”	第二十二回，宝玉偈末句“无可云证，是立足境”，黛玉补“无立足境，是方干净”
二 · 活出来的悟	家破、乞讨之中悟到空	复原本第一〇二回智通寺，第一〇五回正觉庵
三 · 悟后的担当	看破之后仍活，仍把他人当目的	复原本第一〇六回撒手，此后与湘云相守

放在这个三层模型里，程高本的结局与王国维的解脱读法，主要落在第二层；本文所写的是第三层。

三条脂批。

第二十一回庚辰双行夹批说宝玉“有情极之毒”，“故后文方有‘悬崖撒手’一回。若他人得宝钗之妻、麝月之婢，岂能弃而为僧哉？”本项目把这一条拆成两个命题[^s6-5]。

其一，得而弃之。本文记为“改兑现”。复原本第九十七回：婚约已定；麝月带人日夜两班守着宝玉；婚日四更，麝月恰被王夫人叫去回话，屋里空了小半个时辰，宝玉翻墙走了。天亮后新郎不在，长辈们商量半日，对外只说二爷病重，成不得大礼，名分先定下来，宝钗成了没有拜过堂的宝二奶奶。宝玉弃的，是已定的婚约和临到眼前的婚礼；“妻”之名，是他走后追定的。本文认为这一条兑现了，按附录四的分类是改兑现：“得妻”的字面落在他走后追定的名分上，他走时得的只是已定的婚约；“弃之”由成婚之后弃之，改作了婚礼之前走开。把“得妻”读作成婚的，记不兑现；两读并登。宝钗此后最大的命运难题，正是这个名分，而不在实际的生活里（7.2 节）。

其二，弃而为僧。本文记为“以参压准”。这一句与第六十七回靖本批“末回‘撒手’，乃是已悟，此虽眷恋，却破迷关，是何必削发”相冲。前者是庚辰本（准级），后者是靖本（参级，原件已佚）。本项目依判准从后者：第一〇五回惜春对宝玉说“心有佛法，何必出家。汝可为廉虚居士”，宝玉拜受，不剃度。判准在这里的根据，只及于宝玉与人的关系：悟后仍回到人与人之间承担，是第三层；它不及于出家本身。复原本写惜春出家，是正面之笔（6.5 节）。这一取舍照实登记，推翻条件见 9.4 节。

第二十八回回前批（庚辰本；甲戌本回末同文）说琪官“后回与袭人供奉玉兄宝卿得同终始者，非泛泛之文也”。本文记为“半兑现”[^s6-6]。“供奉玉兄”一半已兑现：第九十七回宝玉藏身锦香院，蒋玉菡、袭人时常送东西来；第一〇六回宝玉住进紫檀堡，回目是“花袭人信有始有终”。“宝卿得同终始”一半未兑现。复原本在这里取了另外几条读法：第一回贾雨村口占“钗于奁内待时飞”与判词“金簪雪里埋”，本文读作宝钗另嫁雨村、死于雪中（表一第十四行，乙）；第三十一回回目“因麒麟伏白首双星”，本文读作宝玉终与湘云相守（第十三行，乙）；宝玉婚日出走，是上文第二十一回批的改兑现。这几条读法与“宝卿得同终始”不能同时满足，本文取前者，这一半照实登记为软证据未能兼容（9.1 节）；不说它与判词在逻辑上不能并立。宝玉本来有那条路，是他不走。

复原落点。第一〇二回，宝玉遇劫不躲，柳湘莲道破：“方才不是躲不开，是不肯躲。”柳湘莲当夜折断自己的剑：“这把尺子·量死过一个干净的人。如今折了。往后·我只救还喘着气的。”智通寺的老僧不说法，只叫他出门拾干柴，回来掏炉灰；火生起来，宝玉端着一碗粥，自己念出“无立足境，是方干净”。第一〇四回，一个不识字的农妇让他坐在门槛上等一块芋头，不问他是谁；他走出二三里才想起：“今日你在一个不识字的妇人灶前坐了半日，等一块芋头。”他被一个不认得他的人当作目的对待。第一〇五回，惜春点他为廉虚居士。第一〇六回，他在雪地上写“无证无著”四字，又抹平，把通灵玉掷入雪中；此后与湘云相守，第一〇九回教湘云的一对双生子认字，“只教他们认字，不拿戒尺”。第一一〇回，他说自己一辈子守着“情不情”，湘云头也不抬：“二哥哥，玉都扔了，怎么还舍不得这三个字？”

6.5 活才悲

只就本文所重建的宝玉弧线而言：若把出家设为最终的完成，人物会停在退出世界的那一层；本文所写的第三层，是悟空以后仍回到人与人的关系中承担，更难，也更悲。本文不对出家本身作价值判断，复原本惜春出家就是正面之笔。从文本上说，程高本与王国维都停在出家；脂批给的是“撒手”与“已悟”。

6.6 反家天下：一个政治推论

这一节登记为推论层，不承重。大观园提供了一个局部的、脆弱而不完全的互为目的的空间；它从来不是目的王国，园内仍有主奴等级，有撵人与辱骂，所以只是一次未完成的实验。抄检大观园与抄家，是家天下之力的介入。复原本第一〇八回，押解途中的贾雨村说，林如海清白自守，也死在任上，“清白既不能保身，钻营又有什么稀奇”；甄士隐答他：“分别不在能不能躲过那一淹。分别只在淹下去时，手里可曾按着别人的头。”又说：“你以为在下棋，你自己就是棋子。”梯次打击、架空朝代与政治势力的地图，下放专题八。

以上 6.2 至 6.4 各节，本篇只给结论与一两个最硬的锚；逐人逐回的论证下放专题五、专题六。

7 情情合康庄：与康德、庄子

7.1 原则与写法

不画等号。康德立的是法，对一切理性存在者普遍成立；这部书写的是具体的人在具体的末路上怎样做。每一处只说“在这里相遇”。

两栏法。每一处对照分两栏：“前八十回与脂批之锚”，“复原本之落笔”。关于曹雪芹的句子，只能用前一栏；后一栏只说“本项目把这个方向写到底，写成了这样”。前一栏为空的，注明前八十回无锚，只作复原本的写法。

