Xueqin Cao

Widely known by the literary name Cao Xueqin, Cao Zhan was an 18th-century Chinese writer of the Qing dynasty and is generally credited as the author of Dream of the Red Chamber (Hongloumeng), often regarded as a high point of Chinese fiction.

Accounts of his life suggest he was born into a prominent family connected to the Qing court, but that the family later fell into decline. Biographical details are not fully settled, yet this rise and loss are often linked to the vivid social world and sense of fading grandeur found in his writing.

He is also remembered as a poet and painter, not only a novelist. Even with many uncertainties about his life, his reputation has endured because Dream of the Red Chamber remains a richly observed, deeply human portrait of family life, love, and loss.