To prove the emotion words for telling are important and even indispensable to depict characters of novels,and A Dream of Red Mansions proffers a canon about that,this paper provides a systematic investigation of these words of the classic,including four steps: the depiction of looks,actions,words and minds of the characters in the novel.

In the novel,"telling" was the way of narrating the story so as to realize "facing reality" and it studied "rooting life" in different aspects through changing visual angles.

When he istelling, a narrator issues a comment directly, and so his appraise is comparatively obvious; when he is showing, thenarrator hides behind the showing scene, and so the hint of his appraise is stronger.