7.2 康德一足：人与人

对照	前八十回与脂批之锚	复原本之落笔
人性公式（GMS 4:429）	第五回意淫与皮肤淫滥之分（本文读为：不把人当供我之物）	《情情赋》“敬尔之孤洁，如敬吾之本心”，对应“无论你自己还是任何别人”
病理之爱与实践之爱（GMS 4:399）	第十九回情榜两评并列	情不情的自我批判：《情情赋》“以此自矜，谓之情不情……所谓泛爱，实乃傲慢；所谓同悲，实乃自怜。将万物皆降为余一人之注脚”
敬（KpV 5:73 以下；GMS 4:401 注）	第五十八回，须经场景过渡（6.1 节）	“唯留两点孤明，遥遥相映，不即不离”
爱近敬远（MS 6:449）	前八十回无锚	“不即不离”：爱使人相近，敬使人相远。只作复原本的写法

康德一足的中心在第一行：这一行前八十回的锚最直接，第二、三行的锚要经过读法或场景的过渡，第四行没有锚。其余几行说明几件事。第一，康德并不以感性爱好作为道德法则的根据，但他区分病理的爱与作为义务的实践之爱；这一区分，反倒让“爱与敬合一”有了落点。复原本《情情赋》对“情不情”的自我批判，对应的是康德所说行善时勿使受惠者受辱（MS 6:453 前后）：施爱者若把对方当作待怜之物，泛爱就成了傲慢。第二，敬，康德说它是“由理性概念自己造成的情感”（GMS 4:401 注），是“唯一能完全先天认识的情感”（KpV 5:73），作为对道德法则的敬，又是“唯一的、同时无可置疑的道德动机”（KpV 5:78 前后）；《德行论》导论另列道德情感、良知、爱人、自重四项，作为心灵接受义务概念的感性前提（MS 6:399 以下）。所以不能说敬是康德“唯一承认的道德情感”[^s7-1]。

宝钗：由借力到自己落笔。这里不用他律、自律这对术语：康德的自律，是意志为自己立普遍之法；宝钗在路引上写回自己的名字，是不再由旁人替她落笔，二者不是一回事。前八十回之锚是第七十回宝钗的柳絮词：“好风频借力，送我上青云。”[^s7-5]复原本第一〇八回，流放路上她的冷香丸只剩一丸，她倒在掌心看了半日，放回瓶里；女役拿来路引，姓名一栏先写“贾薛氏”，又添“湖州郡夫人”旧衔，问她留哪一个，她说：“都划了。写薛宝钗。”当夜黛玉入梦，对她说：“那不是风送你的。那是你自己写的。这一笔，没有人替你落。”与 5.3 节的名分一线合看。

7.3 庄子一足：人与物

对照	前八十回与脂批之锚	复原本之落笔
以己养养鸟，非以鸟养养鸟（《庄子·至乐》；《达生》亦有此段）	第八回甲戌眉批“凡世间之无知无识，彼俱有一痴情去体贴”：只撑得起范围，即情及于无知无识之物；“体贴”原是褒语	《情情赋》“且夫情之大患，在于以己度人，以欲乱真。余向日见落花而泣，是不解落花本有化泥之志；见飞鸟而悲，是未知飞鸟自有乘风之乐”
不随物化	前八十回无锚	第一一〇回湘云《敝舍赋》“此针盘者，乃吾不假外求，不随物化之真性也”，与《情情赋》并置。只作复原本的写法

庄子自己的“无情”须交代。《庄子·德充符》惠子问“人故无情乎”，庄子答：“吾所谓无情者，言人之不以好恶内伤其身，常因自然而不益生也。”《养生主》秦失吊老聃，说“安时而处顺，哀乐不能入也”[^s7-2]。庄子讲的是不以好恶内伤其身，本文讲的是情情，二者不画等号。本文的庄子一足，只借“以鸟养养鸟”，即不以己度物；不借庄子的情论。

康德的“目的”只及于理性存在者；他对动物只讲间接义务（MS 6:443）。把“不以己度之”推到落花飞鸟，是庄子一足的功劳。复原本也有一条庄子线：第八十二回黛玉评庄子，“他只管往大里说，说到没边儿上去……他写文章，是不管人信不信”。

7.4 桥：席勒

席勒《论秀美与尊严》（1793）提出“优美灵魂”。黛玉之“本来就是”，近乎一个中国的优美灵魂，仍不画等号。其余留给专题九。

7.5 分歧：自尽

复原本写了迎春、鸳鸯、元春、抱琴之死。康德明确反对自杀（GMS 4:422；MS 6:422 至 6:423）。这是分歧，本文照实登记。本文的写法，是把重心放在把人逼到这一步的结构上：中山狼、宫禁、主奴；写她们被夺去了其他一切选择，不把那一步本身写成可取的自主。本文不据此改复原本情榜迎春条；改的只是论文自己的写法。这一分歧属于哲学对照，不列入第 9 节的可满足性失败。

7.6 余二事

同时代。第一回甲戌眉批说“壬午除夕，书未成，芹为泪尽而逝”。壬午是乾隆二十七年，其除夕公历已入 1763 年；另有癸未（乾隆二十八年除夕，公历 1764 年初）等说。无论取哪一说，曹雪芹之卒都比康德《道德形而上学奠基》（1785）早二十余年。两人没有已知的交集。本文只陈述这一事实；明清之际西学传入的途径一类推测，放在脚注，不承担论证[^s7-3]。

SAE 的位置。作者另有一个哲学框架 SAE（Self-as-an-End），也以“人是目的”为起点[^s7-4]。本文的论证只依赖康德、庄子与文本，不依赖 SAE。

