"Dream of the Red Chamber", as the first of the four classic masterpieces in China, shows the process of a prominent family from prosperity to decline in the feudal period to the fullest, but the fly in the ointment is that the last forty times of the book are not written by the original author Cao Xueqin, so people are always speculating, if Cao Xueqin is allowed to write, what kind of ending will he arrange for these characters in the book? If Cao Xueqin hadn't died of poverty and illness, maybe what we saw was another story.
As we all know, "Dream of the Red Chamber" was written by Cao Xueqin based on his own family, and it is precisely because he has experienced a prosperous life that he can describe the plot in the book fascinatingly. Cao Xueqin's ancestors were the Jiangning Wang, so why did they decline to such a point?
Cao Xueqin's great-grandfather was a weaver in Jiangning, his great-grandmother Sun Shi was the kangxi emperor's nursing mother, and his grandfather Cao Yin was also the kangxi emperor's companion and imperial bodyguard, based on this relationship, the kangxi emperor took special care of the Cao family after he ascended the throne. Later, Cao Yin succeeded Jiangning Weaving, and the Cao family's business became bigger and bigger, not controlled by the local government.
Jiangning weaving is a fat difference, the Cao family in the Jiangning area has always been a famous family, the Kangxi Emperor once went to Jiangnan six times, four times were living in the Cao family, how honored to receive the emperor, but at that time Cao Xueqin was not yet born, did not personally experience such a grand situation, but the servants in the family also told him about such a scene. In the dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin borrowed the mouth of Jia Lian's nursing mother to recall the scene when she received the emperor, saying that she used silver as clay and was extremely luxurious.
Three generations of grandchildren of the Cao family, a total of four people have served as Jiangning weaving, for 58 years. However, when this position passed to Cao Xueqin's father Cao Yan, the Cao family began to lose, mainly because Cao Yan had no talent, did not have any brains in business, and often entrusted his own tasks to the butler, resulting in frequent problems in the Jiangning Weaving Bureau, and even the clothes paid tribute to the palace would fade.
In the later years of Kangxi, as the Prince of Yong, Yongzheng had already noticed the problems of the Cao family, and later when Yongzheng ascended the throne, the national treasury was in a bad deficit, and Yongzheng took the lead in advocating the thriftiness of hundreds of officials and found out a lot of deficit industries, and the Cao family was one of them. But after all, the Cao family had decades of roots, so Yongzheng only ordered them to make up for all the deficits.
At that time, Cao Yan was frightened and thought that he had offended the emperor, so he tried his best to let others help collect the treasures, and gave these treasures to Yongzheng when he entered the palace, Yongzheng was a well-known model emperor, and everyone was frugal, but Cao Yan blatantly "bribed" him at this juncture, which was undoubtedly to hit the muzzle of the gun, so Yongzheng was furious and ordered someone to investigate Cao Yan.
After Cao Yan was arrested, the Cao family was anxious, at that time the Cao family had nothing of value, in order to save Cao Yan, they had to sell the things in the sale, but they were said by people with hearts that they were transferring family property, this matter reached Yongzheng's ears, Yongzheng ordered strict investigation of Jiangning weaving, strict investigation of the Cao family. In the sixth year of Yongzheng, the Cao family was raided, and the remaining family property was only a mere thirty-two thousand, and even Yongzheng couldn't understand such a fat difference, how the Cao family had achieved such a bad deficit.
After the defeat of the Cao family, Cao Xueqin, who was only four years old, moved back to an old house in Beijing with her family and lived a life of poverty. Cao Xueqin was aware of the indifference of the world, he despised the powerful, made up his mind to stay away from the officialdom, and lived a hard life all his life, and in his old age, even eating at home became a problem, and died of poverty and illness in 1763.