Writers › Writer / Poet
Cao Xueqin
Qing novelist from a disgraced bondservant family of the Imperial Household, grandson of Cao Yin, who wrote the first eighty chapters of The Story of the Stone
Mural of Dream of the Red Chamber, a work by this person.
In the Grand View Garden, a young woman gathers and buries fallen petals while a young man watches among pavilions and blossoms. The tender gesture holds the novel’s beauty and transience.
Also known as Cao Zhan · Xue Qin · Meng Ruan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Cao Xueqin, personal name Zhan, also used the names Qinpu and Qinxi. His grandfather Cao Yin had been textile commissioner at Jiangning, and the family were bondservants of the Plain White Banner under the Imperial Household; whether his father was Cao Yong or Cao Fu is still debated. Early in 1728 Cao Fu was disgraced and his property confiscated, and the family moved from Jiangning (Nanjing) to Beijing. He spent his last years in poverty west of Beijing, and his friends the clansmen Dunmin and Duncheng wrote of his drinking, verse and painting. His novel circulated in manuscript as The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji) with commentary by Zhiyanzhai, until Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E printed a 120-chapter Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng) in 1791. A note in the Jiaxu manuscript dates his death to the eve of the renwu new year, February 1763; some place it a year later. Hu Shi's 1921 study of the novel used these sources to establish his authorship and family.
Life and times
Dates c. 1715 CE–c. 1763 CE (death by another account 1764)