biography
| name: |
Cao Xuequin
|
| |
also spelled Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in
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pronunciation:
[chow shwechin]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1715–63)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born into a family who had grown rich as directors of the Nanjing Imperial Textile Works. The family wealth was later squandered, and he was reduced to straightened circumstances as a teacher and poet in Beijing. His memories are re-enacted in his great book, Dream of the Red Chamber, or A Dream of Splendour (also translated as Story of the Stone), the most famous of all Chinese traditional novels. He probably wrote over 80 chapters in 1760, then left the work unfinished; 40 chapters were added by Gao Ngo and the book was published in 1791. It is important for its realistic detail of upper-class family life in the early 18th-c, and is now recognized as the finest literary achievement of the early Qing period. It has been serialized on Chinese television in recent years. |
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