In Chapter 23, under the Imperial Consort's order, all the girls and Pao-yu move into Grand View Garden in order to inspire and stir their poetic imaginations and creativity with beautiful scenery and attractive flowers. Each of them will be assigned a "home": Tai-yu will live in Bamboo Lodge and Pao-yu will stay in Happy Red Court, next to Tai-yu's lodgings.
To satisfy Pao-yu's adolescent restlessness, Ming-yen brings him a stack of novels about concubines and empresses, as well as romantic librettos. He soon discovers his favorite: The Western Chamber. This libretto, however, is forbidden by the Ching government, which fears that the work's anti-feudal ideas will "poison" people's minds. Nevertheless, Pao-yu considers it to be a real masterpiece and shares it with Taiyu. Tai-yu is also enthralled by it—so much so that she can recite some lines immediately after she finishes reading it. Pao-yu also quotes some lines from the novel to teasingly praise Tai-yu's beauty, lines such as, "And yours is the beauty which caused cities and kingdoms to fall."
In this scene, we can see that Tai-yu and Pao-yu have a common ground of mutual understanding about love. Both of them are longing for the freedom to marry whomever they choose, and they are clearly against all old, outmoded feudal fetters concerning matrimonial matters.
On her way back home, Tai-yu is inspired again by some of the operatic lines: "For you are as fair as a flower, and youth is slipping away like flowing water." One line, in particular, from The Western Chamber makes tears run down her cheeks: "Flowers fall, the water flows red, grief is infinite."
Chapter 24 finds Chia Yun, the son of Fifth Sister-in-Law of the back lane, coming to visit Chia Lien, his Second Uncle, about the possibility of getting a job at the Jung Mansion. However, since Hsi-feng (Phoenix) does not see eye to eye with Chia Lien on the assignment of a job to Chia Yun, Chia Lien has to ask Chia Yun to wait for another vacancy.
Chia Yun then goes to see his uncle Pu Shih-jen and asks for four ounces of Borneo camphor and musk on credit, but his uncle turns him down. Then he happens to meet a neighbor, Ni Erh, "the Drunkard Diamond," a moneylender who promises to lend Chia Yun the money without any interest—and not even an I.O.U. After receiving the newly borrowed money, Chia Yun buys some camphor and musk and goes to visit Hsi-feng .
Being a man full of diplomacy and wit, he knows how to flatter Hsi-feng : He presents the camphor and musk to her. Hsi-feng is overjoyed at this unexpected gift, and, accordingly, the next day, Chia Yun gets a job—as a tree planter in Grand View Garden. Here, we see that Chia Lien and Hsi-feng , although husband and wife, battle for the right to hire employees, and we also see that each of them likes to be bribed in order to fill their own private purses. The author lays bare their greediness, as well as other conflicts among married members of the ruling class.
Later, we are introduced to a good-looking maid, Hsiao-hung, who wants to climb up the social ladder; her family has served the Chia family for generations, and her father is now in charge of various farms and properties. She makes good use of the absence of the other maids to serve tea to Pao-yu herself. By accident, she happens to meet Chia Yun. Meanwhile, her beauty leaves a deep impression on Pao-yu and makes the other maids extremely jealous. The chapter ends with Hsiao-hung dreaming that Chia Yun is calling to her, telling her that he has found her lost handkerchief.
Chapter 25 first focuses on the jealous and hateful Chia Huan, Pao-yu's half-brother by the concubine Lady Chao. Hoping to blind Pao-yu, Chia Huan deliberately knocks over a candlestick, splashing some hot wax on Pao-yu's face. Pao-yu, however, is not vindictive; he takes the blame for the burn, saying that he should not have been so careless. This incident shows that Pao-yu is not preoccupied with the feudal principle of distinguishing between lineal descendants and sons and daughters by concubines; moreover, he is clearly not bent on inheriting the Chia family properties. Once again, this incident shows us that Pao-yu is liberated from old-fashioned, patriarchal, feudal notions.
In contrast, Chia Huan and his concubine mother, Lady Chao, want very much to inherit the Chia family properties. Being a son of a concubine, Chia Huan knows that his future is bleak unless he kills or maims Pao-yu, and he is willing to do so in order to realize his ambitions. Similarly, his mother, Lady Chao, is also greedy and ambitious, so she enlists the aid of the priestess Ma (Pao-yu's Buddhist godmother) and bribes the old woman to use sorcery to invoke evil spirits that will get possession of both Pao-yu and Hsifeng, kill them, and ensure Lady Chao and Chia Huan's rights as legal inheritors.
Ma's sorcery and incantations prove to be effective. Suddenly Pao-yu and Hsi-feng become violently insane, lose consciousness, and seem to be near death. At this critical moment, a scabby-headed bonze (Buddhist priest) and a lame Taoist arrive and restore the magic power of Pao-yu's Jade of Spiritual Understanding, rescuing Pao-yu and Hsi-feng from death in the nick of time.
In brief, this chapter describes the struggle between a lineal descendant son and the son of a concubine over the right of inheritance. The conflict is very sharp and intensely realistic, despite the fact that the entire sorcery episode is deeply imbued with a sense of unreality and superstition.
Thirty-three days pass, and finally Pao-yu recovers his strength, and the burns on his face heal. Most of the servants and maids are rewarded according to their rank, and we see that this arrangement leaves some minor servants with no reward. The conversation between Chiu-wen and Hsiao-hung clearly reveals the differences in rank among the servants.
Pao-yu takes an early morning stroll to Tai-yu's Bamboo Lodge and happens to overhear her lazily quoting from The Western Chamber: "Day after day a drowsy dream of love." Tai-yu's love for Pao-yu has found expression in this line, and she resents his making fun of her romantic feelings by quoting lines about "bridal curtains" and "preparing the marriage bed." Already she has been teased enough by the other girls because of her fondness for Pao-yu.
Later, hearing that Pao-yu did not come home after being sent for by his father, Tai-yu goes to Happy Red Court. She is refused admittance and, ready to leave, she hears Pao-yu and Pao-chai laughing together inside. This is too much. Tears flood down Tai-yu's cheeks.
Here, we can see that the love between Pao-yu and Tai-yu is developing further. They use quoted lines to express their love for one another, revealing to us that they are both rebels against the feudal system of marriage. However, as a son and a daughter of aristocrats, their love relationship is full of unhealthy elements, especially in the case of Tai-yu. She loves Pao-yu very much, and yet she feels a compulsive need to test him again and again. When Pao-yu reveals his heart to her, she feels sad and irritated; when her love for Pao-yu meets with difficulties, she feels even more frustrated and begins weeping. All of this romantic anguish reflects the characteristics of the time, as well as Tai-yu's overly sentimental temperament.
