Qing Dynasty China
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Cao Xueqin
Nanjing, Qing Dynasty China
Archival Overview
Qing dynasty author who wrote Dream of the Red Chamber (The Story of the Stone), universally celebrated as the supreme pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction.
Biographical Record
Cao Xueqin (c. 1715–c. 1763) was a Chinese novelist and poet of the Qing dynasty whose family served as trusted intimates to the Kangxi Emperor as imperial textile commissioners in Nanjing. When imperial favor soured under the Yongzheng Emperor, the family estate was confiscated, plunging Cao from luxurious aristocracy into rural poverty in the western suburbs of Beijing.
Drawing upon his family's dramatic rise and fall, Cao spent over a decade composing Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng, also titled The Story of the Stone). Centered on the aristocratic Jia clan and the tragic romance of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, the novel provides an encyclopedic panorama of 18th-century Chinese life, psychology, poetry, aesthetics, and Buddhist-Daoist disillusionment with worldly vanity.
Key Life Milestones
Rouge Ink Manuscripts
Circulated the first hand-copied 80 chapters of The Story of the Stone with commentaries by his relative Zhiyanzhai.
Cheng-Gao Print Edition
Published in movable wooden type by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E, cementing Dream of the Red Chamber as China's literary peak.
Memorial Guestbook & Tributes
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Final Resting Place
Perpetual MemorialBeijing, China