Weekend Reading List

I'm dusting off my five-volume The Dream of the Red Chamber, the 18th Century Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin, for my annual reading. I love this David Hawkes translation for its pedantic, literal accuracy. It never fails to put me in the mood for Chinese New Year to read about all the food and fashion enjoyed by the Jias, this grand Mandarin household, so very celebratory! Well, the first three volumes are, at least, before the last two (my least read) which have an undertow of melancholy and sickness that's depressing to say the least. One learns so much about being Chinese from reading this: The traditions, the aesthetics, the poetry, the medicines, the gardening and architecture. If you can only read one book, this is it.

Fragrance note: There's no end to the list of perfumes you can wear while reading this. There are so many flooding the market but I'm feeling the classic Yves Saint Laurent Opium right now, although Luca Turin declares it unwearable. I disagree, I think it's very current. I'm also thinking Annick Goutal's 2007 Les Orientalistes, specifically Encens Flamboyant (of the trio). Not designed as "Chinese", but Oriental more in the sense of the Moorish, the formality and the sadness, like the sounding of a temple gong, is very much relevant. If you only like fresh, then perhaps Hermes's hit Osmanthe Yunnan, from the Hermessense collection. Can subtle be tacky? I can't help thinking Taiwan when I smell this, but there you go.

I'm also reading December's Travel&Leisure (South East Asia Edition) which I pinched from a cafe last week. Mr Wee stared in amazement as I waltzed out with it quite brazenly after drinking the pear juice for hours.

It's a very good magazine, full of useful information as well as terrific writing.