Hung Lou Meng is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was written in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. It is considered a masterpiece of Chinese literature and is generally acknowledged to be the pinnacle of Chinese fiction. "Redology" is the field of study devoted exclusively to this work.
Red Chamber is believed to be semi-autobiographical, mirroring the rise and decay of author Cao Xueqin's own family and, by extension, of the Qing Dynasty. As the author details in the first chapter, it is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. The novel is remarkable not only for its huge cast of characters and psychological scope, but also for its precise and detailed observation of the life and social structures typical of 18th-century Chinese aristocracy.
For the non-Chinese reader, the title of this book translates to "A Dream of Red Mansions"/"A Dream of Red Chamber" and is also known as "The Story of the Stone".
This book is one of the "big four" of Chinese books. (The others are "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" , "Water Margin" and the last is "Journey to the West" )
