Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Forward -- Between "Noble and Humble" Peculiar Family History -- The Mixing of Manchu and Han Culture -- The Close Connection Between the Cao Family and the Kangxi Emperor -- Outstanding Talents of the Early Qing Dynasty -- Sudden Misfortune Comes -- After a Long Drought, Heavy Rain Fell: The Birth of a Luminary -- The Plot and Cruel Persecution -- Unusual Heredity -- Bondservants in the Imperial Household Department -- The Old Mansion at the Jinling Imperial Textile Factory -- Great Disaster Looms -- The Catastrophe of Confiscation -- A Little Courtyard in Suanshikuo -- Cao Xueqin's Most Influential Teachers -- Seventy-Two Divisions of Hell and More than One Hundred Maidservants -- "Petals Fall as the Water Runs Red" -- Out of Misfortune Comes Happiness: The Paozi Riverside -- Splendidly Clothed but Lost Among Actors -- "The Sentimental World -- An Astonishing New Philosophy of "Good and Evil" -- House Arrest -- A Second Radical Change -- Wandering Aimlessly and Living Off Relatives -- Friendship with the Dun Brothers Forged -- The Land of Poetry -- Writing in Tears and Blood -- West Mountain and Wormwood Weeds -- "An Old Dream of Qinhuai, Yet the People Remain" -- The Red Inkstone Commentary -- The Yangshi Compound at Anding Gate -- "A Proud and Aloof Person Like You Astonishes the World" -- The Thin Mist of Evening over CaoÌs Humble Hut -- The Death of a Literary Genius -- A Matter of Eternal Regret.