A Han Chinese clan assimilated into Manchurian ethnicity, Cao’s family had become so rich as to be able to play host four times to the Emperor Kang-Xi in his itinerant trips down south in Nanjing. In 1727 they suffered the first of a series of reversals to their fortunes that saw the family properties confiscated and the family shifting to Beijing a year later.
Most of what we know about Cao was passed down from his contemporaries and friends. Cao himself eventually settled in Western Beijing where he lived through the larger part of his late years in poverty selling off his paintings. Friends and acquaintances reported an intelligent, highly talented man who spent a decade working diligently on a work that must have been The Dream of the Red Chamber. Extant handwritten copies of this work—some 80 chapters—had been in circulation in Beijing shortly after Cao’s death before Gao Ê, who claimed to have access to the former’s working papers, published a complete 120-chapter version in 1792.
The Dream of the Red Chamber and The Chronicles of the Stone are two of the five names given to the work by the author.
A Han Chinese clan assimilated into Manchurian ethnicity, Cao’s family had become so rich as to be able to play host four times to the Emperor Kangxi in his itinerant trips down south in Nanjing.
Cao Xueqin's grandfather, Cao Yin, was playmate and confidante to the Emperor Kangxi, and the family's fortunes lasted until Kangxi's death and the ascension of Emperor Yongzheng to the throne.
In 1727 they suffered the first of a series of reversals to their fortunes that saw the family properties confiscated in a political purge and the family moved to Beijing a year later.
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