The Stone Story of Red Chamber

The Stone Story of Red Chamber
A case study of business excellence and corporate culture

The Dream of Red Chamber is one of the 4 top Chinese novels and few have used it for business analysis. Similarly, Yi Jing as the first book in Chinese history is seldom used for management and organization change. Why?

Red Chamber is very different from the other 3 top Chinese novels (Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and The Journey to the West). Three Kingdoms is very popular for strategy and war study. Water Margin and The Journey to the West too are used for business and management case studies although at a lesser extent. Red Camber is different from the others in many ways: family and female centric, hidden meaning, political implication, cultural reflection of the time, different version etc. No wonder Mao Zedong valued and placed Red Chamber higher than the other 3 novels.

What can a love story teach us about business management? Also few will associate Red Chamber as a case study for business excellence and corporate culture. Perhaps like what Geoffrey James (see below) has described we are moving away from traditional business model (Three Kingdoms and Water Margin) to Silicon Valley business model (an inclusive type of family and community). This is how the soft power of Red Chamber will play a role.

Famously known as a book for romantic story and basically a love story with concentration of female characters (in surface), in what way can this book be a case study for Chinese wisdom in business? This will be discussed in the following sections.

Here comes a little background about the Red Chamber. It does not have a complete version and the commonly read version in fact is far from the original work of Cao Xue Qin.

This case study will not discuss the literature contributions, the content of the book, the beauty of the story, and the female characters. However, it will focus on the development of the Red Chamber as a publication, the writing experience, the up and down of the publication, and how it becomes popular and famous and now a master piece of Chinese literature. The study of Red Chamber will continue and the book is well read and commented by many famous writers, historians, and even politicians.

1. Imperfection is great

The Dream of Red Chamber is not complete. And its imperfection makes the book even greater. That leaves many rooms for study, discussions, improvements and corrections.

Many names: There are many names for Red Chamber. It is originally named Story of A Stone. Red Chamber’s story is about a stone in the heaven travelling to the earth and when it returns, its experience is recorded on back of the stone. Due to many female characters, the book is also called Twelve Beauties of Jinling. In total, there are 108 beauties as a comparison to 108 heroes in Water Margin. And because of some lustful descriptions, it is also being called “Masterpiece of wind and moon”. Wind and Moon have a double meaning of sex and love in Chinese. For example, the place of wind and moon is referring to bar, night clubs, etc. This is why Red Chamber also creates moral controversy and sometimes bans from reading.

Many versions: The now popular version has 120 chapters; however, it is widely acknowledged that Cao Xue Qin only wrote the first 80 chapters. Even the now remaining 80 chapters are not complete with many verifications and changes. Few chapters are even missing. The last 40 chapters were completed by another writer. So the widely popular book that we are reading is not the original masterpiece, and how come it can still be so popular? Some have argued that the complete version has only 108 chapters. Not only the number of chapters is an issue, the contents are also a great debate. There are many changes due to different copying, printing, editing, and re-writing, no one single known version can be considered as the original work of Cao Xue Qin.

Many people involved: Since its publication more than 200 years go, many people have read comments, researches, and study on various aspects of Red Chamber. Some look at it from the literature view points. Some link it to political development in Qing dynasty. Some uses it to study customs, food, culture and social development. Almost all famous people involved in Chinese literature of the 20th century and today have given their comments, opinions and researches on Red Chamber. Not to mention it has made into movies, plays, drama, TV series, and many other performing arts.

Many comments and hard work: The success of Red Chamber can be considered as an effective team work. Cao got many feedbacks and comments from others to perfect his writing. Every piece and every word used is careful studied and analysed. On top of that, he has to avoid the possible conflict with the authority. It takes 10 years, after 5 drafts, to complete the Red Chamber. At the same time, Cao was poor and under very difficult conditions. It must be a great determination to complete the work under hardship.

