Da Liao
大了
“The Slip at Scattering Flowers”
Her Story
A nun of the Scattering Flowers Convent. In Chapter 101, Wang Xifeng — shaken by what she met walking in the Garden at night — comes to burn incense, and Da Liao brings her the box of divination slips. The slip Xifeng draws carries her own name and the words 衣锦还乡, home again in glory. Everyone present reads it as the best of omens. It is the last good news she is given.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Two sheets that disagree about her head. One gives her long black hair down past her shoulders, hands lifted to her mouth, pale rosettes and cloud-scrolls drifting behind. The other shaves her bare, sets grey ink clouds all around her, and breaks the robes into wet black slabs.
The Calligraphy
大了 on both sheets — the religious name alone, two characters that in plain Chinese also read as “wholly done with it.”
Connections
- Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — draws the divination slip Da Liao brings her, in Chapter 101.
- Ping’er 平儿 — Xifeng’s chief maid, at her side through the illness that surrounds the visit.
Others of the same kind · nun / monk / Taoist Miaoyu 妙玉 · Jingxu 净虚 · Zhishan 智善 · Zhineng 智能 · Zhitong 智通 · Yuanxin 圆信 · Sekong 色空 · Qinxiang 沁香 · Hexian 鹤仙 · Ma Daopo 马道婆 · Zhang Daoshi 张道士 · Wang Yitie 王一贴
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
