A handful of bitter tears, full of absurd words - the story of "Dream of Red Mansions" has injected a bright color into the four famous books, which is different from the epic romance of the Three Kingdoms, different from the blood pride of the Water Margin, and even more different from the fantasy light and monster of the Westward Journey. The story of the Red Mansion is a thin stream of water, scene after scene slowly unfolds, a character slowly emerges, their story does not have so many majestic chapters, but each of them can see the portrayal of the people around us.
And the most impressive thing about this story is the rich scene it depicts of the four major families of Jia Shiwang Xue, and many people say that the reason why Cao Xueqin can describe the life of a wealthy family so realistically is because he lived in such an environment when he was a child. But in fact, when Cao Xueqin was 13 years old, his home was ransacked.
How rich could the Cao family be before so that Cao Xueqin can still remember it when she describes this memory many years later? But in fact, when the Cao family was raided, the confiscated property was said to make Yongzheng's heart cold after seeing the bill, how much is this family wealth?
"Dream of Red Mansions" and Cao Xueqin
In fact, for who the creator of "Dream of Red Mansions" is, there seems to be more and more controversy on the Internet in recent years, and the first eighty times and drafts written by Cao Xueqin, who everyone firmly believed in before, have now made many people suspect that the so-called "Cao Xueqin" is actually just a code name, and the real creators of "Dream of Red Mansions" are actually a group of Ming Dynasty remnants.
In this view, the history of the decline of the four families of Jia Shi Wang Xue is actually depicting the decline of the Ming Dynasty. So in this novel, we can see that the Jia family, which is mainly described, lives as rich as royalty. And Cao Xueqin is actually the pseudonym of the early Qing dynasty literary hero Yuan Zhang, and at the same time, there are many remnants of the Ming Dynasty who participated in the creation, so the customs and customs in this book, the treasures of the material, all of them are worth examining, and the writing is very exquisite.
But in fact, this statement is only a speculative stage and has not yet been conclusive. So we can see many versions of the sequel to "Dream of Red Mansions", as well as various original versions of "Dream of Red Mansions" flowing out, and the most famous "Lu Youben" is one of them. However, these rumors in the market have never been recognized by the mainstream, and the most widely circulated on the market is still the first eighty times written by Cao Xueqin and the last forty times of Gao Que's sequel.
This is not only because of the lack of evidence for the claims written by these so-called Ming dynasty remnants, but also because the works that have been circulated in these versions are also very crude, not as subtle as the series of grass snake gray lines in "Dream of Red Mansions". And the historical Cao Xueqin is really a person, his grandparents lived in the area of Jinling, and the story from his own real experience is also very convincing.
How rich Cao Xueqin's family is
How rich is Cao Xueqin's family? It can be said that the statement that white jade is a gold and a horse described in "Dream of Red Mansions" is not an exaggeration, because Cao Xueqin's great-grandfather was a Jiangning weaver, and his grandmother was also Kangxi's nursing mother.
With such a relationship, the position of the Cao family in the Nanjing area (that is, the "Jinling" in the book) has always been very solid. And the position of Jiangning weaving was a fat gap in ancient times. For many years, people have yearned for the beauty of Suzhou and Hangzhou, in fact, because the Jiangnan area is rich in people, and Jiangning weaving manages the important economic source of the Jiangnan area - silk. This also greatly stimulated the rapid development of the Cao family, thus laying a rich family base.
When it came to Cao Xueqin's father, his father Cao Yin served as Kangxi's companion, had a good relationship with Kangxi, and became an imperial guard when he grew up. Therefore, when Kangxi Microservice visited the Jiangnan area in private, as long as he had the opportunity, he would choose to stay in Cao's house. Under such grace, the status of the Cao family became more and more important.
Unfortunately, this favor of the Cao family reached its peak during the Kangxi Dynasty, but soon came to an end in the Yongzheng Dynasty. This is actually easy to understand, after all, once the son of heaven and a courtier, especially the person who was very trusted by the previous emperor, will always be more feared by the successor. The Cao family apparently did not have that good luck, and soon after the Yongzheng Emperor ascended the throne, the family property was confiscated, and Cao Xueqin was only thirteen that year.
The lipstick that made Yongzheng's face change greatly
The Yongzheng Dynasty wanted to copy the Cao family's wealth, and also took a fancy to the wealth of the Cao family. During the Kangxi period, the Cao family took over as a palace four times, and the Yongzheng Emperor also knew more or less about that kind of pomp and circumstance. Just like the Princess Yuan Province described in "Dream of Red Mansions", a concubine is worth the Jia family spending a lot of money to build a grand viewing garden, not to mention other expenses, just such an expense almost hollowed out the Jia family, which shows the luxury of royal travel.
The Cao family took over the emperor, the pomp is naturally greater than the concubine's provincial, otherwise it is not worthy of the emperor's specifications, and once or twice is enough, four times in a row, even if the grandfather of the Cao family is from the Jiangning Weaving Bureau, the accumulated family wealth is easy to be consumed clean.
But the ancient wealthy families were most afraid of showing timidity, even if they couldn't make ends meet, with a huge deficit, they had to support their face outside. And Kangxi also understood this truth, so when he was dying, he remembered the Cao family, but he never thought that his son Yongzheng had already remembered this "fat meat", after all, the Cao family has been in business for many years, and there are so many large expenses, some things are really not done cleanly, which is a handle sent to people. So only five years after Kangxi's death, Yongzheng attacked the Cao family.
Yongzheng's purpose was very simple, that is, to use the efforts of someone to impeach the Cao family to confiscate the Cao family's property to fill the state treasury, but unexpectedly, the Cao family was also arrested, and the family was also copied, but the final list of confiscated property was not satisfactory. Yongzheng only looked at the numbers listed above, and his heart instantly became cold.
I saw that this list recorded that there were a total of 13 houses in the Cao family, with a total of nearly 500 houses, plus 19 hectares and 67 acres of good land, and 32,000 taels of silver in debts issued abroad, and the rest were some household utensils of the Cao family, and there was not much property.
postscript
Yongzheng copied the Cao family, thinking of filling the treasury, but since ancient times, prosperity is bound to decline, even if the Cao family has prospered, but if the management is not good, the family under the great business may not be prosperity, but easy to accelerate the decline. These wealthy families are accustomed to eating and drinking, and they will not easily pull down their faces, and they will sell their property to fill their faces later. Just like the Jia family later sold a lot of personal belongings in the article Red Chamber. So in the end, it was reasonable that the result of the raid was unsatisfactory, but Yongzheng did not expect that the defeat of a family would come so quickly...
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