Cai'er niang
彩儿娘
“Sent Out of the Garden”
Her Story
Her daughter Cai’er is about ten years old and serves in Xichun’s rooms — one of the many small maids given a name from the 彩 family of names that runs through the Garden: Caiyun, Caixia, Caifeng, Cai’er.
The mother works in the Garden too, and she talks. She gossips, carries stories, says things behind people’s backs. In the sequence around Chapter 74, when the household turns on itself and the Garden is searched and its discipline tightened, Lin Zhixiao’s wife catches her at it and has her put out. That is the whole of her: a bad mouth, caught, and expelled — one small casualty in a purge aimed at much larger things.
The novel never gives her a name of her own. She is 彩儿娘, Cai’er’s mother, and she enters the book only at the moment she is removed from it.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Green jacket, blue headband, wine-red sash, a blue-grey skirt netted over in black. She strides to the left with her head bent and her eyes lowered, both wide sleeves flung out, reeds behind her in grey outline. No open mouth, no quarrel, no one scolding her. The painting takes the woman whose offence was talking and gives her the walk out instead — and paints her walking with some dignity.
The Calligraphy
彩儿娘, “Cai’er’s mother” — a relationship standing where a personal name would go, set high on the right and built exactly as 坠儿娘 is on the other servant-mother’s sheet. Two women in this collection are identified only as the mother of a girl who is herself a minor character.
Connections
- Cai’er 彩儿 — her daughter, the ten-year-old maid in Xichun’s rooms.
- Lin Zhixiao’s wife 林之孝家的 — the household manager who catches her and has her expelled.
- Jia Xichun 贾惜春 — her daughter’s mistress.
- Zhui’er’s mother 坠儿的娘 — the other servant-mother in the collection, who comes to make a scene when her daughter is expelled.
Named on these pages Cai'er 彩儿
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
