The author deliberately set the story in the Ming Dynasty, but actually described the social life of the Qing Dynasty. The book describes some images of Confucian scholars who were deeply poisoned by stereotyped imperial examination system and feudal ethics, reflecting their extremely hypocritical social habits caused by their pursuit of fame and fortune at that time, and then satirizing the fatuity and incompetence of feudal officials, the greed and meanness of landlords and gentry, the hypocrisy and meanness of arty celebrities, and the decay of the whole feudal ethics system and the distortion of human soul.