Why is there the saying "if you don't read Dream of Red Mansions at the beginning of the book, it's useless to read all the poems and books"?

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Dream of Red Mansions is a great work with high ideology and high artistry, representing the highest achievement of classical novel art, and is also a model work of ancient Chinese literature.

"Dream of Red Mansions" is the crystallization of traditional culture, permeated with the factors of traditional culture. It is an encyclopedia of feudal society and a compendium of traditional Chinese culture. The various forms of literature, arts and crafts, including poems, lyrics, compositions, fugues, songs, praises, eulogies, gathas, plaques, couplets, scrolls, riddles, jokes, wine commands, storytelling, plays, carvings, clay sculptures, Zen meditation, character measurement, divination, medicine, as well as poetry, literature, painting and qin, the Dream of Red Mansions is a collection of all forms of Chinese.

The Dream of the Red Chamber is a product of a specific historical and cultural background. Broadly speaking, the ancient Chinese cultural tradition that lasted for more than 4,000 years until the middle of the Qing Dynasty can be regarded as the cultural background from which "Dream of Red Mansions" emerged. The long-term cultural precipitation provides a suitable soil for the breeding of cultural and artistic masterpieces. Of course, there is also the specific cultural background of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which is also crucial in determining the appearance of a work at this time rather than at another time. Although the Qing dynasty was dominated by a culturally backward people and was traumatized by the social upheavals of the late Ming Dynasty, it soon began to recover with socio-economic recovery and development. By the time of Cao Xueqin, not only did the economy reach considerable prosperity, but culture also showed a trend of vigorous development. If at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Manchu officials and dignitaries in the Chinese culture still feel the membrane, so the court rituals and palace rules still need to be eunuchs to point out, to the period of Kang, Yong, Qian Manchu-Chinese cultural integration has reached a fairly high degree, princes and ministers and the clan children by the traditional culture, all to the Chinese culture of the authentic successor to the self-proclaimed. Cao Xueqin and his family, is this historical period of the specific cultural environment of the child, the traditional culture of the background, the specific cultural context of the Ming and Qing dynasties and the cultural environment of the Cao family, these three in Cao Xueqin body into one. A Dream of Red Mansions is a crystallization of traditional culture, and it is rich in the factors of traditional culture. In terms of reflecting the richness of life, it is the encyclopedia of feudal society; in terms of the cultural factors it contains, it can be said to be the sum of the traditional culture of the Chinese nation.