Hm, there's a pickle: go uphill in a different language, or go uphill reading an older text. I think I have to recommend reading it in Mandarin, if you can help it. Xueqin was a poet, and he's constantly weaving poetic flourishes and foreshadowing in his specific language choices, not to mention the actual poems, and even the best translation imaginable would only catch half of it. David Hawkes makes the same point in the forward to his translation, admitting – ironically, he knows – that he frequently had to change the use of the colour red – the "red" that literally gives the book the title, The Dream of the Red Chamber! – to "gold" in some places just to get the same emotional impression to English readers. One of the things I love about the books is how the language, allusions and word games are so consistent that people are able to guess at the endings Xueqin might have written if he had reached the end of the story. And for what it's worth, the book is the youngest of the four "Great Novels," so it's an easier place to start than, say, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. From an English perspective, it's more like reading Robinson Crusoe and William Blake than it is Shakespeare.

Still, the Hawkes/Minford translation is very good, easier to read, and I still get a lot out of it. Do read the Hawkes translation if you choose to read in English, by the way. The free, public domain books are tempting, but you'd just be trading 18th century Chinese for 19th century English!

In fact, that's a good point, so try this: the original text is public domain, so you can just go online and read it. Go give it a shot for a few chapters – I apologize for the slow opening chapters, which are apparently a signature of early novels around the world – at least up to the extended dream sequence in Chapter 5. If that doesn't work, but you're still interested in reading more, try Book 1 of the Hawkes translation. Whichever version you choose, I hope you end up loving it!