Cao Xueqin ([tsʰǎʊ ɕɥètɕʰǐn] tsow sh'weh-chin; 4 April 1710 – 10 June 1765[a][1][2][3]) was a Chinese novelist and poet during the Qing dynasty.

Cao Xueqin was born to a Han Chinese clan[4] that was brought into personal service (as booi aha or bondservants of Cigu Niru) to the Manchu royalty in the late 1610s.

[6] After the Plain White Banner was put under the direct jurisdiction of the Qing emperor, Cao's family began to serve in civil positions of the Imperial Household Department.

By the early 18th century, the Cao clan had become so rich and influential as to be able to play host four times to the Kangxi Emperor in his six separate itinerant trips south to the Nanjing region.

[11] Cao eventually settled in the countryside west of Beijing, where he lived the larger part of his later years in poverty selling off his paintings.

Cao Xueqin's family fate has changed from the status like blooming of flowers to the state of decline, making him deeply experience the sorrow of life and the ruthlessness of the world, and also get rid of the mundanity and narrowness of his original social class.

His tragic experience, his poetic emotion, his spirit of exploration, and his sense of innovation are all cast into "Dream of the Red Chamber".

Dream of the Red Chamber is a vivid recreation of an illustrious family at its height and its subsequent downfall, and the novel was "semi-autobiographical" in nature.

[12] A small group of close family and friends appeared to have been transcribing his manuscript when Cao died quite suddenly in 1763–4, apparently out of grief owing to the death of a son.

In 1791, Cheng Weiyuan (程偉元) and Gao E, who claimed to have access to Cao's working papers, edited and published a "complete" 120-chapter version.