However, Cao Xueqin did not say that the story of A Dream of Red Mansions took place in the Qing Dynasty. He gave a particularly mysterious answer, at the beginning of the book.
In A Dream of Red Mansions, Zhen channeled her dreams for the first time.
There is such a passage in Jia Yucun's dusty wife: at first glance, the empty Taoist priest turned out that he had no talent for mending the sky and joining the WTO in illusion, and was brought into the world of mortals by that vast scholar and mysterious real person and led to the other side; It tells about the land of depravity, the land of reincarnation, as well as family chores, boudoir leisure, poetry riddles, but it is still well prepared. It's just the age of the dynasty, and you lose without taking the exam. There is a cloud behind:
Without the talent to mend the sky, it is a waste of time to enter the world of mortals. Who will remember to give this department a wonderful biography?
Here, the story of A Dream of Red Mansions is the "before and after" of this stubborn stone. As for the time when it happened, the author clearly told us that the dynasty was lost and there is no way to verify it.
Although Cao Xueqin meant to tell a love story without dynasties, he inadvertently revealed a lot of information about time in his writing.
Take your time if you don't believe the author.
In the second section of Leng Zixing's On Guo Rongfu, Jia Yucun made the following exposition: If a person or a woman is born with this spirit (referring to the spirit of the integration of good and evil), he cannot become a benevolent gentleman on earth, nor can he become a great evil on earth. Among thousands of people, its smart and witty spirit is above thousands of people; Its perverse and unreasonable state is below tens of millions of people. If you are born in a rich family, you are infatuated. If you are born in a poor family of poetry and books, you are an easy scholar. Even if he comes from a poor family, even if he is an excellent prostitute, he will never be a pawn, a healthy servant and willing to be driven by a mediocre man. Such as Qian You, Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Wang, Gu Hutou, Tang, Liu Tingzhi, Wen Feiqing, Min Nangong, Shi Manqing, Liu Qiqing, Qin Shaoyou, and recently Ni Yunlin, Tang Bohu, Zhu Zhishan, and Li Guinian and Huang Zan.
The eleven words "Ni Yunlin, Tang Bohu and Zhu Zhishan recently" in this passage are the key points, which are enough to tell us what dynasty Jia Yucun lived in, of course, that is, the dynasty in which the story of A Dream of Red Mansions took place.
Since Jia Yucun called Ni Yunlin (Ni Zan, one of the "Yuan Sijia") in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties and Tang Bohu and Zhu Zhishan in the middle of Ming Dynasty as "modern" figures, these three historical celebrities should be three or four hundred years earlier than him at most. If they are over 500 years old, how dare they take the word "near" as their orientation?
Chou Shizhou, that is, Chou Ying, was a great painter in the Ming Dynasty who was a little later than Tang Bohu and Zhu Zhishan, and was also called "the four great painters in the Ming Dynasty" with Shen Zhou, Wen Zhiming and Tang Yin (that is, Tang Bohu). His date of birth and death is also a key to determine the time coordinates of the story of A Dream of Red Mansions, because his painting "Double Bright Pictures" was mentioned in the fiftieth chapter of Xue Lu 'an's impromptu poem "Warm Scenery and Elegant Spring riddles"