A reflection of Chinese characteristics: Red Chamber as a family unit is the refection of the society and nation of early Qing dynasty. No other Chinese writings have given a complete picture of the time as Red Chamber. Red Chamber provides the first hand knowledge of the living, customs, family life/relationship, official and government politics and life of lower class people. Their behaviours and how they mange life and face the political outcome are also well covered in the book. From here, you will see different faces of Chinese, how they react under crisis, how they become poor and how they get promoted, how they do bad things, and how they mange a family. All these show us the positive and negative aspects of Chinese characteristics.

2. Business excellence

Leadership:

Senior Executive Leadership
Organisation Culture
Responsibility to Community & Environment

Senior Executive Leadership
Red Chamber may be an accidental success, or at least never expected to be so successful. Cao wanted to make it a great book as he had spent 10 years writing it. But what he left behind is an incomplete publication. He may end up finishing the final draft but the final draft was never published in full. Nevertheless, even an incomplete version has made Cao a great contributor to Chinese literature.
As what he had said it was made up of blood and tears. He had demonstrated his leadership with assistances of others to envisage and vision the whole project.
What he may not anticipate is Red Chamber could be so successful and so popular. In such a way, he has shown the soft power of a leadership.

Organisation Culture
He had set his vision, mission and value very clear - to make Red Chamber a great book, to take a long time to write even under financial hardship, to make impact in Chinese culture and literature.
He was the master mind of the Red Chamber project and he was assisted by his group of family members and friends. It was a team project as relatives and friends had made comments, feedbacks and struggle together with him. He was not alone and his team was supporting him in one way or another, some even providing financial assistance.

Responsibility to Community & Environment
Qing dynasty was very sensitive about writings and wrong phases or words will bring troubles to the writers. Judging from the contents, the story involves a family from rich to poor and the cause and background were the political development of the time.
When Cao engaged in the Red Chamber writing project, he had made it clear that the story background, times, places, and male/female leads are all artificial. It looked true and untrue. This was to prevent conflict with the authority. Perhaps, it was because of this type of formats that make Red Chamber even more interesting as readers have to use his/her own judgements to find out the true/false and fact/smoke of the story.
Another interesting theme is Red Chamber is telling the story of women. Cao wanted to highlight them in the family. He valued them, gave equal right to them and stressed their importance in daily life.
In terms of writing responsibility, Cao was committed to his best and wanted to present the best to readers. One can see the life style and habit of the rich and famous during the early Qing dynasty.
There were many restrictions in writing such a book as the contents might offend the ruler. However, Cao had cleverly used his talented writing skills to complete the job.

Planning:

Strategy Development & Deployment

Strategy Development & Deployment
To write a great masterpiece, Cao knew he needed to have a long term plan and inputs from others. He had to evaluate the suitability of the structure, made corrections, added new comments and changed drafts after drafts. However, his core value and objective had not changed –to make Red Chamber a great book.
The story line and development is an excellent work. It takes 10 years for Cao to complete the writings. Cao’s strategy is very clear and wants to make it a record that will have impact in history and literature.
Due to careful planning, Red Chamber was never banned or got into troubles with the authority. If the book was banned, it will be a great loss to Chinese literature.
In the very first beginning, Cao had realized the possible consequence if the book angered the authority. Even he wanted to implicate some political events, he had to adopt the hidden tactics or use other past historical events to cover up. In fact, this book was widely circulated among officials and people were willing to spend high price to get it. This proved that even the government had agreed with its publication.
He had not benchmarked his book with others but believed in his own performance and improvement through blood and tears.

Information:

Management of information
Comparison & Benchmarking

Management of information
Red Chamber is a reflection of Chinese characteristics. A Chinese has a combination of 3 characteristics: Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. The book is a rich collection of these characteristics. In order to have Chinese characteristics in the book, Cao needed to have a rich understanding of the Chinese history and literature. He himself must acquire all these knowledge before writing.
In the process of writing, he will have to get help from other team members as well as research for more information to enhance his writing.

