Chuluan
雏鸾
“The Heroine Grandmother Jia Refused”
Her Story
She belongs to a ballad, not to the novel. At the New Year’s feast in Chapter 54 two storytelling women offer 《凤求鸾》: a former minister’s only son — comically named 王熙凤, to the table’s delight — shelters from a rainstorm at an old friend’s house, where the daughter Chuluan, seventeen and accomplished and an only child, is waiting to be fallen in love with. Grandmother Jia cuts them off and demolishes the whole genre. Chuluan never gets a scene.
In Xiang Li's Hands
The most conventional beauty in this group, which is the joke: full length in pink and pale yellow, robes pooling across the paper, a black looped crown, one hand lifted at the breast. A moon-halo behind her, bare winter trees either side. Assembled from stock parts.
The Calligraphy
Inscribed 雏鸾, the young lady’s given name alone, as though she were a person in the household rather than a figure in someone else’s story.
Connections
- Grandmother Jia 贾母 — who interrupts the ballad and dismantles its clichés.
- Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — whose name the ballad’s hero shares, to the family’s amusement.
Others of the same kind · story-within-story / invented figure Mingyu 茗玉
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