[^s6-1]: 第五回。“皮肤淫滥”，通行本作“滥淫”，见 1.2 节脚注。总论曾引作“可心会”“非世之言情者”，非项目底本原文，本文不用。 [^s6-2]: 审计表“不承”第一条：情榜不列正、副、再副及三四副全谱，不取癸酉本的全谱罗列式。 [^s6-3]: 第一回甲戌侧批。 [^s6-4]: “至吴玉峰题曰《红楼梦》”一句，据通行校本所记只见于甲戌本；影印本未核。 [^s6-4b]: 空空道人改《石头记》为《情僧录》，情僧原是易名的空空道人，不是宝玉。 [^s6-4a]: 第二十二回、第三十二回、第二回。第二回一句是冷子兴转述宝玉七八岁时的话，不是宝玉当场所说。 [^s6-5]: 第二十一回庚辰双行夹批。本项目初记“已兑现”，复核复原本，时序有误：名分是宝玉走后才追定的，出走时麝月被叫去回话。据此拆为两条：“得而弃之”改兑现，“弃而为僧”以参压准。 [^s6-6]: 第二十八回回前批，并入“不承”第六条，记半兑现。初记不承时，理由只写了复原本的情节（宝玉婚日出走，宝钗未成其妻）。这不算循环论证：复原本没有满足一条批，正是可满足性检验应当登记的失败；毛病在没有交代情节所据的读法。现上溯到复原本所取的读法，登记为软证据未能兼容。此批句读另有一读：“后回与袭人供奉玉兄宝卿，得同终始者”，玉兄、宝卿同是供奉的对象，“得同终始”说琪官与袭人；照此读，未兑现的是“供奉宝卿”一半，结论与理由不变，正文沿用“宝卿得同终始”作简称。又，此书披阅十载、增删五次，批者所见未必与今本同一稿，此批所指或出另一稿（笔者之见，3.4 节）。这一层只作可能登记，不拿来销去这一半的不兑现。 [^s7-1]: 本节康德引文以普鲁士科学院版（AA）卷页定位；中文据原文译述，参李秋零主编《康德著作全集》。 [^s7-2]: 《庄子》诸句据通行电子文本引，篇名定位参郭庆藩《庄子集释》（王孝鱼点校，北京：中华书局，1961）；未与纸本逐字对校。 [^s7-3]: 项目内部曾讨论明末清初耶稣会士所译西学著作与方以智一脉的会通，作为“同时代而独立”的背景。这些只是推测，本文不以之立论。 [^s7-4]: SAE 方法论系列与相关论文见作者的 Zenodo 页面。 [^s7-5]: 第七十回。项目底本作“频”，通行本作“凭”。

8 结论表

本节三张表都是初版，随专题论文与复核更新。

8.1 表一：主要复原结论

下表逐条列出主要复原结论，标来源类型、推理等级与对照。推理等级见 4.2 节：甲，直证；乙，推断；丙，判准择读；丁，创作裁定。同一条结论不同部分等级不同的，分别标出。

#	复原结论	回次	来源与锚点	等级	对照
1	抄没在八十回后；抄宁府与荣府长房，二房封门候问	91	第二十七回庚辰眉批“此系未见‘抄没’、‘狱神庙’诸事”	甲（抄没）；丁（范围）	程高本亦写查抄
2	元春死于宫中	91	判词“虎兕相逢大梦归”；第十八回庚辰批“《长生殿》中伏元妃之死”	甲（死）；丁（死法）	程高本作病薨
3	宝玉下狱，茜雪、小红等于狱神庙相救	91–94	第二十、二十六、二十七回诸批；第四十二回批“狱庙相逢之日”	甲	—
4	黛玉泪尽而逝，不焚稿，诗稿托雪雁带回姑苏	95	绛珠还泪；第二十二回庚辰批“将来泪尽夭亡”；判词“玉带林中挂”	甲（泪尽）；丙（不焚稿）；丁（细节）	程高本焚稿（反）
5	甄宝玉送还通灵玉	96	第十八回庚辰批“《邯郸梦》中伏甄宝玉送玉”	甲	—
6	婚日新郎出走，宝钗名分事后追定	97	第二十一回庚辰批“得宝钗之妻、麝月之婢”	丁；与此批，本文认为改兑现（6.4 节）	程高本“出闺成大礼”（异）
7	宝玉出走、乞食	97–104	第十九回庚辰批“寒冬噎酸虀，雪夜围破毡”	甲	—
8	巧姐被亲舅所卖，刘姥姥一行救出；自择随刘姥姥去，嫁板儿	99–103	判词“偶因济刘氏，巧得遇恩人”；《留余庆》“休似俺那爱银钱忘骨肉的狠舅奸兄”；第四十一回庚辰批“小儿常情遂成千里伏线”	甲（被卖、获救）；乙（嫁板儿）	程高本另嫁（异）
9	妙玉在瓜洲被卖、获赎，不屈从	99–100、105	判词“终陷淖泥中”；第四十一回靖本眉批（残文）	丙（校读）；偏离见表三	程高本遭劫（异）
10	惜春出家	99、104–105	判词“独卧青灯古佛旁”；第二十二回庚辰批“此惜春为尼之谶也”	甲	程高本亦出家
11	宝玉撒手，不剃度，为居士	105–106	第六十七回靖本批“是何必削发”；与第二十一回庚辰批“弃而为僧”相冲	丙（以参压准）	程高本中举出家（反）
12	袭人嫁蒋玉菡，与之供奉宝玉	81、97、106	判词“堪叹优伶有福”；第二十回庚辰眉批“花袭人有始有终”；第二十八回批	甲	程高本亦嫁蒋玉菡
13	宝玉与湘云相守	106–110	第三十一回回目“因麒麟伏白首双星”。同回庚辰批“后数十回若兰在射圃所佩之麒麟正此麒麟也”把麒麟后文明确连到卫若兰（复原本第八十七回兑现），构成对本条的压力；本文仍取宝湘，理由下放专题六	乙	周汝昌说同向
14	宝钗嫁贾雨村，随之获罪流放，死于雪中	103、107–108	第一回贾雨村口占“钗于奁内待时飞”（甲戌侧批“表过黛玉则紧接上宝钗”；同处另一夹批见 6.3 节）；判词“金簪雪里埋”	乙	—
15	凤姐被休，病死，柩停庄上，待归金陵	90、92、93、94、96	判词“一从二令三人木，哭向金陵事更哀”（甲戌批“拆字法”）	乙	—
16	迎春死于孙家	86、92	判词“金闺花柳质，一载赴黄粱”	甲	程高本亦死
17	探春远嫁海外，不归	85、109	判词“千里东风一梦遥”；第二十二回庚辰批“此探春远适之谶也”	甲（远嫁）；丁（海外为王妃）	程高本远嫁而归宁（异）
18	贾兰中举，李纨受诰而殁	109	判词“桃李春风结子完”；《晚韶华》“只这带珠冠，披凤袄，也抵不了无常性命”	甲	程高本贾兰中举
19	香菱出狱，父女相认，回姑苏	95、107、109	判词“致使香魂返故乡”（走向）；第一回甲戌侧批“八字正是写日后之香菱”	丙（改兑现，见表三）	程高本香菱难产而死（异）
20	秦可卿“其孽非色，乃政”	104–105、110	判词“情既相逢必主淫”（断语）；第十三回删天香楼诸批	丙（断语重读）；推论层	刘心武说（同异见专题八）
21	通灵玉返青埂峰；甄士隐说梦	108、110	第六十七回靖本批“青埂峰时缘了证情，仍不出士隐梦”	甲	—
22	第一一〇回写情榜，不列全谱	110	第十八回庚辰眉批“至回末警幻情榜方知正、副、再副及三四副芳讳”	甲（有情榜）；丙（不列全谱）	癸酉本列全谱（反）
23	全书一一〇回	—	脂批四组（3.5 节）	丙	一〇八说
24	贾环气死父亲、致死嫡母	98	—	丁	—

