Among the "Four Great Families of Jinling" in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Cao Xueqin's least favorite family may be the Xue family.
The Jia family is the first home of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and Cao Xueqin undoubtedly has great sympathy and pity for the rise and fall of the Jia family. Therefore, Zhen Shiyin's annotated "Good Song" makes people sad, especially the last sentence "The land is really clean after falling into a white expanse" is full of desolation and helplessness.
For historians, Cao Xueqin still has a sense of identity, so the two characters related to historians in "Dream of the Red Chamber", from Miss Shijia JiaMu many years ago to Shi Xiangyun, are positive characters, Cao Xueqin gives them many advantages, but also let them win the love of many readers.
For the Wang family, Cao Xueqin gave them a chilling characteristic - viciousness. From Wang Xifeng, who is fierce and fierce, to Lady Wang who has created many tragedies in Jia Province and forced qingwen and Jin Jun'er to die, to Prince Teng, who has risen step by step, and Wang Ren, who has sold his niece, all of them are fierce characters, which makes people daunted.
For the Xue family, Cao Xueqin was more contemptuous. Therefore, when he appeared from the Xue family, Cao Xueqin let them embark on the road of "turning to relatives and friends".
Obviously, he was a nobleman who made slaves and concubines, pampered himself, and had no worries about food and clothing, but like the humble Grandma Liu, he lived a family that flattered the people of Jia Province and exchanged themselves for benefits. This is the most authentic Xue family.
Xue Baochao is the person who is the most able to flatter Jia Mu, even if she has a birthday, Jia Mu asks her what she likes to eat, what drama she likes, she also has to pick up what Jia Bao Yu likes to say; obviously Jia Bao Yu was beaten, Wang Xifeng ordered someone to make lotus leaf soup for him, but Xue Baochao insisted on pulling it out, "I have been here for so long, pay attention to it, Feng Yatou is no more clever, but the old lady goes."
Aunt Xue's flattery is not as straightforward as Xue Baochao's, but she is also pleasing to Jia Mu everywhere, even if she doesn't want to play cards at all, in order to please Jia Mu, she also has to hold on hard.
"The golden nest and silver nest are not as good as their own grass nests", not to mention the Xue family's house in the capital, absolutely cannot be a grass nest. No matter how good other people's homes are, they are not as comfortable as their own homes. How can living a daily life of flattery compare to doing whatever you want at home and saying whatever you want?
However, the Xue family just didn't live in their own house and wanted to live in Jia Province. Some readers believe that the Xue family did this for the sake of Xue Baochao and Jia Baoyu's "golden and jade good relationship", but this is definitely not the only purpose of the Xue family. Cao Xueqin even said the real reason why Xue Jialai was in Jia Province through the names of the two servants.
We all know that most of the ladies in "Dream of the Red Chamber" have a fresh and elegant good name, and none of these names are like a painting, as if they came out of ancient poetry. The Qingwen, Raider, Musk Moon, and BiJian in Jia Baoyu's room, the Purple Crane, Snow Goose, and Spring Fiber in the Daiyu Room, and the Waiters and Cui Mo in the Exploring Spring Room are all very good.
However, when I arrived at Aunt Xue's place, the painting style suddenly changed. Aunt Xue's two servants were called Tongxi and Tonggui respectively. Such a name is very incompatible with the style of "Dream of the Red Chamber", but it is truly written from Cao Xueqin's pen.
Tongxi and Tonggui, the names of these two servants, also hide Cao Xueqin's contempt for the Xue family. The Jia family pursues poetry, the Xue family pursues only "joy" and "gui", and they also hope to achieve the purpose of "tongxi" and "tonggui" by forging closer relations with Jia Fu.
The most important thing is that these two names are not at all like the names of girls or girls, more like the names of Xiao Wei, but Cao Xueqin, who has created countless good names, has given these two embarrassing names to Aunt Xue's handmaiden, and I have to say that this has a deep meaning, which is his most spicy irony of the Xue family.