A Dream of Red Mansions is finished, but some manuscripts are missing.

Many readers think that Cao Xueqin didn't finish writing A Dream of Red Mansions. He only wrote about 8 times, and before he could write down, he stopped writing and died. This is not the case. Cao Xueqin finished writing the whole Dream of Red Mansions, but the whole book is not 12 times. According to Mr. Zhou Ruchang's research, the general structure of Dream of Red Mansions is based on nine times as a unit and twelve times as the combination number of characters and plots. Therefore, the whole book should be 9×12=18 times.

Cao Xueqin has basically completed the whole book, with a complete reply, and the narrative words are basically written every time, leaving only some "parts" such as poems to be embedded. Of course, it is necessary to unify the manuscript and polish off some inconsistent or clerical errors. Although the whole book has been completed, the manuscripts are lost in the next thirty chapters or so, which leads some people to think that A Dream of Red Mansions has not been finished.

Extended materials

The manuscripts of A Dream of Red Mansions were lost in the last 3 chapters, mainly due to the following reasons:

1. Physical loss. For example, soaking caused by leaking rain in houses, wear and tear caused by long-term reading, rat disaster, moth-eaten and so on;

second, human losses caused by non-malignant motives. For example, relatives and friends can't wait to borrow the manuscript they just wrote to read, perhaps because they like it and leave it behind, perhaps because they don't appreciate it and don't cherish it, or because they have no choice but to think about it when they encounter difficulties;

Third, some borrowers feel that there are many "obstacles" in reading, that keeping such manuscripts will cause trouble, and that it is unsafe for Cao Xueqin to continue writing like that, so they destroyed them after reading them;

fourth, malicious intervention is tantamount to a raid. This is, of course, a "well-connected" person. "It's urgent to ask for a book." The author can't do it without giving the manuscript. After taking it away, even if he doesn't pursue it again, he will implement "seizure" and throw it into a dark well.

5. kill it in a premeditated way. Mr. Zhou Ruchang's long article "Behind a Dream of Red Mansions" quoted an imperial edict from the fourth day of the first month in the thirty-seventh year of Qianlong (Gregorian calendar 1772, about eight years after Cao Xueqin's death). The purport of the imperial edict was to order the purchase of a group of books, with the intention of checking them, and then banning some of them. This is of course a very harsh cultural autocratic measure.

according to the data, there were more than 3, species and more than 6, pieces banned at that time. However, after all, Emperor Qianlong was a great politician, and he knew that he could not just ban and destroy books that were "offensive". Instead, he would "transform" some of them and make them "harmful" into "harmless".

Zhou Lao's thesis is very detailed, and many historical materials are cited, forming a strict logical chain, so we can't quote them all here. In short, the conclusion is that Cao Xueqin's Dream of Red Mansions has not been completely banned, but has been "reformed" by Mr. He Shen, an adult-looking for a writer to "copy the original text" in the first 8 chapters and rewrite it completely after the 8 chapters, turning it into a simple "love letter", that is, an "unobstructed" "love novel"-

People's Daily Online-Liu Xinwu: Cao Xueqin finished writing A Dream of Red Mansions.