程高本一栏据一百二十回通行本电子文本[^s8-1]。

8.2 表二：脂批审计摘要

全表出专题一，数据随发。

• 底数。前八十回批语 4,099 条。先以关键词分出前指候选，逐条裁定；其余抽样检验，并对全量作定向补筛。审计表逐轮修订，确数以专题一为准。
• 甲层（硬前指）。二十余条。多数兑现或改兑现；其余或半兑现，或不取，或以参压准，都登记了理由。
• 乙层（前指候选）。二百余条，除一条所指之人无名无姓、无从锚定而保留外，都已裁定。
• 丙层（其余批语）。抽样三百八十二条，漏网两条；定向补筛捞出的漏网者，多落在已裁定的组里。复核中续有漏收补登，如第四十二回回前批（6.3 节），逐条交专题一。
• 明确不承账六条，各附理由[^s8-3]。其中第六条（第二十八回“宝卿得同终始”）收窄为半条。
• 约束同时满足的样例（不称“最有分量的兑现”）。第十三回批说秦可卿托梦给凤姐，嘱托“贾家后事二件”，“其事虽未行”；复原本第九十二回，凤姐病中对平儿复述这两件事，随即说“我一亩也不曾置”，又低低道“便是那时听明白了，我也未必肯依”，连“其事虽未行”一并兑现。此条的正向措辞曾经反向审计改正（9.3 节），本条是主动通过之例。又如第三回王夫人问凤姐“月钱放过了不曾”，甲戌侧批“不见后文，不见此笔之妙”，隔了八十三回，落到复原本第八十六回邢夫人查账。另有两条须注明，不列为兑现的证据：第二十一回回前批所举“薛宝钗借词含讽谏，王熙凤知命强英雄”十四字，复原本直接用作第九十回回目，属于直采；第十八回元春所点四出戏各伏一事，复原本四事俱落，但四出戏名在复原正文里几乎不出现，这是笔法样例，所伏是事不是戏名。

8.3 表三：未来指向文本的回应登记

未来指向文本的回应分四种：甲，事件兑现，回应由人；乙，改兑现；丙，偏离；丁，断语重读。正文每种只列代表例；第五回判词十五人、《红楼梦曲》十四支的全表见附录五。本表是初核版，全表核定后以新版本替换。

甲 · 事件兑现，回应由人：复原本依判词落成了遭逢，人怎样回应，册上写不下

人物	原句	复原本的实然	其中人的回应	回次
宝钗	“金簪雪里埋”	死于流放路上的雪地	自拔金簪，凿开冻雪埋下；路引上划去两个名分，自写“薛宝钗”；最后一丸冷香丸不服	108
探春	“清明涕送江边望，千里东风一梦遥”	远嫁海外，不归	远嫁非她所择；到那边后自执其政，改泊船章程，开织坊	85、109
凤姐	“一从二令三人木，哭向金陵事更哀”	被休，病死，柩停庄上，待归金陵王家	拒按休书手模；病中托孤；最后一笔账，替巧姐留下能带走的衣裳首饰	90、92、93、94、96
巧姐	“势败休云贵，家亡莫论亲。偶因济刘氏，巧得遇恩人”	被亲舅所卖，为刘姥姥一行所救	随刘姥姥去、嫁板儿，是她自己要的：“姥姥没有叫我走，是我自己要去”	99–103

乙 · 改兑现：原句的字面兑现了，所指被改写

人物或曲	原句	那一刻的走向	复原本的实然	改写之处	承担的选择	回次
香菱	“自从两地生孤木，致使香魂返故乡”	在夏金桂手里断送	金桂毒汤误中自身；香菱出狱，父女相认，回姑苏	“返故乡”兑现，“香魂”所示之死被改写；第一一〇回旧册末句作“此身未灭返故乡”	本人与他人并在：香菱不记宝蟾旧恶，当堂替她开脱；宝蟾当堂直陈	95、107
《终身误》	“都道是金玉良姻，俺只念木石前盟。空对着，山中高士晶莹雪……纵然是齐眉举案，到底意难平”	金玉成婚，心在木石	名分由长辈事后追定，宝钗成了“没有拜过堂的宝二奶奶”；婚礼未成，宝玉出走；“意难平”兑现	“都道是”读作众人所定之名，“纵然”读作让步。若把“齐眉举案”读作实事，则为偏离，两读并登	宝玉本人：婚日出走	97

