11. Dream of the Red Chamber

Who was Gao E?

For more than 100 years it has been believed by experts that Cao Xue Qin didn’t write the last 40 chapters of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber (DRC) which was first published in 1791. We have good evidence for this argument, namely that not one of the 20+ handwritten copies of the novel that existed before 1791 contains any of the chapters 81-120. Not one. Instead, chapters 81 to 120 appear for the first time in the printed version of the novel.

In the printed novel two men are credited: the publisher Cheng Weiyuan and the editor Gao E. The published edition claims that the two men bought the last 40 chapters in a used-book store in Beijing. Almost no one believes this claim. Instead most people believe Gao E wrote the last 40 chapters and - as was typical for Chinese writers, he disclaimed any of fiction writing as his own. [To restate the facts: we do not know the identity of the authors of any of the other pre-1800 Chinese novels: The Saga of the Three Kingdoms, The Heroes of the Marsh, The Journey to the West, The Western Chamber, The Golden Lotus… none of these have an identified author].

Gao E, the editor, is the man mostly likely to have written the last 40 chapters.

Who was he? How was he different or similar to the initial author, Cao Xue Qin?

Gao E’s Biography

Gao E was born in 1738 (about 25 years after Cao Xue Qin) & he died in 1815. He passed the 2nd level of the Imperial Exam in 1788 (at the age of 50!) and passed the highest level of the exam in 1795 (at age 57!!). He was a member of the Bordered Yellow Banner but he was not Manchu, he was Chinese. He published one collection of his own poems shortly before his death. After he achieved the rank of Jinshi, he served the Qing government in several academic positions (like Lord Zheng in the DRC, he ran the Imperial Exam in one of the provinces).

This is an extremely unusual biography for two major reasons.

First, almost no ethnic Chinese were members of the Bordered Yellow Banner.

Second, not one man in 1,000 passed the 2nd level of the Imperial Exam at age 50 and I’m willing to bet that Gao E is the oldest man to pass the 3rd level of the exam in the entire Qing Dynasty.

Gao E’s Was an Old Man When He Passed the Exam

Most Chinese in the Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties sat for the exam starting around the age of 18 and giving up by age 36 if they hadn’t passed. Every person who takes the exam is ranked, from top to bottom. You know how well you did each time you take the exam. A man who ranked near the top (but didn’t pass) was much more likely to try again three years later, than a man who came in last.

For a normal Chinese scholar, you would try the exam if you thought you had a chance to pass. But nearly everyone who hadn’t passed, gave up after age 35 because it was well known that older men almost never passed the exam. The exam demanded perfect recall of thousands of pages of classic texts and everyone in China understood that memory began to fail in one’s 30s. Further the exam was physically grueling, during each exam in every province a few men died from the strain. Taking the Imperial exam was for a young man in peak physical and mental condition.

We do not know how many times Geo E sat for the exam. It could well be that he came close to passing each time and he tried every three years from age 21 to 57 - potentially 12 times. Or perhaps he tried for several years, gave up, then tried again. We do not know. But we do know that he only passed the 2nd level at age 50 in 1788, three years before the first publication of the 120 chapter version of the DRC.

For Gao E to try to pass the final level of the exam and succeed at age 57 is extraordinary. As I mentioned at the start, I don’t think any man ever passed the final exam in the Qing Dynasty at such an advanced age. Beyond the mental effort involved, what would be the point? Most men died before the age of 60. Most government officials retired in their late 50s. How long a career could Gao E expect at the age of 57? As we know, he served the Qing government for 17 years, retiring in 1813, age 76, and died just two years later.

Gao E appears to be a truly remarkable man, showing enormous dedication in a seemingly pointless quest which then was finally crowned with vindication and a measure of success.

The contrast between Gao E and the the first author, Cao Xue Qin is stark. Cao Xue Qin never passed even one level of the exam and although he married, he didn’t amount to much and died in poverty. His only son predeceased him and his wife disappeared from history; we don’t even know her name.

However, there is some commonality between the two men: they both worked hard on a long and unrewarding effort - Cao spent more than six years writing the first 80 chapters of the DRC while it is safe to assume Gao E tried and failed the exam multiple times, likely over several decades. Also, both men were members of the Manchu Eight Banners.

Gao E in the Bordered Yellow Banner

I have described the Manchu Banner system in several essays. See here and here. In brief, Nurhachi divided his early kingdom into four banners: Gold (Yellow), Silver (White), Red, and Blue. Then he doubled his banners in 1615, making eight. The most prestigious banner was Gold. When he doubled the banners, the #2 banner in rank became the Bordered Gold banner. His future heir, Abahai (AKA Hong Taiji) was given command of the Bordered Gold Banner and when he took control of his father’s kingdom in 1628, his banner, the Bordered Gold Banner, became #1 and the Gold Banner (known now as the Plain Yellow Banner) became #2 in the hierarchy.

There were almost no Chinese men in the Bordered Gold Banner. This was the banner of the Imperial family and it was 99% Jianzhu Manchu, along with a tiny number of Mongol Khans who had joined Hong Taiji in the years 1620 to 1640. Aside from Gao E, the only other Chinese man of note who was also a member of the Bordered Yellow Banner is Nian Gengyao (one of the most powerful men in Kangxi’s government).

