Bei Jing Wang Fu Zhang Shi

His Story

The comptroller of the Prince of Beijing’s household: the officer who runs a princely establishment and carries its messages out into the city. He has no name in the novel and only one errand, and he arrives with it at the worst moment in the family’s life.

In Chapter 105 the Rong mansion is raided. Imperial guards seal the rooms; chests of land deeds and a box of loan bonds are carried out and found to be usurious; the vice-president Zhao presses for a total confiscation there and then. He is interrupted by a princely household’s comptroller coming in to report that the throne has sent the Prince of Beijing to read out an edict — and the raid stops.

In Chapter 106 Jia Zheng is at home, out of his depth, when word comes from the palace and the Prince of Beijing’s comptroller is shown in. He opens with one word: 大喜 — congratulations. The Prince of Beijing and the Prince of Xiping have memorialised on Jia Zheng’s behalf, reporting his terror and his gratitude to the throne. The emperor, unwilling to punish a house whose Imperial Consort died so recently, has restored Jia Zheng to his post in the Board of Works; only Jia She’s property is forfeit and the rest is returned; Jia Lian is stripped of rank but released; the bonds are to be examined, and those at illegal interest confiscated, the lawful ones given back with the deeds.

The novel’s other comptroller — the one from the Prince of Zhongshun’s household in Chapter 33 — came to demand a runaway actor and left Baoyu to be beaten half to death. Same office, opposite errand. Between them they set the outer weather of the whole book: the state at the door, bringing ruin or reprieve, and either way not to be argued with.

In Xiang Li's Hands

Mid-stride, body turned away, head sharp in profile, beard jutting. A rose-red robe over grey, a gold-and-jade plaque belt, black cap. He holds a red card up at eye height, covered in small writing, and a sheaf of white papers in the other hand. No room, no doorway, no Jia Zheng. She paints him reading aloud to no one — which is exactly what a message is when the man carrying it has no stake in it.

The Calligraphy

北静王府长史, six characters down the left. The household comes first and the office last; there is no surname, because a man on this errand is not himself but the mansion that sent him.

Connections

• 北静王水溶 — his master, whose intervention he is delivering.
• 贾政 Jia Zheng — who receives him and kneels to thank the throne.
• 贾赦 Jia She — whose property is the part not returned.
• 贾琏 Jia Lian — stripped of rank and freed by the same message.
• 忠顺府长史官 — the other comptroller, Chapter 33, who came to take rather than to give.

Dream of the Red Chamber
Xiang Li painted all 413 characters of the novel between 1975 and 1985, the first person to complete the entire cast. See the whole collection · Chinese Empresses