Cao Xueqin

Cao Zhan, known as Cao Xueqin, was born about 1715 in Jiangning, today Nanjing. His great-grandmother had been the Kangxi Emperor's wet nurse, and for nearly sixty years four men of three generations of his family held the post of Imperial Textile Commissioner at Jiangning; four times, on his southern tours, the emperor lodged in the Cao household, which lived in the greatest splendour. Early in the Yongzheng reign the family's property was confiscated for debts to the throne, and they moved back to Beijing in ruin. In his last years Cao lived in the western outskirts of Beijing, where 'the whole family ate gruel and wine was bought on credit', and spent ten years and five revisions writing Dream of the Red Chamber. On New Year's Eve of 1763 his young son died; grief brought on illness, and he died soon after, his book unfinished.