丙 · 偏离：走向被人的选择改写

人物	原句	那一刻的走向	复原本的实然	承担的选择	回次
妙玉	判词“可怜金玉质，终陷淖泥中”；《世难容》“到头来，依旧是风尘肮脏违心愿”	终陷淖泥	“陷”已兑现：截轿、被卖、役使；“终”被改写：在瓜洲获赎	他人为主：刘姥姥托还成窑钟，邢岫烟以钟换人，又在江边拉住；其后本人回身，端粗碗	99–100、103、105

“终”也可读作“终于陷入”，那样全句都已兑现，此行当归甲部。本文取“到头来”一读，即把“终”读作终局，两读并登。

丁 · 断语重读

人物	原句	那一刻的断语	复原本的重读	回次
秦可卿	“情天情海幻情身，情既相逢必主淫”；《好事终》“擅风情，秉月貌，便是败家的根本”	以色败家	情榜记作“世谓”，翻为“其孽非色，乃政”	104–105、110

初核结果：全表二十九处，事件兑现二十一（其中三支曲同含定命或报应之语，那几句另作断语重读），改兑现二，偏离两条文本、一个人物事件（妙玉判词与《世难容》），断语重读四。“情榜是活的”不押在偏离的多少上（6.2 节）。全表核定后，数目有变，照实改写本段。

9 限度与可证伪处

9.1 循环与两种检验

复原文本是在判准之下写出的，不作原作证据（第 1 节）。约束指标写作时逐回执行，达标不算检验。本文能诚实主张的检验只有两种。

约束共同可实现性检验（下文简称“可满足性检验”，不是形式逻辑意义上的 SAT 判定）：各组约束能否在一部完整的三十回里同时满足。约束分两级。硬约束须全部满足：前八十回所写之事、人物、时序；未来指向文本每条都须有回应，或兑现，或登记为改兑现、偏离、重读。软证据求最大兼容：脂批、考据、异本、探佚前人；不能兼容者逐条公开。

这一检验会失败，已失败处分两组照实列出。

一组是约束相冲，即材料之间、材料与判准、或材料与复原本所取的读法不能同时满足，照实登记：不承账六条（第六条收窄为半条）；第二十一回“弃而为僧”与第六十七回“何必削发”，以参压准；第二十八回“宝卿得同终始”与本文对“钗于奁内待时飞”“白首双星”的读法未能兼容，记半兑现；第二十回批说袭人出嫁之后“宝玉、宝钗身边还有一人”，复原本只落了宝玉一半，宝钗一半只落在名分上，亦记半兑现；第十八回批语册次与第五回正文相抵，从正文；另有一处软失败，第六十七回批“末回‘撒手’”须读作末数回，因为复原本的撒手在第一〇六回。

另一组是工序之误，已查出并改正。举两例：一条秦可卿托梦之批的兑现，曾拿林家祖茔的词频当贾家祖茔的证据；第二十八回一条，曾只引《终身误》前半，漏看同曲“纵然是齐眉举案，到底意难平”。此外有残文硬断、兑现位与时序误记、来源漏记、前指漏收诸例。病根与所立工序见 9.3 节，逐条见专题一。

诊断性留出检验是拟作的：合格指标尚待核定，检验尚未做，原则见 4.4 节，实测放专题四。

9.2 判准是规范，它的每一次运用可以查

“人是目的”是本文公开采用的规范性判准，不是本文要从《红楼梦》材料里证成的经验命题。可以审查的，是这一判准在每一次择读中有没有越权，有没有与不可违之事相冲。所以本文把它的用处全部登记出来：丙类逐条列表，读者若不接受这个判准，可以逐条换一个判准重读。

本项目自己的择读，尤须登记。“情不情为病，情情为愈”这一等差，前八十回没有；第五回甲戌侧批以“体贴”释意淫，第八回甲戌眉批说宝玉对无知无识之物“彼俱有一痴情去体贴”，都是褒语，这一择读与它们的方向相左，代价就在这里。把“情情”讲作“敬人如敬己，任物各适其性”，是改义。二者都归丙类。

未来指向文本的每一处回应，都登记在表三与附录五；读者可以逐条查：兑现之处，有没有写出人的回应；改兑现与偏离之处，背后有没有人的选择。

9.3 反向审计与工序

正向审计问“批语有无落点”，拿锚点去搜，人在、事在就判兑现，失之于宽。反向审计把批语拆成可证伪的命题，再用复原本文本去证伪。本项目已对最可能被抵触的前指作了定向测试，共六组命题，见下表。这几组里已经查出正向审计的几处措辞失当，所以判为兑现的其余各条都要续测，全量续测见专题一；无具体内容可拆的，登记为“无可证伪命题”。

组	命题	所出批语	结局
一	秦可卿托梦二事“其事虽未行”	第十三回	通过（主动通过）
二	妙玉不屈从枯骨	第四十一回靖本眉批	通过（主动通过，依 4.6 节择读）
三	凤姐短命、病根	第四十三、四十四回庚辰批	通过
四	袭人出嫁后麝月在侧；“供奉玉兄宝卿得同终始”	第二十回、第二十八回	麝月一事：宝玉一半落实，宝钗一半只落在名分上，记半兑现；“宝卿”一事初记不承，今记半兑现
五	又副册三断词	第十八回庚辰批	脂批自误，从正文
六	“弃而为僧”与“何必削发”	第二十一回庚辰批、第六十七回靖本批	脂批内部冲突，以参压准