Comparison & Benchmarking
Cao had never clearly indicated that what he would like Red Chamber to be compared with others? However, he had clearly stated that he wanted to make a difference. Differences from the male centric of Chinese novels (like Water Margin, Three kingdoms), moving away from the historical events (like Water Margin, Three kingdoms),

People:

HR Planning
Employee involvement & Commitment
Employee Education, Training & Development
Employee Health & Satisfaction
Employee Performance & Recognition

HR Planning
To make an impactful book, Cao understands he needs inputs from others (relatives and friends). He had selected a group of friends and relatives who could contribute to the making of Red Chamber. He shared his drafts with them and asked for their comments to improve the writing.

Employee involvement & Commitment
Equally impressive was his group of supporters. His supporters were very engaged in their work and gave due feedbacks, for example, the arguments on the words used, the political sensitive issues, the story lines and developments, the hints etc.

Employee Education, Training & Development
Cao had very good foundation on the Chinese history and literature. This enabled him to use a lot of historical events, poems, arts, writings etc of other people.

Employee Health & Satisfaction
His team members were satisfied and willing to provide feedbacks to him. However, due to his financial condition, Cao had never maintained a good health. However, he too was satisfied with his achievement.

Employee Performance & Recognition
Inputs, feedback and comments from his team were valued and recognized. Cao had very good commentators on his book. They gave valuable inputs to him so that he could avoid conflicts and prevented sensitive subjects. Cao also appreciated their assistance. In the drafts or even published Red Chamber, readers can easily find the different comments given by different supporters. Few books were published with comments.


Process:

Innovation Process
Process Management & Improvement
Supplier & Partnering Process

Innovation Process
The process of writing Red Chamber is a very innovative one. Red Chamber may be the only Chinese book that you can find the comments, notes and other feedbacks from readers and commentators. Cao listened to the comments and input them into his drafts.

Process Management & Improvement
This is why only after at least 5 drafts/corrections; the final version of Red Chamber was out. Cao welcomed inputs and feedbacks so that he could improve his writings.
The process also involved suitable selection of words, chapters, story developments, arrangements of female characteristics (position of 108 of them).

Supplier & Partnering Process
This was a weak point. The original scripts went to too many hands for comments and advices. There was no proper control. Some readers did not return the drafts and some even lost them. Some liked it so much and refused to return.
The printing of Red Chamber is also not very smooth. The book as a draft form was “hand” copy and circulated around. It becomes more popular and achieved huge success after the addition of the last 40 chapters (after Cao dead) and entered commercialised printing and copying.


Customers:

Customer Results
Financial & Market Results
People Results
Operational Results

Customer Results
Customer Requirements
There is a demand for high quality publication. Readers are interested to know the romantic story, the hidden political meanings, the culture and literature of the Qing dynasty, etc. Red Chamber is able to fulfil these demands.

Customer Relationship
Although Cao has no direct relationship with readers, especially, readers after his death, Red Chamber is well received by many people, from young to old, from educated to uneducated, from rich to poor.
The relationship is established naturally and the readership base becomes bigger and bigger. There are people spending their whole life studying, analysing and researching the Red Chamber.

Customer Satisfaction
Red Chamber attracts many high quality readers. When it was first published, it was an immediate success. Many readers paid high price to get a copy. A lot of scholars, powerful families, wanted to collect the Red Chamber. It became a business to get people to copy the Red Chamber and sold it for a profit. The discussion of Red Chamber among officials after office hours was a hot topic and educated people who did not know about Red Chamber found no topic for discussion.
Even today, there is no lack of readers and they continue to spend time to re-read and research on Red Chamber.

Financial & Market Results
There were no financial results for Cao as we do not pay copy right to him. In fact, Cao was financially very poor. Most likely, he died in hardship.
However, Red Chamber was well known not only in China but all over the world as a masterpiece of Chinese literature and culture. Its market expansion has reached beyond China. Red Chambers was made into movies, TV series, drama, opera, books, etc. It is also a representative of Chinese literature.

People Results
Scholars are still studying Red Chamber from different aspects. “Hong xue” or the study of Red Chamber is an important branch of Chinese literature. Seminars, research papers, conferences, are held regularly. Red Chamber has become part of Chinese culture as a performing art, literature, research and study.

