In this first-year seminar class we will try together to get a better understanding of traditional Chinese culture by reading and discussing a novel that has both been praised as a veritable encyclopedia of Chinese life, and which has mattered deeply to countless Chinese readers, some of whom read it year after year. Because the novel focuses on life within the household and the majority of its major characters are female, one of the foci of the course will be on the life of Chinese women during the time the novel was written. Class meetings will feature a number of different activities. One of these will be class debates on specific topics. The main goal of the various debates will be to permit us to get a wider and richer view of the novel and the culture that produced it, but we will also be interested in relating what we see in the novel to life around us and material we have learned in other contexts. The procedure of debating topics from different points of view will also help us be more critical about our own beliefs and predilections.