The author of A Dream of Red Mansions is Cao Xueqin (1715?-1763?). His personal name was Zhan, and his style (name adopted by a man at his coming of age), Mengruan. He was also known as Xueqin, Qinpu or Qinxi. His ancestral home was in what is now Liaoyang City, in Northeast China, and his forebears, although Han Chinese themseles, had been accepted into the Manchu Right White Banner. For three successive generations, a period of some 60 years, his ancestors had held the post of Textile Commissioner in Jiangning (present-day Nanjing). His paternal great grandmother, surnamed Sun, had been nursemaid to the infant who was later to become the Kangxi emperor, and his grandfather, Cao Yin, had been the future emperor's study companion and close attendant, accompanying him when he came to the throne on four of his six inspection tours of the south, a singular honor. After the death of Cao Yin, the family, under the leadership of Cao Xueqin's father Cao Fu, continued to enjoy the emperor's favor, but when the Yongzheng emperor ascended the throne, Cao  Fu was removed from his office and punished on charges of financial mismanagement and incompetence in the management of courier stations. The family property was confiscated, and the Cap's halcyon days came to an end. They moved to Beijing. Cao Xueqin, who had spent his childhood in pampered luxury, now shared the family's fate of a wretched existence. Dogged by poverty, he eventually moved to a rustic hovel on the western outskirts of the capital. The death of his young son in 1762 was a crushing blow to Cao, from which he never recovered, and on February 12, 1763 the himself passed away.

From The Introduction of A Dream of Red Mansions, traslated by Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang

Xinyi Translation Studio