"Prince Hongshi" is set in the late Kangxi period to the Yongzheng Dynasty, telling the emotional story of the prince Hongshi and his concubine Yulan in the court. The image of "the stone left in the wilderness" in the opening chapter is used throughout the whole text, implying that although he is a prince, he cannot escape his bad luck. With the outbreak of the Nian Gengyao case and the decline of the Cao and Li families, Hongshi was eventually expelled from the clan and imprisoned to death by Yongzheng because of his willfulness and unpopularity. The ending echoes the opening, and its fate is as inevitable as a stone patching the sky. The growth line of Cao Zhan (Cao Xueqin) hints at the origin of the creation of "Dream of Red Mansions", and the entire text shows the struggle between power and humanity through exquisite imagery.