主动通过：复原本依该批写成，通过由构造所致，不作证据。

审计中的误判有同一病根：拿残文当定本，拿词频当语义，拿批语的修辞当实务规格，引曲文只读半支。由此立的工序：残文先校后裁；同名异指以语义复核（祖茔、庵、麒麟、册）；批语修辞不作实务规格解，例如第二十二回庚辰批“公府千金至缁衣乞食”，只核身份与处境是否兑现，不核“乞食”二字是否逐项坐实；引判词、曲文与前八十回原文作理由，整支、整段读完再引。工序随审计续有增补，见专题一。

9.4 推翻条件

• 宝玉悟性的第三层。现有准级批语第二十一回“弃而为僧”已与之相左，本文以参压准。若再见一条准级批语明写宝玉为僧，与第二十一回互证，6.4 节的第三层即失去根据。
• 立项一节。若新见批语明写黛玉焚稿、宝玉中举出家为原稿，3.1 节“换了一本书”须重写；这不自动推翻“人是有情的”（1.4 节）。
• 表三。若全表核定之后，改兑现与偏离都被改判为兑现，“情榜是活的”仍立于“可志其遭逢，不能封其后来”，偏离之有无不承重。若连“回应由人”一栏也被驳倒，即复原本在兑现之处并未写出人的回应，6.2 节须重写。

9.5 其余限度

AI 参与带来的偏差，已知的一条是 AI 审稿方倾向于把独特的文学选择“稳定化”，防线是三层编辑等级与人类评审（4.3 节）。层累的具体层次本文不参与（3.4 节），主论点只依赖“有层累”。本文以哲学照文学，不以哲学归并文学（7.1 节）；与康德相左之处照实登记（7.5 节）。本文与复原本都是预发布版，读者意见与新的理解，以新版本吸收。

10 结语：迟到的对话

对话由曹雪芹发起，由后来者回应。

本文的结论可以用一句话说完：一条从“人是有情的”出发、以“人是目的”为判准的读法，在公开的约束下被写到了底。这不证明原稿如此，只证明这条读法站得住，而且每一处取舍都可以查。

复原本把这条读法写成了一句自撰的批语。它在全书最末，是本项目自己写的，不是脂批：

金陵十二钗，情情合康庄。 血噙沥十载，曹公千古名。

书内，康庄是大道；书外，是康德与庄子。

[^s8-1]: 程高本诸条（元春病薨、巧姐另嫁、妙玉遭劫、探春归宁、香菱难产而死等）据网络流传的一百二十回通行本电子文本，未与程甲、程乙本影印本对校。 [^s8-3]: 不承账六条：一，情榜不列全谱；二，狱神庙等迷失稿的原稿形态；三，删去的“遗簪”“更衣”诸文；四，第二十二回批“使此人不远去，将来事败，诸子孙不致流散也”的反事实假设；五，第三十五回蒙本回末批的因果说教；六，第二十八回“宝卿得同终始”。 [^s8-4]: 第五回“寿夭多因毁谤生”，项目底本作“毁谤”；写作时，复原本第一一〇回梦中旧册与情榜作“诽谤”，袭人一页作“堪羡优伶有福”，项目底本作“堪叹优伶有福”；该回写这两页“一字未移”，所录却与项目底本不合，已交复原本修订。本文引判词一律据项目底本；附录五登记的是重读这一取舍，不系于情榜字句。

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附录一　三十回回目

以写作时为准；后轮修订或有改动。

回	回目
八十一	痴公子讨情遣旧婢　花袭人含泪别芳群
八十二	贾宝玉佯捧万章篇　林黛玉梦承椿庭笔
八十三	史太君含笑嘱心肝　静琥珀一语传遗命
八十四	昧心人偏办昧心事　鸳鸯女终全鸳鸯誓
八十五	敏探春扬帆赴南溟　慧惜春剪发拒西宁
八十六	懦迎春命断中山狼　执邢氏查账翻旧恶
八十七	凤辣子失势尝世冷　痴公子有问立菱洲
八十八	明翻旧案夫妻反目　暗结青丝儿女同心
八十九	联新韵湘黛续寒塘　警天伦元春诉幽梦
九十	薛宝钗借词含讽谏　王熙凤知命强英雄
九十一	锦衣军查抄宁荣府　忠顺王指名锁玉郎
九十二	哀绣桔风尘报噩信　病凤姐榻前托孤雏
九十三	烈茜雪带冤慰旧主　慈姨妈含苦劝病颦
九十四	众义士计赚狱神庙　痴公子冒死奔潇湘
九十五	绛珠仙泪尽完夙债　信香菱德善免命灾
九十六	贾宝玉一恸昏故馆　甄宝玉双手送通灵
九十七	薛宝钗冲喜失新郎　赵姨娘多行受沉沦
九十八	贾存周含恨别尘世　孤宝玉衔玉别京华
九十九	决堂姑出家辞故府　孤侄女信舅堕奸谋
一百	村姥姥津渡施巧计　成窑钟瓜洲赎玉人
一百一	刘姥姥三进荣国府　贾巧姐二哭大观园
一百二	冷二郎仗剑救痴人　空王座说法度迷士
一百三	薛文起锁系待勘狱　贾雨村假贺谋良姻
一百四	仁村姑一饭护羁客　俏春燕半瓢活断枝
一百五	慧觉师一言点痴弟　廉虚士五更识铁槛
一百六	贾宝玉参无执无著　花袭人信有始有终
一百七	呆香菱开口认旧事　薛宝钗就奁待时飞
一百八	贾雨村获罪辩天道　甄士隐说梦了红楼
一百九	三和班新排桃花扇　五知交再续女儿令
一百十	情不情居士梦情榜　通未通灵玉返青峰

附录二　致谢与 AI 使用说明

感谢 Zesi Chen、Zhen Zhang 在项目中给予的大量分析与帮助。

本项目使用了多家 AI 辅助，包括 Claude（Anthropic）、ChatGPT（OpenAI）、Gemini（Google）、DeepSeek、GLM（智谱）、Meta AI、Grok（xAI），用于复原正文的起草与修订、审读、机测脚本，以及本文的大纲整理与引文核验。所有取舍由作者裁定，文责由作者自负。

