The first person to see "The Story of the Stone" was: Hu Shi.
In August 1927, Hu Shi purchased the fragmentary copy of "Zhiyanzhai's Recommendations on the Story of the Stone" from Hu Xingyuan in Shanghai, which is the Jiaxu version of the "The Story of the Stone". "He is convinced that this copy is the oldest in the country." Copy of "The Story of the Stone".
In December 1948, Hu Shi took this copy with him when he flew overseas. Later, he deposited the original Jiaxu copy in the Cornell University Library in the United States. In early 2005, the Shanghai Museum bought it back from Hu Shi's descendants for US$830,000, and it is now stored in the museum's rare book warehouse.
Introduction
"A Preliminary Study of Qin Liangyu and the Story of Stone" written by Sun Yizu and Sun Yi focuses on exploring and analyzing the extraordinary wandering experience of this "Jade Ruyi" and discovers that every aspect of it A stay and a departure are like a boat on a voyage. Each place has an extraordinary and legendary experience, and it is so amazingly consistent at many points such as time, place, humanities and political environment.
From the storyline of the first eighty chapters of "Dream of Red Mansions" and the comments of Zhi Yanzhai and Jihusou, many metaphors related to this jade article were also revealed. It was found that Cao Xueqin used these in his writing The use of jade as a prop and even the plot, dialogue and poetry of the story all point to the jade Ruyi inscribed by Qianlong.