Cao Xueqin

Cao Xueqin (c. 1715–1763/64) was a Qing novelist, born at Shangyuan near Nanjing into a bondservant family of the Plain White Banner, grandson of Jiangning textile commissioner Cao Yin.

In 1727 the Yongzheng Emperor seized the family's estates and jailed Cao Fu, forcing them to Beijing. Cao spent his later years poor in the western suburbs, selling paintings while labouring for a decade on Dream of the Red Chamber, a novel of a great family's rise and fall.

He died in 1763 or 1764. He left some eighty chapters, the core of one of China's Four Great Classical Novels.