A Dream of Red Mansions,sometimes translated as The Dream of the Red Chamber, the great classical Chinese novel written in the mid-eighteenth century during the reign of Emperor Chien-lung of the Ching Dynasty, has been widely popular throughout the last two hundred years and The four great houses of Chia, Shih, Wang and Hsueh described in this novel were typical basic political units of feudal Such families were linked with the court above and the local officials below to form a network of control with the feudal autocratic state power as its The book depicts the inevitable doom of these families, riven as they are by fierce struggles among themselves and in society, focusing on the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu and also provides a panorama of the lives of people of various levels in the degenerating It is the only one novel so brilliantly integrated with these that readers are fascinated and moved by With superb artistry the author presents a panoramic genre-painting, a whole gallery of highly individual yet typical Through detailed descriptions of their daily life he succeeds in depicting their different idiosyncrasies, thoughts and In the use of dialogue too he shows outstanding skill, putting such distinctive speech into each character's mouth that the reader feels as if he can see and hear the The Ching Dynasty (1644-1911) was the last feudal dynasty in C The Chien-lung era (1736-95) was the turning point towards the decline of the Ching D Crisis-riven feudalism was already on its last The whole fabric of Chinese feudal society was tottering on the verge of final This was the period in which Tsao Hsueh-chin the author of A Dream of Red Mansions Tsao Hsueh-chin died in the twenty-eighth year of Chien-lung (1763)The novel is a great realistic work among early Chinese novels, a superb achievement in both ideological and artistic Lu Xun, the great 20th century Chinese writer, has this comment on the novel: "The appearance of A Dream of Red Mansions shatters all traditional ideas and techniques of "