附录三　复原本的版本

复原本第八十一至一一〇回仍在逐轮修订，本文不以任何一轮的具体稿件为依据。所引复原正文是写作时的字句，只用来展示一条读法怎样落成文本；表一、表三与附录五登记的，是情节层的取舍。后轮修订若改动这些取舍，本文随出新版，更新相应条目；只改字句的，本文不随改。本篇所引复原文字，写作时所据稿件另有留档（回次、稿件标识、校验值），可应请求提供。诊断性留出检验若做，所测的版本随检验结果报于专题四。

附录四　术语表

术语	本文所指
诠释性复原	在公开约束下构造一个可受检验的结局，每一笔标明所站之层；不声称恢复逐字原稿
复原本	本项目所写第八十一至一一〇回；引作“复原本第×回”
封稿	复原本某回某一轮的定稿；复原本逐轮修订，本文不系于任何一轮（附录三）
项目底本	本项目所用的前八十回汇校电子底本，据江山阁隐制作的《红楼梦脂批本完美版》PDF 整理，批语依所标本名著录（卷首说明三注）
判准	“人是目的”；复原者公开带入的规范性判准，只在证据允许的读法之间择读
不可违	前八十回所写之事（叙事正文、回目）；可以重读，不可违背
未来指向文本	判词、曲文、谶语；复原须逐条回应
应然之册	本文对未来指向文本的读法：记那一刻已成的性情、处境与关系所指向的走向
走向、断语	未来指向文本的两类：走向可由人的选择偏离；断语可以重读
事件兑现，回应由人	表三甲部：复原本依判词落成了遭逢（兑现是生成约束被满足，不作独立证据）；人在遭逢之中怎样回应，册上写不下
改兑现（表三）	未来指向文本字面兑现而所指被改写，如香菱“返故乡”兑现、“香魂”所示之死被改写
偏离	实然不照走向走；须由正文中可追踪的因果链承担，人的选择为承重因素
材料	脂批、考据、癸酉本、程高本；调整各读法的证据分量
甲、乙、丙、丁	推理等级：直证、推断、判准择读、创作裁定
准级、参级	脂批本名的权重：甲戌、庚辰为准；蒙府、戚序、靖藏为参
以参压准	依判准从参级批语，不从与之相冲的准级批语；逐处登记
已兑现、改兑现、半兑现、不取	脂批审计的裁定档
软证据未能兼容	脂批等软证据与复原本所取读法不能同时满足，照实登记，归可满足性检验的约束相冲
不承账	审计中明确不承的批语，各附理由
正向审计、反向审计	正向：批语有无落点。反向：把批语拆成可证伪的命题，以复原本去证伪
主动通过	复原本依该批写成，检验通过由构造所致；照实登记，不作证据（9.3 节）
可满足性检验	约束共同可实现性检验的简称，不是形式逻辑意义上的 SAT 判定：硬约束全满足、软证据求最大兼容，看能否在一部完整的三十回里同时成立
诊断性留出检验	拟作。只取经修订史核查、确未参与写作期定向修订的指标，实测前单独预注册，择复原本一个公开发布的版本一次性对照实测，所测版本随结果报于专题四，只报告远近
承重、非承重	倒则全文倒；倒则只伤局部（1.4 节）
两栏法	对照分“前八十回与脂批之锚”与“复原本之落笔”两栏；关于曹雪芹的句子只用前一栏
庚辰化	按庚辰本语料习惯校订复原正文的叙述语言；直接引语与已锁定的诗文不动
机测	在同一语料上以脚本逐字检测，不采信各家自评
情情、情不情	脂批所记情榜两评；本文把“情情”改义读作敬人如敬己、任物各适其性（丙类）
大知批	复原本书末的项目自撰批语，不是脂批

附录五　未来指向文本回应全表（第五回）

范围：第五回金陵十二钗正册、副册、又副册判词十五人，《红楼梦曲》引子、十二支、收尾共十四支，合二十九处。其余谶语（灯谜、柳絮词、花签、酒令等）登记于专题五。判词、曲文据项目底本，与通行本异文随注[^a5-1]。分类见第 8 节表三。本表是初核版。

