Maestro weaved his magic to convey spirit of novel

Wang Liping talks as if it had just happened yesterday.

At 76 he can still recall vividly the day he was chosen to be the composer of the television adaptation of the Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the four masterpiece of Chinese literature written by the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) author Cao Xueqin.

It was 1980, and in a small hotel room in Beijing a panel of a dozen people asked Wang asked for his views on the novel and on the main characters, such as Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. The questioners included Wang Fulin, the director of a planned 36-episode TV adaptation of the novel.