Chapter 10 Chapter Nine Cao Xueqin and "Dream of Red Mansions"

During the Qianlong period, the Qing Dynasty ushered in the peak of its prosperity. However, various social contradictions continued to accumulate, and crises lurk under the cloak of prosperity.At this time, a novel began to circulate in Beijing, exposing the extravagant and corrupt life of bureaucrats and nobles.At first, people still couldn't figure out who the author was, but after research, they found out that the author of the book was Cao Xueqin. Cao Xueqin, formerly known as Cao Zhan, was born in what year, month and day. There is no exact information. There is a saying: the year when the author Pu Songling died (1715, the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi) was the year Cao Xueqin was born.It is generally believed that it will not be too early or too late.

Cao Xueqin's ancestors were Han people, and his distant ancestor Cao Xiyuan was a magistrate in Shenyang Zhongwei in the Ming Dynasty, and later became a captive and slave of Nurhachi.His son Cao Zhenyan was incorporated into the flag registration, and in the seventh year of Chongzhen (1634), he was transferred to the Zhengbai Banner of Manchuria under the command of Dorgon, and served as a "neighbor" in the army. The House of Internal Affairs was covered with a white flag, an honor only enjoyed by the most loyal servants who had been tested for a long time, especially for a person of Han nationality.It is precisely because of this that the wife of Cao Xueqin's great-grandfather Cao Xi was likely to be selected into the palace to be the nanny of the young Kangxi, and Cao Xi's son Cao Yin was the companion for the young Kangxi.After Kangxi ascended the throne, he immediately entrusted Cao Xi with a heavy responsibility and sent him to Jiangning as a weaver. Since then, this position has not changed every three years, and it has become a hereditary official position of the Cao family.Jiangning (now Nanjing) is a wealthy place in the south. Weaving is an official who specializes in making clothes for the royal family. It is a job to make money. Although the official rank is not high, the status is very important.Throughout the Kangxi period, the three generations of the Cao family received generous treatment and special trust. Kangxi made five "southern tours", and four times used Zhizaofu as his residence.The Cao family thus became Jiangning's "century-old family".After Cao Xi's death, Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin and father Cao Yong took over the official position.

After Emperor Yongzheng succeeded to the throne, the Cao family was implicated because of internal disputes in the royal family. Emperor Yongzheng believed that the Cao family had opposed him, so he not only dismissed Cao's post, but also ordered their family to be confiscated.At that time, Cao Xueqin was a ten-year-old child, already sensible. Seeing such a catastrophe in the family, the young heart was greatly shocked. Cao Xueqin's father lost his official position and couldn't stay in Jiangning any longer, so he had to return to his hometown in Beijing. Life became poorer and poorer, and family disasters happened one after another. Later, his father Cao Yong also died.Cao Xueqin's life was even more difficult, so he had to move to the west of Beijing, where he built a few simple thatched huts and lived on hunger.

At the beginning, Cao Yong was a hospitable person and had direct contacts with British businessmen.At the request of Cao Yongzhi, Philip, a British businessman, taught textile technology to his factory, and preached the "Bible" in Cao's family. He even talked about Shakespeare plays. His vision is not useless.Cao Xueqin's grandfather, Cao Yin, once collected more than 100,000 volumes of books, and presided over the compilation and publication of "Quan Tang Poems" and "Pei Wen Yun Fu".This family background is tantamount to "God's help" to Cao Xueqin, who is extremely intelligent.

After the decline of his family, Cao Xueqin was about 20 years old and started to make a living. He worked as a petty official, a teacher, and even Shef. He no longer had illusions about the prosperous life he once had.Even if you earn the wealth of your ancestors, you will be reduced to abject poverty overnight.His contempt for official career is unmatched by other literati who have not experienced disillusionment.The only thing he didn't change was his hobby of reciting poems and painting, drinking and listening to music, and even "among miscellaneous actors, playing in plays for fun".

Although Cao Xueqin's material life is bleak and desolate, his arrogant temperament is rare among all kinds of people. He has neither the slavishness of those who are officials, nor the wildness and lowliness of the vulgar and illiterate .He is suave and unrestrained, his emotions are stretched, and the brilliance of his personality shines more and more freely because of this special experience. He doesn't want to gain anything, and he is not afraid of losing anything. He is bright and humorous, eloquent and talkative, and arrogant. His closest friends are the wandering children of the royal family, Dun Min, brothers Dun Cheng, and private school teacher Zhang Yiquan.Brothers Dunmin and Duncheng were originally the fifth grandsons of Azige, Prince Ying, the twelfth son of Nurhachi, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty.They are people of higher status than Cao Xueqin, and their understanding of the world is like a heart-to-heart.All three of them admired the strength of character of famous scholars in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, especially Ruan Ji. Cao Xueqin once wrote "Meng Ruan", and Dun Cheng also wrote a poem "Being too lazy to pass Ji Zhongsan and return to Ruan infantry".

Cao Xueqin is good at poetry and painting.His poems are full of "novelty". Dun Cheng once praised Cao Xueqin's poems as "Ai Jun's poems are full of strange spirit, chasing Changgu and breaking the barrier".Li He, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, was a well-known "ghost talent".Cao Xueqin's paintings, like his people, are also full of strangeness. Dun Min wrote a poem titled "Painting Stones in Qin Garden", which said: "Proudness is like a king, and the world is already amazing, and the bonyness is even more so. This fence is more visible. After drunkenness, I sweep like a seal pen. , When writing out the block in the chest."

Cao Xueqin's life circumstances ranged from a prosperous aristocratic life to an impoverished cultured person. She was full of extraordinary emotions and geniuses, and breathed out thousands of depression and resentment from her chest. It took ten years to turn it into a stunning and brilliant literary masterpiece. A piece of psychic jade came to Jia's mansion, a wealthy family in the world, to experience the rise and fall of honor and disgrace, love and hatred, darkness and decay in the world, and finally Wukong by color, just like a dream of the Red Chamber. This immortal masterpiece of despair in the world seems to be a literary prophecy of the crisis-ridden Qianlong era and a literary summary of China's thousands of years of autocratic dynasties.

After it came out, it was not only welcomed by the people in China, but also influenced the whole world.Part of it was translated into English in 1842. Since then, English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Dutch and other translations have appeared one after another. Discipline, known as "Red Science". It seems that Cao Xueqin’s special life experience was produced, but this special experience is the logical necessity of the cannibalism of the autocratic dynasty. The autocratic ethical system makes everyone live in alienated social relations, losing everyone’s freedom and freedom. For happiness, only hypocrisy, sophistication, barbarism and ugliness permeate the world.