Dai Shu(1754) ShiShu (1760) Shi Shu (1791)
The controversy of whether the maidservant of Tan Chun in "Stone Story" is Shi Shu or Dai Shu has never met a unanimous idea. But a great idea come to my mind yesterday.
Before pointing out my idea, I will say something about this problem. Many of the handwritten copies label as "Stone Story" use "Dai Shu" while the printed editions labeled as "A dream of red mansions" use "Shi Shu".
My idea is that "Shi Shu" and "Dai shu" are very different in Chinese though, they are almost the same in English. Confused? "Dai Shu" means "wait for books" while "Shi Shu" means "waiter of the books". Get the idea? They ALL need to WAIT! So what the author want to say is that the reader have to wait before reading a book. So "Dai Shu" is better because it directly points out the meaning of wait.
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