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The two reigns of Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong in the Qing dynasty are known as the Golden Ages, but it is in these Ages that crises are brewing and tragedy is in the making. Their reflections in the literary writing lead to the birth of a great tragic work of literature—A Dream of Red Mansions. wish.1155815.com
Cao Xueqin (1715-1763), the author of A Dream of Red Mansions, was also named Zhan. His polite name was Mengruan and his poetic name Qinpu or Qinxi. His ancestral home was Liaoyang and his ancestors, who were originally Hans, later became Manchu bannermen of Zhengbai Banner. His great-grandfather Cao Xi, grandfather Cao Yin, father Cao Yong and uncle Cao Fu all held one of high-ranking official posts – Textile Commissioner of Jiangning Prefecture. His family official careers lasted about sixty years so that his family developed into a most prosperous family of enormous wealth and influence worth of the Changjing River. During his young days he led a wealthy and pompous life and at thirteen or fourteen he moved with his family from Nanjing to Beijing as his family fortune declined with loss of power and influence and the confiscation of the family estates. In his remaining years he moved to the western suburbs of Beijing, lived a very poor and lonely life and took up writing the novel A Dream of Red Mansions. On the New Year’s Eve of the year 1763 (the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong) he died of poverty and illness, leaving behind the unfulfilled A Dream of Red Mansions and also an irreparable regret to the history of Chinese literature. 民俗节庆门户网站
A Dream of Red Mansions consists of one hundred twenty chapters, the first eighty chapters of which are conventionally thought to be written by Cao Xueqin and the last forty of which are by Gao E. Gao E (1738-1851), polite name Lanshu, passed the imperial examination for Jinshi during the reign of Emperor Qinglong and became a tutor to the Imperial Academy. His literary talent and thought rank next to Cao’s, and his chapters, therefore, fall behind Cao’s in artistry and thought. However, his merits outweigh his demerits for he has written the sequel to A Dream of Red Mansions and made a complete whole of it. 民俗节庆网
Based on his life experience and his deep sense of the realities, Cao Xueqin spent ten years in writing up the novel A Dream of Red Mansions, which had gone through five revisions and was really a product of blood and tears. By depicting the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu he exhibited a history of the prosperity and decline of the four big families like the predominant Jias, the Shis, the Wangs and the Xues, and portrayed scenes of decline and numerous tragedies in life in the last period of the feudal society, thus objectively revealing a historical trend of the ever-declining feudal society.
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民俗节庆网
Chinese Folklores & Festivals Website
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