The history and background of the composition of the novel Honglou meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone) has been a very popular subject in the scholarly world since it was set in movable-type printing by Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E in 1791-1792, all together in one hundred and twenty chapters. In late Qing and during the early Republican Era it was gradually discovered, however, that even before the publication of the Cheng-Gao edition there had been a number of transcribed copies, in eighty chapters only, being circulated among close friends and relations in some semi-aristocratic households, each of which bears a number of marginal commentaries signed under a pen-name Zhiyan zhai ([Master of] the Studio of the Red Inkstone) or using a similar pseudonym. The study of the novel during the early years of the Republic (unlike the trifling and brief remarks contributed by a host of Qing scholars found in their leisurely jottings or in their own commentaries added to the reprinted new editions of the work) has sparked a number of serious contests among modem scholars even up to the present time. Some earlier scholars (led by Cai Yuanpei [1868-1940] and echoed later by Pan Chonggui and others) stick to some of the traditional views maintaining that the novel bears remarks reminiscent of the longing for the lost Ming dynasty, containing also some anti- Manchu feelings of the ethnic Han-Chinese hidden in between the lines. The others (advocated by Hu Shi [Hu Shih, 1891-1962] and followed by many others) are more inclined to utilize the autobiographical materials scattered in the same work to strengthen the importance of Cao Xueqin ( 1724-1763), his undisputed yet sometimes ambiguous authorship, and his prestigious family background to the creation of such a gigantic literary work. The present writer stands somewhere between the advocations of these two Schools. He does not believe that it is necessary to view them as being antagonistic. Although he accepts several of the autobiographical findings gathered by Hu Shi, Zhou Ruchang and others, he has not completely refuted the hermeneutic approach for the study of some parts of the book which he believes might have inherited from some remains of an old version which Cao Xueqin could have kept in his unfinished manuscript as an early and feeble structure while planning his creative work. Historically, the first emperor of the Qing dynasty, Shunzhi (r. 1644-1661), had himself a very moving and tragic romance with his beloved royal concubine Osi Donggo (1639-1660), originally wife (and widow) of his half-brother, the Hosoi Royal Prince Bom-bogor, who pined away at the age of twenty-two, the Chinese reckoning. Tonggo, the Manchu concubine whose clan name was unfortunately homophonous with that of a Han-Chinese courtesan, Dong Xiaowan (1625-1651), who lived in the South, was married to Mao Pijiang (Mao Xiang, 1611-1693), a distinguished literary figure. She either had met her mysterious and early death, or as Professor Chen Yinke (Chen Yinque, 1891-1969) suggests, might have been hijacked by some Manchu soldiers during the time of disturbances and simply disannpared. Rumnours in the South give that Concubine Tonggo was in fact none other than the famous courtesan who was later admitted into the harem and given a Manchu name. There are a few commentators of the novel who believe that the Tonggo/Dong Xiaowan story had however, slipped into the plot of the novel and is reflected in the Baoyu/Daiyu tragedy Proving impeccably the absurdity of the North- and -South Mixture, the writer of this paper nevertheless cites a number of incidents depicted in the novel which match some of the contemporaneous historical accounts. They are found, for instance, in the Qing History, the Qing Veritable Records (Qing shilu), the miscellaneous writings included in the Memoir of Schall von Bell (1592-1666), a German Jesuit priest who served at the court, the yulu and diary of the Chan (Zen) Master Muchen Daomin (1596-1674) to whom the emperor had shown unusual esteem, and a diary compiled by a Korean envoy Yi Myo who witnessed many events at that time. These accounts show very convincingly that in the novel, the male-protagonist Baoyu resembles very closely the image and the behaviour of the reigning emperor who had a high enthusiasm for the Han-Chinese culture.