“Words on the paper mix with blood,
The extraordinary labor of ten years!”

— Zhiyanzhai

(zh-TW) 字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常。

Poem in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, present in its 1754 jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本), quoted in Zhou Ruchang's Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181

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“Words on the paper mix with blood,
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