甲 · 事件兑现，回应由人

《引子》为总领之曲，只记事件兑现，不登单人回应。

出处	原句（摘）	复原本的实然	其中人的回应	回次
正册 · 黛玉	“玉带林中挂”	泪尽而逝；父亲的青玉带挂在潇湘馆的竹上	临终自己叫紫鹃挂上，又写一个缺笔的“敏”字压在带下，扶窗拜了一拜；诗稿托雪雁带回姑苏，一字不焚	95
正册 · 宝钗	“可叹停机德……金簪雪里埋”	死于流放路上的雪地	自拔金簪，凿开冻雪埋下；路引上划去两个名分，自写“薛宝钗”；最后一丸冷香丸不服	108
正册 · 元春	“三春争及初春景，虎兕相逢大梦归”	死于宫中	写下“不待屠刀下，吾自决去留”，是夜悄然而逝（正文不明写死法，由此句透出；与康德的分歧见 7.5 节）	91
正册 · 探春	“清明涕送江边望，千里东风一梦遥”	远嫁海外，不归	远嫁非她所择；到那边后自执其政，改泊船章程，开织坊	85、109
正册 · 湘云	“展眼吊斜晖，湘江水逝楚云飞”	卫若兰死，湘云寡居	独自生下遗腹双生子；此后与宝玉相守	106–110
正册 · 迎春	“子系中山狼，得志便猖狂。金闺花柳质，一载赴黄粱”	死于孙家	情榜：“以己意认己之死”（与康德的分歧见 7.5 节）	86、92
正册 · 惜春	“可怜绣户侯门女，独卧青灯古佛旁”	出家，法号慧觉	自己要走：“熬不住的，是这里头”	99、104–105
正册 · 凤姐	“一从二令三人木，哭向金陵事更哀”	被休，病死，柩停庄上，待归金陵王家	拒按休书手模；病中托孤；最后一笔账，替巧姐留下能带走的衣裳首饰	90、92、93、94、96
正册 · 巧姐	“势败休云贵，家亡莫论亲。偶因济刘氏，巧得遇恩人”	被亲舅所卖，为刘姥姥一行所救	随刘姥姥去、嫁板儿，是她自己要的：“姥姥没有叫我走，是我自己要去”	99–103
正册 · 李纨	“桃李春风结子完，到头谁似一盆兰”	贾兰中举，李纨受诰，旋即病逝	临终不替李纹、李绮作主，“只问他们自己肯不肯”	109
又副册 · 袭人	“枉自温柔和顺，空云似桂如兰。堪叹优伶有福，谁知公子无缘”	嫁蒋玉菡	情榜：“去就得失，终是己择，非人所驱”	81、106
《引子》	“因此上，演出这怀金悼玉的《红楼梦》”	钗黛俱殁	总领之曲，不登单人回应	95、108
《枉凝眉》	“若说有奇缘，如何心事终须化……怎经得秋流到冬尽，春流到夏”	二人终未成婚；黛玉泪尽	凸碧堂私下结发；临终不焚稿	88、95
《恨无常》	“喜荣华正好，恨无常又到……故向爹娘梦里相寻告”	死于宫中；梦告在两回：第八十九回生前入父梦，“父亲，路远些好”；第九十二回死后入宝玉梦，“我如今什么也护不住你们了”。时点与对象有别，所指兑现；若要求身后告爹娘，照附录四定义当记改兑现，两读并登	见元春判词行	89、91、92
《分骨肉》	“一帆风雨路三千……奴去也，莫牵连”	远嫁	见探春判词行。曲中“自古穷通皆有定，离合岂无缘”属定命之语，另作断语重读：复原本不作定命解释（两属）	85
《乐中悲》	“终久是云散高唐，水涸湘江”	卫若兰死	见湘云判词行。曲中“这是尘寰中消长数应当，何必枉悲伤”属定命之语，另作断语重读（两属）	106
《喜冤家》	“中山狼，无情兽……叹芳魂艳魄，一载荡悠悠”	死于孙家	见迎春判词行	86
《虚花悟》	“将那三春看破，桃红柳绿待如何”	出家	见惜春判词行	99
《聪明累》	“机关算尽太聪明，反算了卿卿性命”	被休病死，家亡人散	情榜：“末后却有一件不曾拿来算的，是巧姐”	90、92、93、94、96
《留余庆》	“留余庆，留余庆，忽遇恩人……休似俺那爱银钱忘骨肉的狠舅奸兄”	被亲舅所卖，为刘姥姥一行所救	见巧姐判词行。曲中“幸娘亲，幸娘亲，积得阴功”“正是乘除加减，上有苍穹”属报应之语，另作断语重读：复原本写刘姥姥之来是偶遇，叙述者不作阴功之报（两属）	99–103
《晚韶华》	“只这带珠冠，披凤袄，也抵不了无常性命”	受诰而殁	见李纨判词行	109

乙 · 改兑现

出处	原句	改写之处	承担的选择	回次
副册 · 香菱	“自从两地生孤木，致使香魂返故乡”	“返故乡”兑现，“香魂”所示之死被改写；第一一〇回旧册末句作“此身未灭返故乡”	本人与他人并在：香菱不记宝蟾旧恶，当堂替她开脱；宝蟾当堂直陈	95、107
《终身误》	“都道是金玉良姻，俺只念木石前盟。空对着，山中高士晶莹雪；终不忘，世外仙姝寂寞林……纵然是齐眉举案，到底意难平”	名分由长辈事后追定，婚礼未成；“都道是”读作众人所定之名，“纵然”读作让步；“意难平”兑现。若把“齐眉举案”读作实事，则为偏离，两读并登	宝玉本人：婚日出走	97

丙 · 偏离

出处	原句	复原本的实然	承担的选择	回次
正册 · 妙玉	“欲洁何曾洁，云空未必空。可怜金玉质，终陷淖泥中”	“陷”已兑现：截轿、被卖、役使；“终”被改写：在瓜洲获赎	他人为主：刘姥姥托还成窑钟，邢岫烟以钟换人，又在江边拉住；其后本人回身，端粗碗	99–100、103、105
《世难容》	“到头来，依旧是风尘肮脏违心愿。好一似，无瑕白玉遭泥陷”	同上一行。“到头来”是本文把判词之“终”读作终局的旁证；若“终”读作“终于陷入”，两行都归甲部	同上	同上

丁 · 断语重读

出处	原句	那一刻的断语	复原本的重读	回次
正册 · 秦可卿	“情天情海幻情身，情既相逢必主淫。漫言不肖皆荣出，造衅开端实在宁”	以色败家	情榜记作“世谓”，翻为“其孽非色，乃政”；末句所指宁府之败兑现	104–105、110
《好事终》	“擅风情，秉月貌，便是败家的根本……宿孽总因情”	以色败家，孽因于情	同上一行	110
又副册 · 晴雯	“寿夭多因毁谤生”	夭于毁谤	情榜：“册言夭于诽谤，实则宁折不曲，诽谤又焉能杀之”	110[^s8-4]
《飞鸟各投林》	“无情的，分明报应……冤冤相报实非轻，分离聚合皆前定……好一似食尽鸟投林，落了片白茫茫大地真干净”	报应与前定	家散之事兑现；叙述者不作报应解释，人的去留写成人自己的选择	全书

[^a5-1]: 项目底本《枉凝眉》作“终须化”，通行本作“终虚化”；《虚花悟》“觅那情淡天和”，通行本作“清淡天和”；《分骨肉》曲名底本误作“鄯骨肉”。晴雯判词“毁谤”与复原本第一一〇回“诽谤”之异，见本表晴雯一行之注。

参考文献

原典与版本

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研究文献

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