Re-Creating Tradition in the Media Age: Adaptations of Dream of the Red Chamber
Abstract
Dream of the Red Chamber, being one of the Four Great Classical Novels of China, holds a pivotal place within Chinese cultural history. That the text remains unfinished has bred a perennial tradition of continuations and adaptations, transforming it into a living field of cultural negotiation. Focusing on the ways the novel comes into being in the media age and such reconfigurations reconstruct cultural values, the present study employs textual analysis and comparative case studies for examination. The research considers Gao E's eighteenth-century continuation, two prominent television adaptations, and recent online rewriters within participatory digital media. The results show that where older adaptations stressed text fidelity and reduplication of Confucian moral closure, more recent versions evidence a movement toward commodification, aesthetically experimental form, and individuality and affect freedom as core values. User-generated rewritings from the twenty-first century subsequently signal audience intervention, reconfiguring receipt into active cultural production. The study concludes that Dream of the Red Chamber survives not as an immovable text but as an evolving cultural topography, where custom is endlessly reinterpreted and redefined according to shifting historical and media contexts.
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