On Hypothetical Relationships between ZHU You dun and CAO Xue qin and His A Dream of Red Mansions

ZHU You-dun was a great composer of Yuan Zaju of early Ming Dynasty and CAO Xue-qin was famous for his A Dream of Red Mansions. The two persons lived in two different dynasties and they were remote from each other in time. And apparently, they had no relation with each other at all. In fact, it is not so. ZHU’s Zaju had vast influence in Qing court. Cao’s family was in close connection with the court. In this sense, CAO was not a stranger to ZHU’s Zaju. ZHU was then a marquise and his original name had been Fan. To Qing Dynasty, his family was no longer in power. From the encountering of ZHU’s family, CAO thought of his life and felt sad about his family’s declination. His acceptance of ZHU had its own reasons. ZHU’s hobbies and his attitude toward females were quite similar to those of CAO’s, which were shown in the novel A Dream of Red Mansions. ZHU’s closed structure of his Zaju was in accordance with the novel which both begins and ends with a myth. Various signs show that such coincidence seems accidental but inevitable actually. Though there is no evidence, it is in line with the common sense. Compared with those researches only in form, this is much closer to the truth.