What is the importance of dreams in the novel, The Nine Cloud Dreams?

Dream are important in the novel because they symbolize the theme that reality is an illusion. Shao-yu's life is Hsing-chen's dream, and one of the themes of the novel is that the line between dream and reality is unstable, or perhaps nonexistent. As Shao-yu approaches enlightenment, he has strange dreams and becomes increasingly unsure if certain events are real or dreamed.