To be blunt: Gao E, as a member of the Bordered Yellow Banner, was born near the apex of political and military power in China and he lived in this rarified atmosphere his entire life. Nearly all his compatriots in the Bordered Yellow Banner lived in the best part of Beijing. Most of his fellow Bannermen were imperial guards. Some of their daughters would likely serve in the Imperial Palace and a few even became consorts of the Huangdi (Emperor).

And yet… because he was a Chinese man, Gao E was unlikely to get an official position unless he passed the imperial exam. The only other way for him to gain an official post would be to meet the Huangdi (Emperor) and make a favorable impression. But there were tens of thousands of other Manchu (and Mongol) men trying to do the exact same thing and they were almost certainly better warriors and archers than Gao E - which was the best way to impress the Qianlong emperor.

Oddly, because Gao E was ethnically Chinese, he had to compete with other Chinese in the Imperial Exam. If he were Manchu (or Mongol) he could take the Easy Manchu Exam - an exam he would almost certainly have passed with the top grade. But the Qing government treated Chinese men, even those who were part of the Banners, as ordinary Chinese civilians in this one regard. When it came to taking the exam, Chinese Bannermen were competing with the best and brightest Chinese men - not with their fellows from the Banners.

This was a strange form of discrimination and its one that Cao Xue Qin also faced, and failed to surmount.

Now, Cao Xue Qin’s family was part of the Silver (Plain White) banner, which was ranked #3 in the hierarchy of banners. Prestigious to be sure, but in Beijing in the 1700s there were 100,000 other men in the Bordered Gold and Plain Yellow banners who were ranked higher than you. Being able to look down on the men of the Red, Blue, and Bordered White Banners was nice, but it didn’t matter very much.

The result of all this is: Gao E understood Cao Xue Qin, even though he likely never met the man. Gao E almost certainly knew the story of Cao Xue Qin’s family, at one time the Cao clan were one of the richest Chinese families in all the Banners. I’m sure their fall into disgrace and poverty was much talked about within Gao E’s family.

In all of China, there were few men who were better situated to carry on Cao Xue Qin’s story, and perhaps no one who had the literary skill (and chutzpah) to do it.

Gao E Works for Yinxiang, Prince of Yi

What follows is speculation about Gao E and why he wrote the last 40 chapters of the DRC.

Gao E, being a very intelligent man and an excellent writer, his services as a scribe were always in demand from his companions in the Bordered Yellow Banner. The reason is: Manchu officials had to be able to read and write both the Manchu language as well as Chinese. But very few Manchu were book-smart. Many of the highly placed Manchu officials were functionally illiterate and so they had to employ private secretaries to read documents to them out loud - then they would dictate their responses. [See Mark Elliott’s wonderful book The Manchu Way, pgs. 291-295].

As one of the rare members of the Bordered Gold banner who could read swiftly and write beautifully, I feel confident that Gao E gained employment even without passing the Imperial exam. My guess is that he became one of the private secretaries for Hongxiao, the Prince Yi (eldest son of Yinxiang who had been the half-brother of the Yongzheng Huangdi). [For detailed description of noble titles in the Qing Dynasty, the Wikipedia has a very long entry on this topic.]

We know that Hongxiao, Prince Yi, owned one of the early copies of the DRC because the Jimao version of the DRC was created by someone on his staff around the year 1760. I believe Gao E read Prince Yi’s copy of the DRC and the desire to complete the DRC started growing in his mind for some years before he actually began the project.

Shipping Grain to Beijing

My guess is that Gao E left Hongxiao’s staff sometime before 1778 (the year Hongxiao died). From there, it seems that Gao E worked for one of the Manchu officials in charge of shipping grain along the grand canal, sending it north to Beijing. I say this because the Grain Shipment system is described in Chapter 99 of the DRC and the writer describes aspects of the grain shipment which were not common knowledge.

The shipment of grain to the capital was one of the most critical jobs in the Qing government - just as it had been under the Ming government from 1420 to 1644. If the grain didn’t arrive at the capital in sufficient quantity, the people would starve, the cavalry horses would die, and the entire government might collapse.

Since the grain shipments had to arrive, significant amounts of corruption were tolerated in the process because the alternative - no grain - was potentially catastrophic. The Huangi and his council were concerned with the grain shipment each year but what mattered was getting enough grain to Beijing. If some of the grain that was supposed to go north ended up being sold illegally on the black market, that was a lesser concern.

As mentioned, in Chapter 99 of the DRC, Baoyu’s father is briefly put in charge of part of the grain shipping process and he makes a big mess because he is morally upright. His principled stand on refusing bribes and prohibiting any diversion of grain quickly gums up the whole works. Within six months, he is fired by the Huangdi and sent back to his previous job pushing paper in the Beijing Ministry of Works. Relatively few people outside the government knew the details of how the Chinese grain transport system actually functioned.

