The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791)

This is one of the four essential novels from China, and the most recently written.  Everywhere you go in China, people know this book.  The 1973 translation is the one to read.
At the centre of the plot is a love triangle involving Baoyu, a young aristocratic fop, and his two girl-cousins. These characters divide readers into fiercely opposing camps: some prefer the wilting, anorexic beauty of Miss Lin Daiyu, others admire the healthier, more down-to-earth charms of her rival, Xue Baochai; as for Baoyu, readers either adore him and his aesthetic ecstasies, or consider him a self-indulgent sentimentalist.
Its pages make up a veritable encyclopedia of Chinese life, from the making of tea with last year’s melted snow, to the eating of crabs, the performing of lyrical opera and the writing of classical verse in every possible metre. To offset the large cast of upper-class characters, there is also a wonderful assortment of low-life personalities, old village dames, garrulous matrons, drunken retainers, martial artists, sing-song girls and theatrical performers. It convincingly describes the corruption and other social ills that beset China’s society in the late traditional period.