A Dream of the Red Mansions, which is sometimes also called The Story of the Stone, was written in the mid-17th century. The novel is generally acknowledged to be among the very best of classical Chinese novels. Over the past three centuries years, it has exerted a profound influence on the cultural life of the Chinese people.
The novel tells the story of four noble families -the Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue. In particular the novel depicts the rise to prosperity and the subsequent fall of the Ning and Rong Houses of the Jia clan. A Dream of the Red Mansions is essentially a love story as it tells the story of the tragic fate suffered by characters like Jia Baoyu and a group of girls in the Red Mansions under the feudal system. Its main protagonists Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu are a pair of youths madly in love and rebelling against the dishonesty of noblemen and the inherent unfairness of the feudal ethical code. Their love is doomed to end in tragedy. Lin Daiyu dies alone of illness while Jia Baoyu runs away because he is deceived into marrying a girl he has no love for. Despite previously enjoying high status and great wealth, their aristocratic family, collapses into penury and obscurity.
The novel also describes the dissolute and debauched lives of many Chinese feudal noblemen at that time; it exposes the oppression and exploitation of the working classes; it celebrates the young people, the servants and maids and the ordinary people who rebel against this restrictive and oppressive system. The novel castigates many aspects of traditional thought such as the feudal ethical code. Epic in scale this book is a stunning artistic, cultural and social achievement.
Cao Xueqin (1715-1763 or 1724-1764), tthe author of A Dream of the Red Mansions, was born of noble origin. Since the time of Cao Xueqin’s great-grandfather, the Cao clan held the office of Imperial Textile Commissioner at Jiangning. They were in charge of purchasing textiles and clothes for the imperial family. Indeed, Cao Xueqin’s grandfather, Cao Yin, when he was a child was a playmate of the young Emperor Kangxi (who would reign as Emperor from 1662 to 1732). So the Cao clan was a rich and powerful family.
The family’s fortunes remained prosperous until Kangxi’s death and the ascension of Emperor Yongzheng to the throne. Internal strife in the imperial family meant that the Cao clan who lost favor with Emperor Yongzheng. The Emperor dismissed the Cao Xueqin’s father from his post and confiscated all the Cao clan’s properties. Cao Xueqin, still a young child at that time, shared in his family’s misfortune.
The Cao family fell into penury. They were forced to relocate to Beijing and their lives became more and more difficult. His father passed away and Cao eventually found himself living in the western suburbs of Beijing. Sometimes, the whole family had nothing to eat but thin gruel.
Thus Cao Xueqin was intimately acquainted with a life of poverty and want and he came to know well a whole range of ordinaru working poor people. When he thought about the old days when his family enjoyed high status and great prosperity, he sighed deeply with heartfelt emotion. Cao Xueqin had a very good knowledge of the vicissitudes of life when he came to begin writing his great novel A Dream of the Red Mansions.
Cao Xueqin spent a decade writing the first 80 chapters of the novel. However, the novel remained unfinished when the author, worn down by years of poverty passed away. After Cao’s death, the novel circulated in a rough manuscript. It grew in popularity and many people after reading the first 80 chapters, craved an ending to the novel. They were so eager to find out what became of such fascinating characters. Some years later a writer named Gao E wrote an additional 40 chapters and his contribution became generally accepted as the conclusion to the great novel.
A Dream of the Red Mansions is well-known as a veritable encyclopaedia of Chinese feudal society. Over the past 200-plus years, people have read this book again and again and it has provoked tears, laughter and heated discussion. Many scholars have made careers out of analyzing this masterpiece of literature. ‘Redology’ - the study of A Dream of the Red Mansions is now effectively an independent field in the area of Chinese social science study and it focuses exclusively on this work.
