Fu Rong Hua Shen
芙蓉花神
“The Post Qingwen Was Given”
Her Story
Chapter 78. Qingwen has been turned out of the Garden and has died. A little maid tells Baoyu that at the end she said she was not dying: heaven was one flower god short and the Jade Emperor had called her up to fill the post. Pressed on which flower, the girl looks at the hibiscus in bloom by the pool and says that one.
Baoyu believes it, and writes 《芙蓉女儿诔》, the elegy for the Hibiscus Maiden, hanging it that night on the hibiscus branches: 生侪兰蕙，死辖芙蓉 — ranked with the orchids in life, governing the hibiscus in death. As he finishes, someone steps out of the flowers. It is Daiyu. They rework a couplet until it reads 茜纱窗下，我本无缘；黄土垄中，卿何薄命, and Daiyu changes colour.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She flies across the sheet on her side, both arms flung wide, gold bangles at each wrist, face turned out and smiling. Sage-green and yellow robes unspool into a blue-grey wash; banks of pink hibiscus stand behind her head and again at the lower left. No ground, no Garden, no sickbed — the appointment, taken up.
The Calligraphy
芙蓉花神, four characters down the left through the blossom: a divine office attached to a single flower, which is what the novel describes and never quite names.
Connections
- Qingwen 晴雯 — reported at her death to have been called up to this post.
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — believes the report and writes the elegy to the Hibiscus Maiden.
- Lin Daiyu 林黛玉 — steps out of the hibiscus at the end of the elegy; in Chapter 63 hers is the hibiscus flower-slip, 除了他，别人不配作芙蓉.
- Huashen 花神 — the general office of flower god, of which this is one flower’s share.
- Wang Furen 王夫人 — turned Qingwen out of the Garden in Chapter 77.
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