Operational Results
The innovation process of Red Chamber may not be easy to match for future writers. It is also hard to get so many qualified people to contribute to a book. The qualification and knowledge of Chinese customs, literature and history that Cao possessed is even hard to match.
However, it shows how a great a masterpiece is done and with better and improved technology, the drafting shortfalls can be verified.




3 Corporate Cultures

1 Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
The publication of Red Chamber, due to its hidden political sensitivities, could lead Cao into great troubles. This was especially true in the early Qing dynasty as there were many resistances from Han people. There were many tragedies that buried the whole family. Some people got into troubles because of a sensitive and double meaning word. Some suffered because of other people ill intention.
Cao had to use many hidden tactics and reflection writings. He had to carefully select his words not only for the beauty of literature but also for political considerations. There were some chapters that he had to make changes or even sacrifice the writings.
He is in the battle flied and yet seeking a balance to live in an ecosystem.

2 Corporations are communities, not machines.
Red Chamber is “life” story of a family, a community. It is a reflection of the whole nation in terms of Chinese customs, culture, literature and history. Many of the thinking, behaviours, customs mentioned in the book are still valid in today’s China. You can find the Chinese characteristics there. It is not a history book but a book that readers can have interactions, exchanges, and associations.
As a creative work, Red Chamber cannot be written like a machine – standard operation procedures. Otherwise, readers will suffer form boring and discard it after few pages. Red Chamber is a life story of the writer, from rich and famous to poor and disgrace. The background is a family. It shows people staying in the big family and how they react to changes in life.

3 Management is service, not control.
The publication of Red Chamber is to serve the readers. The book has no intention to control or influence readers. However, it wants to engage readers and share with readers about the life and the sad story of a rich family. Readers can choose to read their favourable chapters based on their own interest. For example, poems society for young, old lady entering the big garden, burying flowers etc. Each can form individual piece for interest reading or research purpose.
Cao wanted to service the readers and presented a story that reflected his family, his period of Qing dynasty and the Chinese characteristics.

4 Employees are peers, not children.
Red Chamber comparing to the other 3 great Chinese novels (Three kingdoms, Water margin and The Journey to the West) has given equal right to female and poor people. In an old traditional Chinese society and family, Cao has projected a positive image for women (in terms of management, intelligence, knowledge and power) and poor people (sincerity, honesty and pure). For example,
• The most powerful figure is the grand mother.
• The best CEO is a female (Wang Xi Feng).
• There are many intelligent ladies in the family but men are projected as stupid and ugly.

Cao also treated his supporters or teammates as equal and accept their suggestions and advices.

5 Motivate with vision, not fear.
Cao had set a clear vision for himself. He also understood the consequences if the writings got into trouble with the authority. He was motivated by his belief that his work would become the most influencing writing of his time. He continued to write even under hardship and poor condition. Some times he not even had enough food. However, he was still committed to write the book. There were difficulties, fears, and hungry during his writing.

6 Change is growth, not pain.
Red Chamber made a lot of changes as compared to other Chinese writings. Some changes are
- female centric
- family as a reflection of a nation
- hidden political story
- up and down of a family from rich to poor
- hidden, negative and positive writings
- a collection of Chinese customs and arts.
However, the writing is a painful process.

7 Computers are servants, not masters.
Red Chamber used a lot of ancient Chinese idioms, history, the philosophy of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism and many hints.
However, Cao cleverly used his writings to combine all these into his book. His writing was never restricted or obstructed by the heavy historical past and the teaching of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism.
The past information was used to enrich his writing and not become his masters. In stead, Cao made use of these rich information and materials as backup to enhance his writings.

8 Work is play, not toil.
Although the process is a painful and difficult one, Cao never complained about the difficulty of the writing. He enjoyed writing it and especially, when he could share his writings with others and getting their feedback.
If Cao had never enjoyed in his writing, he would certainly abandon his work.
He must have found the happiness in the blood and tear of the stone story despite of the physical condition.