A Dream of Red Mansions—the great classical Chinese novel written in the mid-18th century during the reign of the Qing Emperor Qianlong—has been widely popular throughout the last two hundred plus years. The four great houses of Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue as described in this novel were typical basic political units of feudal society. Such families were linked with the court above and the local officials below to form a network of control centered on the autocratic power of the feudal state. The book depicts the inevitable doom of these families, riven as they are by fierce struggles among themselves and in society, focuses on the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, and provides a panorama of the lives of people of various levels in a degenerating empire.