Hui Niang
慧娘
“Dead at Eighteen, Priceless After”
Her Story
A girl of Suzhou who never appears in the novel. She is described, in Chapter 53, as the maker of an object.
At the New Year feast in Grandmother Jia’s hall each table carries a hanging panel of scarlet gauze, embroidered with flowers and with lines of verse in cursive script. The novel stops to explain them. Hui Niang came of a scholar- official family and was expert in painting and calligraphy; she embroidered only now and then, for amusement, and never for sale. The sprays of flowers are after the old Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming masters; beside each is an ancient couplet on that flower, worked in black floss, and the strokes hook, turn, thicken and break exactly as a brush does. Because she never traded on it, the world knew of the work and almost nobody owned any. It was called 慧绣, Hui embroidery.
慧娘命夭，十八岁便死了 — her life was cut short; she died at eighteen, and not one more piece could ever be had. Scholars then decided that 绣, embroider, was too coarse a word for such strokes and changed it to 纹, so it is now called 慧纹, and a genuine piece has no price. The Jia house had three. Two went to the palace last year. The last is the sixteen-panel set Grandmother Jia loves too much to put out for guests.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She sits among lotus — a great pink bloom opening at her left, more above her — in a dusty rose jacket over a white and celadon skirt, hair in two black loops, a sprig of small yellow flowers by her cheek, one hand raised to her chin. There is no silk, no frame, no needle. The only thing near her hand is a flower, which is what she was famous for copying. The painting declines the craft entirely and gives back the girl, thinking.
The Calligraphy
慧娘, two characters at the top right corner — the personal name with 娘, the form used for a young woman rather than a household title, and the only name the novel gives her.
Connections
- Jia Mu 贾母 — who keeps the last sixteen panels of her work and will not put them out for company.
She has no other relationship in the novel. She is dead before the book begins, and known to it only through an object.
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
