Cao Xueqin(1716~1763), styled Mengruan, had the literary names Xueqin and Qinxi Jushi. His ancestral home was Liaoyang, and later was received as member of the Orthodox White Banner of the "Eight Banners" of the Man nationality in the Qing Dynasty.

曹雪芹(1716~1763 )，字梦阮，号雪芹、芹溪居士,祖籍辽阳。先世本汉人，后入满洲正白旗。

From his great-grandfather to his father's generation, four persons of three generations of the Cao's successively held the post of Jiangning Zhizao, a post in charge of satin-weaving for the use of the emperor or officials, for as long as 60 years, enjoying imperial favor for along time and living a life of luxury and dissoluteness.

双语阅读之中国历史名人:曹雪芹

曹雪芹曾祖到父辈，曹家祖孙三代4人历任江宁织造达60年之久。

Emperor Kangxi lived in the office of Jiangning Zhizao four times during his six inspection¹ tours to the south.

康熙6次南巡，有4次都以江宁织造署为行宫。

During the reign² of Emperor Yongzheng, the house of Cao Family was searched and their property was confiscated³, their family, once prosperous and prominent, being on the wane⁴.

雍正年间，曹家遭受抄家，由盛转衰。

During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, great calamity⁵ befell the family again.

乾隆年间又遭巨祸，从此一败涂地。

Living in such a family, Cao Xueqin endured all kinds of frustrations⁶ and tribulations⁷ in his lifetime, getting a full taste of misery⁸ and bitterness.

曹雪芹从繁华坠人贫困，一生历尽坎坷与苦难，饱尝了人世的辛酸与悲痛。

Imperturbably⁹ he began to ponder and reflect upon the past. He dipped his brush heavily in poignant¹⁰ tears to blend the tragedy of the age with culture and life, which resulted in A Dream of Red Mansions¹¹, the summit of Chinese classical fiction.

往事已成旧梦，他开始冷静地回味与反思，对人生和历史有了很多感悟，因此他能把时代的悲剧、文化的悲剧和人生的悲剧熔为一炉，饱蘸辛酸之泪创作出中国古典小说的高峰之作《红楼梦》。

Before he could complete the book, he passed away due to exhaustion¹², leaving behind merely 80 chapters of scribe's copy.

书未成，泪尽而逝，仅留下八十回抄本。

During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, Gao E combined the 80-chapter transcript¹³ with over 30 volumes of incomplete draft and produced a 120-chapter edition to be block-printed.

乾隆年间，高鹗根据八十回后的30余卷抄稿，增补成一百二十回刊刻。

A Dream of Red Mansions was originally entitled The Story of the Stone. It took the author 10 years to read over marginalia and make additions and deletions five times. The fiction was the crystalization of Cao's talent, emotion, scholarship and painstaking¹⁴ effort.

红楼梦》初名《石头记》，披阅十载，增删五次，是曹雪芹一生才华、学问与心血的结晶。

Its main thread was the passionate¹⁵ love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, with the first five chapters as its key link. Through the depiction¹⁶ of the prosperity and adversity of the four big clans¹⁷, namely, Jia family, Shi family, Wang family and Xue family, the author exposed and animadverted with profundity¹⁸ the evils of the feudal¹⁹ ruling class and feudal system. The tragedy of the times caused by the decadence²⁰ and collapse²¹ of the Qing Dynasty was fully incarnated²².

小说以宝黛爱情为主线，以前五回为纲，通过对贾、史、王、薛四大家族兴衰的描绘，深刻揭露和批判了封建统治阶级与整个封建制度的罪恶，比较全面地表现了清王朝腐朽没落造成的时代悲剧。

A Dream of Red Mansions was penetrated²³ with an intense feeling of predestination, the concepts of “nihility" and that “the nature of the things was the emptiness" . It contained the historical sense of vicissitudes²⁴ and the experience of life piercing to the bones. It was endowed with rich implication of tragedy.

红楼梦》中渗透着强烈的命运感与“虚无”、“色空”的观念，蕴涵着荣久必枯、兴久必衰的历史感受和透骨人髓的人生体验，具有浓郁的悲剧意味。

As a great realistic magnum opus and a fiction of human feelings like an encyclopedia²⁵, it has been interpreted divergently by innumerable people.

这是一部伟大的现实主义巨著，一部百科全比式的人情小说，两百年来，它得到了无数人的无尽的阐释。

The study of Cao Xueqin and A Dream of Red Mansions has already become a renowned²⁶ cosmopolitan²⁷ school called the Hongloumeng(A Dream of Red Mansions) scholarship.

对曹雪芹和《红楼梦》的研究已成为一门专门学问，称为“红学”。