“How many concerns there are in the world, of which there’s no making head or tail, mostly because what persons do without any design is construed by such designing people, as chance to have their notice attracted to it, as having been designedly accomplished, and go on talking and talking till, instead of mending matters, they make them worse!” – Cao Xueqin, The Dream of the Red Chamber (trans. H. Bencraft Joly)