THE Kingdom of Shu exist-ed about 3,000 years ago inwest-central Sichuan,but itdisappeared into the mist of legenduntil only a decade or so ago,whenarchaeologic
CAO XUEQIN,one of thegreatest novelists in China’shistory,lived in the middleof the 18th century at the heightof the Qing Dynasty.He spent10 years writing his