What difficulties did Cao Xueqin encounter when he wrote A Dream of Red Mansions?

Hu Shi's Re-evaluation of Zhi Yanzhai's The Story of the Stone

Cao Xueqin was born in Nanjing and lived a rich life as a teenager. At the age of thirteen, the year after the Cao family was copied, the family moved back to Beijing, and their wealth dropped sharply. Since then, Cao Xueqin has lived a hard life of "thatched rafters, earthenware, rope beds" and "porridge and wine are often on credit to the whole family". With regard to the creative process of A Dream of Red Mansions and Cao Xueqin's life in the middle and late period, due to the lack of literature, many problems cannot be ascertained and can only be doubted. From the scattered records of Cao Xueqin's good friends Zhang Yiquan, Dunmin and Duncheng, we only know that Cao Xueqin is versatile, good at painting, addicted to alcohol and crazy, and has a proud attitude towards the dark society. Cao Xueqin wrote A Dream of Red Mansions under extremely difficult conditions. "Every word is meticulous, and ten years of hard work is extraordinary." This masterpiece exhausted his life's hard work, but before the book was finished, he fell ill because of the sudden death of his beloved son, and "died in tears", not yet 50 years old.