Tang Xianzu writes \u201cLove comes nowhere, but once involved in it, people will never come back.\u201d In The Peony Pavilion, Bridal Du\u2019s love seems to me just come from nowhere. She went the Peony Pavilion for views of spring after a class on \u201cPoem\u201d, and fell in sleep to meet her lover, Liu Mengmei. The fact is that she never met Liu in real life and she even did not know he is real or not. However, her unreachable love directly causes her death in the story. In class, we discussed that the poem, \u201cGuanju\u201d, taught by tutor Chen invokes her perceptions for love, and in fact she fell in love with her own ideal concept of love.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I found this idea very appealing to me even in contemporary society. People are falling in love with idols, who are neither reachable nor trustworthy in reality. Some of my friends are crazy about Korean actors. They never really get a chance to know the actor in person because of the limitation of time and space, but they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to support the actors or buy tickets for fan meetings. Most of the cases, they are falling in love with the character in the soap drama instead of the actor as a real person. People are fallilng love with their own imaginations and are willing to devote time, money, or even everything to pursue their dream. Bridal Du\u2019s love for Liu Mengmei is very reasonable even in contemporary society because people are still doing so to seek for emotional support in daily life.<\/p>\n
Peony Pavilion portraits a love for the concept of love that could go beyond the boundary of time and space. This love continuously exists in almost everyone in contemporary society. May be that is the reason for this drama to be a long-lived classic work for the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Qing: Falling Love with the Concept of Love in Contemporary Society By Xiru Zhao Tang Xianzu writes \u201cLove comes nowhere, but once involved in it, people will never come back.\u201d In The Peony Pavilion, Bridal Du\u2019s love seems to me just come from nowhere. She went the Peony Pavilion for…<\/p>\n