The Dream of the Red Chamber

Cao Xueqin was born into a wealthy Han Chinese family around 1720. His ancestors had served in the Manchu army and were subsequently rewarded with prestigious posts in the Imperial administration. His exact date of birth remains uncertain. Cao’s great-grandmother is said to have been Emperor Kangxi’s wet nurse, and his grandfather Cao Yin was the emperor’s personal friend and confidant. During Kangxi’s reign the family enjoyed a high standing with the Imperial Court and amassed great wealth, holding the lucrative post of Commissioner of Imperial Textiles in the Southern Jiangsu province for three generations. After Kangxi’s death, however, the clan’s fortunes began to sink, as the stern Confucian Emperor Yongzheng came to power and started to clamp down on corruption and illegal financial dealings. Having issued several warnings, he had the family’s entire property confiscated and its patriarch arrested in 1727. Subsequently, the family was forced to leave their mansion in Nanjing and move to a modest dwelling in Peking. Cao Xueqin was still a child then. A brilliant boy and talented painter and writer, he proved unfit for an academic career. He was hired as a private teacher of Manchu children, only to be fired after impregnating a maidservant. By the middle of the century he hit rock bottom, selling the occasional painting, drinking too much and writing The Dream of the Red Chamber in small installments over some 10 years or so, often providing a new chapter to family and friends in exchange for some food and wine. Cao Xueqin died around 1763, purportedly from a broken heart after the death of his only son. Around this time, several handwritten copies of the novel’s first 80 chapters began to circulate.