The Collection
Four hundred and thirteen people,
one at a time
Every named character in China’s greatest novel, painted by hand on rice paper with Chinese watercolor. Ten years of work by Xiang Li, the first Chinese artist to finish all of them.
Start here
She arrives with no money, no mother, and the best ear in the house.
Lin Daiyu comes north to her grandmother’s household as a child and never stops being a guest in it. She writes the finest poetry in the garden and reads every slight correctly, which is the thing that ruins her. Cao Xueqin gave her the novel’s cruellest arithmetic: the more clearly she sees, the less she can bear.
Meet Lin DaiyuThe house, to scale
The garden holds more painted faces than both mansions put together. Each block is sized to its share of the collection — click any one to jump to that household.
The Twelve Beauties of Jinling
In chapter five Baoyu falls asleep and reads twelve verses that tell him how twelve women’s lives will end. None of it has happened yet. He does not understand a word of it. The twelve shown here are from the original collection; Xiang Li returned to the same women in a separate group of paintings in 2018.
Browse by household
The novel is built on households — who eats at whose table, who bows to whom in the courtyard. The collection is arranged the same way.
The Rong-guo House
30 portraits荣国府
Grandmother Jia sits at the head of a table that seats four generations. Below her, Wang Xifeng keeps the books, the keys and the secrets. The house runs on her competence and comes apart partly on her debts.
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The Ning-guo House
12 portraits宁国府
The senior branch, and the worse-behaved one. Jia Zhen buries a daughter-in-law with more ceremony than the family can afford. Years later, when the censors arrive, the funeral is the first thing they ask about.
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Wang, Shi, Xue & Lin
21 portraits四大家族
Four families who married into one another for three generations and covered for one another in court. Daiyu arrives from the south with no money and no mother. Baochai arrives with both, and the trouble starts there.
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Prospect Garden
85 portraits大观园
Cao Xueqin gave the maids the same interior lives he gave their mistresses. Xiren is patient and Qingwen is not, and that difference decides which of them survives the year. Eighty-five of them are painted here.
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Below Stairs
41 portraits仆役
Stewards, wet-nurses, page-boys and bailiffs. Wu Jinxiao walks a month through snow to deliver a rent that has already shrunk, and Jia Zhen complains anyway. The people who see everything are recorded here too.
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Monks, Nuns & Taoists
14 portraits僧道尼
A scabby-headed monk and a lame Taoist walk into the story on the first page and walk out with it on the last. Miaoyu keeps a hermitage inside the garden and throws away a cup after Granny Liu drinks from it.
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Officials, Nobles & the Court
25 portraits官宦王侯
Princes, eunuchs, physicians and examination officials. Dai Quan sells a military rank over tea and calls it a favour. The machinery that raises the family to an imperial marriage takes the house apart in a single morning.
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Country Folk & Poor Relations
26 portraits乡野亲眷
Granny Liu comes to the great house three times — once to beg, once to be laughed at, and once as the only person left who can help. The novel settles its moral arithmetic through a farm woman.
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The Land of Illusion
8 portraits太虚幻境
Before there is a family there is a stone left over from mending the sky, and a flower that owes a debt of water. Painting these meant inventing them. There is no costume record for a goddess.
See this household →Find a character by name
All 262 painted characters are searchable. The best known are listed below — type a name, in English or Chinese, to reach any of the others.
No one by that name in the Red Chamber.
The artist
Ten years, four hundred and thirteen faces
Xiang Li began the Dream of the Red Chamber collection in 1975 and finished it in 1985 — Chinese watercolor laid down by hand on rice paper, one character at a time. Rank, age, season and the cut of a collar were researched before anything was drawn.
The complete set was released in 1985 and made her a nationally recognized artist. She spent decades afterwards as a master artist at the Forbidden City in Beijing, restoring and reproducing ancient Chinese paintings, and in 2012 began a second collection of more than two hundred Chinese empresses.
About Xiang LiQuestions
Who wrote Dream of the Red Chamber?
Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹) wrote the first eighty chapters and died before finishing. The last forty are attributed to Gao E (高鹗), who prepared the first printed edition in 1791.
How many characters are in Dream of the Red Chamber?
Four hundred and thirteen are named. Xiang Li painted all of them between 1975 and 1985 — the first Chinese artist to complete the full set.
Who are the Twelve Beauties of Jinling?
Twelve women whose fates Jia Baoyu reads in a dream in chapter five, before any of them have happened. Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai share the first verse.
What is Chinese rice paper painting?
Pigment applied by hand onto xuan paper — rice paper — which takes ink and colour instantly and forgives nothing. This collection is Chinese watercolor in the gongbi tradition of fine-line figure painting.
Can I see these paintings in person?
Yes. The originals travel to museums and institutions across the United States.
See them in person
Rice paper doesn’t photograph. Four hundred and thirteen faces on a wall is a different thing from four hundred and thirteen thumbnails. Come look.