Yuan-chun (Cardinal Spring), the eldest daughter of Chia Cheng, is selected as "Chief Secretary of the Phoenix Palace with the title of Worthy and Virtuous Consort," and there is more good news: in the future, ladies of the court will be allowed to go home at regular intervals so that they won't get homesick and unhappy. Preparing for Yuan-chun's reunion, all of the Chia family members are thrilled with the news and busy designing a separate court to be built especially for Yuan-chun's visits home.
Meanwhile, the delicate young Chin Chung, Pao-yu's best friend, dies, admonishing Pao-yu to make a name for himself through his own efforts — instead of being content to be the heir of a "noble family." When the work on the new Grand View Garden is completed, Chia Cheng takes two cultured friends for a tour so that some tentative inscriptions for different locations in the Garden can be suggested for Yuan-chun's final approval. By chance, Pao-yu is in the Garden, still grieving over Chin Chung's death, so his father asks him to join them; he wants to test his son's talent. Happily, he discovers that Pao-yu's impromptu couplets are free from vulgar ostentation and full of originality; his son's poetry vividly describes the characteristics of each stop much better than the hackneyed clichés of the cultured elders. Chia Cheng, however, a proponent of feudal tradition and culture, refuses publicly to recognize his young son's superlative poetic genius. He belittles Pao-yu's creativity and originality.
Here is another example of the "generation gap" theme in this novel. The differing attitudes of Chia Cheng and his son, Pao-yu, represent two opposing views about the ideals of life and aesthetics. Pao-yu's rebellion against feudal vulgarity also exposes the poverty of the feudal scholars' imaginations.
In Chapter 17, then, the author presents superb penetrations and descriptions of the characters, along with picturesque descriptions of the Garden's scenery. The combination of psychological character portrayals, juxtaposed against the detailed descriptions of natural beauty makes it easy for us to see why Tsao Hsuehchin stands out among his literary contemporaries as one of China's best writers.
On the fifteenth day of the first month of the New Year, Yuan-chun, now the Imperial Consort, is allowed to visit her parents for the Feast of Lanterns. This special occasion is a cause of great celebration and anxiety for the entire Chia household. Everything must be arranged according to Imperial etiquette: Everybody — whether from a high station or a low station — must be dressed in their Imperial best; the new pleasure garden must be decorated with hangings and screens which are brilliantly embroidered with dancing dragons and flying phoenixes. An excited, if solemn, atmosphere pervades the whole house and the garden itself.
