From "Jin Ping Mei" To "Dream Of Red Mansions"

"Golden Lotus" and "Dream of Red Mansions" are two full-length realistic novels reflecting the social reality and family life of that time. Among them, the characters’ entertainment and leisure activities scattered throughout the novel,reaching a peak representing social thought and social culture at that time respectively.In the novels the family entertainment and leisure activities are mainly around the family life to unfold, but show their different content and features. They reflect the social outlooks in different periods of the Ming and Qing Dynasty, and show social trends, values, ethics, morals, and many other aspects of people at different times.This paper will be divided into five chapters to elaborate. The first chapter mainly discusses the background of "Golden Lotus" and "Dream of Red Mansions", mainly relating to several aspects of politics, economy and culture of the two periods. And to find a comparable point between two books and two times. The second chapter mainly discusses the home entertainment and leisure culture in the "Golden Lotus",which are basically divided into two aspects of material culture and spiritual culture,to unveil the era significance of the entertainment and leisure culture and its development and occurrence. The third chapter discusses the home entertainment and leisure culture in the "Dream of Red Mansions", which is mainly divided into two aspects of material culture and spiritual culture, to unveil the occurrence and development of the entertainment and leisure culture and analyze its era significance.The two chapters pay attention to their mutual correspondence in content, and mainly emphasize on several major aspects of landscape architecture, food, drama,entertainment and religious culture. Other details would be a simple discussion. The fourth chapter focuses on the evolution of family entertainment and leisure culture,including the evolution of the description ways and specific content of the novel, such as the changes of leisure products, leisure space, leisure activities and related industries from the "Golden Lotus" to "Dream of Red Mansions" in different times.The fifth chapter discusses the reason and the influence and significance of this cultural evolution. The family entertainment and leisure culture had provided a template for literary creation for future generations, with larger ranges of content,concern and angle, method by literature. Both the two books have not only created vivid characters and theme with profound thought, but also displayed the flowing deformation of the Refined and Popular culture, and the aesthetic moral transformation of the corresponding times.