Writers › Writer / Poet
Cheng Weiyuan
Suzhou man of letters who with Gao E edited the 120-chapter Dream of the Red Chamber and printed it in movable type in 1791
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Xiaoquan
Cheng Weiyuan, courtesy name Xiaoquan, was a Suzhou man who lived in Beijing in the last years of the Qianlong reign and wrote poetry, calligraphy and painted. Having collected fragments of the last forty chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber for years, he and Gao E edited and joined them, and in 1791 the Cuiwen Studio printed the 120-chapter novel in wooden movable type, the edition now called Cheng A; a revised Cheng B followed the next year, and the complete novel spread widely from then on. From 1800 to 1802 he served on the staff of Jinchang, General of Shengjing, and edited Jinchang's poems. He died in Liaodong.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown; active from the end of the Qianlong era into the Jiaqing era; died c. 1818