Bookplanet: Chinese Lit - you've read any?

The good old Guardian has a good article on Chinese Lit in translation, of which there's very little, compared to Japanese Lit (quick, name a Chinese writer). I have to admit that besides knowing about the first novel ever, the Tale of the Genji, which happens to be Japanese, I know absolutely zero zilch sweet Mary blow-all about the literature of a quarter of the human race. ( (All this started by a link via the Literary Saloon.)

In this quick review of Chinese lit, Kenneth Rexroth blatantly states: "In fact I would say that the Chinese The Dream of the Red Chamber and the Japanese Tale of Genji are the two greatest works of prose fiction in all the history of literature. I am not trying to be odd or annoying. I am not saying something like 'Sturge Moore is the greatest poet of the twentieth century.' I really do believe that these are the two best novels in the world. Furthermore, there are not many people who are familiar with them who do not agree with me."
Holy cow, I'd better read them ASAP. See if they're better than Middlemarch, my vote for best novel ever. Going to the library now to reserve them before any of my NYC readers do. Anyway, here's the start of a modern Chinese lit library from the Guardian:
Cao Xueqin The Story of the Stone, translated by David Hawkes (Penguin Classics). Written around 1760, this classic family saga of the late imperial period is probably China's best-known novel. This is also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, one of Rexroth's two greatest novels ever. According to this useful survey of classic Chinese novels, there's also an abridged translation by Double Day.
Lu Ling Children of the Rich. An epic and untranslated account of the decline of a wealthy family during the Japanese invasion of the 1930s.
Lu Xun's bleak stories of rural China and reworked versions of classical stories, collected in Lu Xun Selected Works, translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (Foreign Languages Press, 1985).
Ma Jian, Red Dust, translated by Flora Drew (Chatto & Windus, 2001). Semi-fictionalised travelogue of an escape around the margins in the early 1980s; an acute portrait of a society in flux.
Qian Zhongshu's 1947 satire of wartime Shanghai, Fortress Besieged, and barbed stories of human and superhuman vanity collected in Men, Beasts, Ghosts.
Shen Congwen's bittersweet nostalgic tales of his war-ravaged south China homeland in the early 20th century, some of which are translated by Jeffrey Kinkley and others in Imperfect Paradise (University of Hawaii Press, 1995).
Han Shaogong's relaxed biography of a village in southern China, A Dictionary of Maqiao, told as the author's semi-fictionalised memoir of labouring there and learning the local dialect during the Cultural Revolution; translated by Julia Lovell, (Columbia University Press, 2003).
Xiao Hong, The Field of Life and Death, translated by Howard Goldblatt (Indiana University Press, 1979). A moving portrait of stoical, suffering women in the northeast during the 1930s.
Yang Jiang, Six Chapters From My Life "Down under", translated by Howard Goldblatt (University of Washington Press, 1984). Written by Qian Zhongshu's wife, a wryly sensitive account of two years labouring in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.
Zhang Ailing's claustrophobic novellas of domestic scheming and psychological disintegration in pre-1949 Shanghai. One of the best "The Golden Cangue", is in Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949 translated by CT Hsia et al (Columbia University Press, 1981).
(Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged is published by Penguin. Julia Lovell's translation of the novellas of Zhu Wen will be published next year by Columbia University Press.)
HECK, you could probably start a publishing business right now putting out translated Chinese novels: maybe you'd even get a grant from the Chinese government. Hint, hint.