Foreign Fabrics In A Dream Of Red Mansions

This article examines the imported fabrics in A Dream of Red Mansions by tracing the period of late Ming and early Qing dynasty.People at all levels of society recognized and used various types of imported fabrics,and the resulting social impact,reflecting the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the context of economic globalization.Sino-foreign exchanged and shared civilizations during the period.A Dream of Red Mansions was written on the early Qing Dynasty,and a wide range of Western objects in the book gradually attracted the attention of scholars.At the beginning of the 20 th century,Western material civilization,a school of the study of the Red Book,was initiated,which involved the circulation of Western artifacts and its social influences in China with the point of view of culture and economy.In this period a series of political and economic changes took place in East Asian waters,which changed the trade pattern in Asia and affected global trade.The background of A Dream of Red Mansions and the Western objects mentioned were all closely related to the Great Navigation when East Asia was undergoing tremendous changes.The world market has thus taken shape,with textiles being the critical link for the European countries to join the Asian trade zone.In the late Ming and early Qing dynasty,the imported fabrics were colorful,sourced and bred mainly by the Europeans' new woolen cloths and the imported Western clothes from East Asia and Southeast Asia with a long history.Taking A Dream of Red Mansions as an example,these exotic fabrics infiltrated the nobles of the Qing Dynasty.The description of the noble family of the Qing Dynasty used the foreign fabrics in daily life such as the people in Jiafu,when the imported fabrics were regarded as daily necessities,the main imported fabrics introduced to China were undergoing subtle changes: the European woolen fabrics gradually increased and the types while the number of Western cloth sent from tributary states were gradually decreasing.After the 17 th century,due to the rise of the British national power and the gradual development of the woolen trade policy formulated for Asian trade,British woolen became the main force of European textiles in China.At the same time,East India Company showed that China accepted the market for woolen cloth.In the gradual expansion.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties,a large number of imported products entered the Chinese society and provided writing materials for literary works,thereby reflecting the unique social thoughts and life at that time.This article mainly adopts the method of mutual verification of literature and history.Through comparing the imported fabrics in A Dream of Red Mansions with the true records in the historical materials of the Ming and Qing Dynasties,we examined the imported fabrics in the historical context and restored the process of the exchange of Chinese and Western cultures.In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties,people of different social strata showed differentiated views of Western civilization based on their cognition and purpose,reflecting the collision and integration of different civilizations.