Recently, cultural circles in Ningguo City, Anhui Province, have shown an unusually strong interest in "Dream of the Red Chamber", believing that the customs and customs described in "Dream of the Red Chamber" are strikingly similar to those of Ningguo, and that the Cao Xueqin family is inextricably linked to Ningguo and gives a lot of evidence.
I would like to give you a few examples here.
For example, there are more temples than temples in "Dream of the Red Chamber", and Ningguo is also more than temples, and there are Water Moon Nunnery that appears in "The Dream of the Red Chamber", and there is also a psychic peak that is inseparable from Jia Baoyu; moreover, the temple environment in Ningguo is mostly as described in "Dream of the Red Chamber": "Surrounded by mountains and rivers, where the forest is deep and bamboo, there is a temple hidden." ”
For example, when the Cao Xueqin family was an official in Nanjing (then known as Jiangning), Nanjing was the capital of Anhui Province, which belonged to the State of Ning. The Cao Xueqin family had close contacts with figures from Ningguo Prefecture and Ningguo County, cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin and the famous scholar Shi Yanzhang, the Huangshan painter Mei Qing, the Mei Geng brothers astronomer, the mathematician Mei Wending, and other famous scholars; after Shi Yanzhang's death, Cao Yin gave him a version of the Complete Collection of Learning; after Mei Wending's death, Cao Fu built a tomb for him by kangxi's holy will; in addition, the people of Ningguo also discovered the utensils used by Cao Xueqin's ancestors.
For example, Zhou Chun, a scholar who was a scholar who was the first scholar to study "Dream of the Red Chamber" during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, after a long period of research and argumentation, determined in his article "Reading the Essay on the Dream of the Red Chamber" in his red studies monograph "Reading the Essay on the Dream of the Red Chamber", that "Hou Yunyi, the eldest son of Marquis Jing against Xiangzhuang, and the youngest son, Yunhan, the prefect of Ningguo Province, are the names of Ningguo and Rongguo." According to the "Chronicle of Ningguo Prefecture" and the "Chronicle of Ningguo County", the name of NingguoFu is derived from the name of Ningguo County.
Of course, there is some truth in the views of cultural people in Ningguo City, but the author believes that the name of Ningrong Erfu should be related to the historical Princess Ningguo of the Ming Dynasty.
As mentioned earlier, Cao Xueqin lived in the city of Nanjing when she was a teenager, and there was once a Ningguo Mansion in Nanjing, and its owner was Princess Ningguo, the second daughter of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma.
Princess Ningguo was born in 1364, and in 1378 married Mei Sizu, the Marquis of Runan, to Mei Yin, and died in 1434 at the age of seventy-one.
When the author consulted the historical materials of Mei Yin, he was pleasantly surprised to find such content: Mei Yin, the character Boyin, the son-in-law of Mei Sizu, the Marquis of Runan, was the son-in-law of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding monarch of the Ming Dynasty of China. Courtesy by nature, able to ride horses and shoot arrows, Hongwu married Zhu Yuanzhang's second daughter Princess Ningguo in 1378, and was made the Duke of Rongguo and appointed Shandong Xuezheng.
Princess Ningguo's husband Mei Yin happened to be crowned the Duke of Rongguo, and their husband and wife had lived in Jiangning (later renamed Nanjing) that Cao Xueqin had long cherished, so the NingRong Second Mansion in Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber" should have a close relationship with Mei Yin and his wife.
We may wish to continue to look at Mei Yin's life experience to the next one
Before Zhu Yuanzhang's death, he appointed Mei Yin, who was "old cheng zhongxin", to assist Emperor Jianwen, and specially granted Mei Yin a testament, which read, "Those who dare to go against heaven, ru ask for it." During the Battle of Jingnan, Mei Yin was ordered to lead troops to garrison Huai'an to resist Zhu Di, the King of Yan, who was fighting for the throne from the south, and he recruited 400,000 troops to prepare for a decisive battle with the "violators of heaven".
The cunning Zhu Di avoided Mei Yin, took a roundabout route to occupy Nanjing, and then became emperor. Princess Ningguo, persecuted by Zhu Di, angrily bit her finger and wrote a letter to her husband, who was still stationed in Huaishang, to persuade her to surrender, and Mei Yin saw her wife's blood letter and heard the emissary say that Emperor Jianwen was dead, so she had to return to Nanjing to see Zhu Di.
When Zhu Di saw Mei Yin, he falsely comforted Mei Yin and said, "The horse is hard! Mei Yin responded lukewarmly: "Labor and fruitless ears." Zhu Di secretly hated Mei Yin from that moment on.
In the second year of Yongle, Du Yushi Chen Ying reported that Mei Yin "saved his life" In the third year of Yongle, Mei Yin went to the imperial palace for a meeting, and was pushed down the pipe bridge by the former military governor Tan Shen and Zhao Xi, commanded by Jin Yiwei, and drowned in the water. Princess Ningguo cried to Zhu Di, and Zhu Di had no choice but to kill Tan and Zhao, cut off their siblings, cut off their intestines and sacrifice them, and Tan and Zhao told this conspiracy before they were executed.
The author boldly speculates that the Jiangning Weaving Mansion where Cao Xueqin lived in his youth is likely to be the former site of or near the Ming Dynasty Ningguo Princess Mansion, and he should be very familiar with the fact that Mei Yin was unjustly killed, so he named the most important aristocratic mansion in his novel As Ningguo Mansion and Rongguo Mansion, in order to imply to posterity that the decline of the Jia family was the result of being framed and wronged, and the Jia family was an unfortunate victim of the cruel royal struggle.