It would have been easy for someone to write that Baoyu’s father was corrupt and that’s why he was fired. Instead, Gao E writes that Baoyu’s father’s real problem was his failure to understand that the grain shipments didn’t move without corruption. Being uncorrupt was the problem! I’m not sure that the Huangdi himself could have fixed the corruption in the grain shipment system, after all, the shipping of grain from the south to Beijing dates to at least 1420.

In addition, I think only a man who didn’t fear attack for writing the truth would have written about the corruption in the grain transport system. Gao E, because of his membership in the Bordered Gold Banner, was nearly untouchable. Bannermen were only subject to Banner courts, not the regular laws and magistrates which controlled all the other 250+ million people of China.

Thus, Gao E could write about corruption in the grain shipping system and as long as he didn’t offend the Huangdi or the unit commanders of the Bordered Yellow Banner, he was safe. Almost no other Chinese men could do this.

Working With the Censorate

In addition to his work on the Grain shipments, it seems Gao E also worked for one of the Manchu officials who oversaw the Imperial Censorate. I say this because of the following events in the story:

1. Xue Pan is arrested and imprisoned for killing a man in a fight. Xue Pan’s family responds by gives more than 500 taels of silver to the Magistrate in charge of his case. The Magistrate then reduces the charge to justifiable manslaughter, with the punishment being a fine.

2. At this point, an Imperial Censor (AKA an investigating official) intervenes in the case and declares that the punishment of Xue Pan does not fit the evidence. The Censor suggests that the Magistrate was bribed to reduce the charges (which was true).

3. Xue Pan’s family then spends even more money to try and get the head of the Censorate in Beijing to reverse the Investigating Censor’s ruling and they fail. The Censorate cannot be bribed. Despite all the money they spend, what they accomplish is getting Xue Pan’s execution postponed.

4. A Commissionar Zhou - also from the Censorate (but possibly from the Ministry of Justice) decides to take a look at the Xue family and finds they are connected to the Jia family and he then uncovers some troubling deaths and illegal behavior which implicate the Jia family and then he gets the Huangdi to approve a raid on the Jia family estates (which is described in Chapter 105).

Note that the fictional Censors in the story are correct in general as to what is going on. They are mistaken on some of the details but basically, their assertions about attempted bribery of magistrates and the unnatural death of Yu Er-jie and Yu San-jie are pretty close to the truth. Inspector Zhao is unsuccessful in bringing down the Yong Gu Fu but if he had learned the truth about Xifeng’s killing of Yu Er-jie, he might have done more damage.

These events show how the Censorate can only be stopped by direct intervention from one of the Princes of Beijing (sons or nephews of the Huangdi). These are the only people who can go see the Huangdi and ask him to put the breaks on a Censor. Very few people ever saw a Censor in action (there were ~250 while the population in China was more than 250 million! Almost no one outside the government was in a position to observe how the Royal Princes could side-track or halt the Censors.

My guess is that Gao E either saw this while working for the Prince Yi, or he spent time working with one of the Manchu supervisors of the Censorate.

The Last 40 Chapters Are Actually Very Interesting

Most English translators say the last 40 chapters of the DRC are inferior to the first 80 (Hawks didn’t translate them, and Tsao Hsueh Chin gave them only a brief summary. By contrast, I found the last 40 chapters to be quite interesting. I am convinced that Cao Xue Qin didn’t write them, and I believe only a man who knew the inner workings of the Qing government could have done it.

My guess is that Gao E, around age 38, having failed the Imperial Exam many times, said to himself: I’ve wasted my life trying to pass the exam. I’m just going to spend the next six years of my life and finish the Dream of the Red Chamber.

Gao E brought his own understanding of the world to the project and I think his insight into China in the late 1700s is worth paying attention to.

Final Note: Did Gao E Really Pass the Exam at the age of 50?

I think the timing of this event is suggestive. We know from the Shu Yuanwei version of the DRC - hand written in 1789 - that the 120 chapter version of the novel now existed. Lets say Gao E writes his 40 chapter addition, between the ages of 36 and 44. This would result in the 40 chapters being done by ~1781. It circulates around. People in the Bordered Yellow Banner read it and like it. Someone powerful reads it and says, Our brother in the Bordered Yellow, Gao E, is such a talented writer. Its a shame that he has been denied a position in the government all this time just because he is Chinese. Let’s fix that.

Can a Prince of the Qing get a man to pass the Imperial Exam just by asking? Yes. The man in charge of the exam in each province could do this. Gao E could have been told by a powerful man: Gao, if you take the exam this year, I’m confident you will pass. Just make sure to include this four character phrase in one of your answers… Think of this as your well earned reward for all your work over the last decades, and in particular for completing the Dream of the Red Chamber.

Again, this is pure speculation but it seems fitting.

As for Gao E passing the 3rd level of the exam and attaining the rank of Jinshi, that is much easier to explain. Usually a third of the men that took the final stage of the exam passed. The last test was the relatively easy part of the exam system.

Perhaps Gao E was given this title as well. Control over who passed the highest level of the exam was in the hands of a few men who the Huangdi personally appointed. The exams of the 1790s were held when Heshen was effectively in control of the palace and almost anything could be done if you paid Heshen enough money. Could a Prince have suggested to Heshan that Gao E should become a Jinshi? Yes.