Jin Ping Mei made the household the subject of the Chinese novel, and Dream of the Red Chamber is what that opening produced. Before it the form was heroes, outlaws and gods; after it a novel could be about one large family's rooms, servants, money and decline. The specific inheritance is the structure: a wealthy compound observed over years, a large cast of women whose rivalries are the plot, ritual and festival described at length, and an ending in which the house falls. Cao Xueqin's novel is far less explicit and far more lyrical, and it is usually read as answering its predecessor rather than repeating it, which is what makes the debt visible.
