Jia Huan
贾环
“The Other Son”
His Story
He is Jia Zheng’s son by the concubine Zhao Yiniang, and Tanchun’s full brother. Those two facts are the whole of his character as the household reads it, and the household never stops reading it aloud. His sister spends her life proving that a concubine’s child need not be small. He proves the opposite, on purpose.
Chapter 20: playing dice for money with Baochai’s maid Ying’er, he loses, disputes the call, cheats, and cries. Chapter 25: set to copy sutras in Lady Wang’s room, he watches Baoyu lying with his head in his stepmother’s lap, decides to blind him, and shoves a lamp of boiling wax oil into his face while pretending his hand slipped. A line of blisters comes up down Baoyu’s left cheek. The eyes are spared. His mother spends the rest of the chapter buying a curse from a Taoist woman to finish the job.
Chapter 33: he kneels before his father and says that his mother told him Baoyu had forced Jinchuan and driven her into the well. Jia Zheng’s face goes the colour of gold paper. The beating that follows nearly kills Baoyu, and Jia Huan has done it with one sentence.
He is not stupid. In Chapter 78, made to compose on the woman general Lin Siniang, he produces an eight-line poem the company thinks better conceived than his young nephew’s, and his father allows that it is 不甚大错，终不恳切 — not far wrong, but never sincere. That is a fair judgement of everything about him.
In Chapters 118 and 119, short of money and remembering how Xifeng used to treat him, he proposes that Jia Lian’s daughter Qiaojie be sold as a concubine to a border prince while her father is out of the capital. Others carry it out. It was his idea.
In Xiang Li's Hands
The surprise of this group. He gets the young women’s palette: a pink robe strewn with red plum sprigs, a soft blue-grey open jacket, a gilt cage over the topknot with a red bead, a gold-and-coral pendant on red tassels at the throat. The ground is bare paper, exactly as behind Baoyu and the girls. He stands square to us, both hands raised in front of his mouth holding something small, eyes cut hard to one side. Nothing in the drawing is ugly. She gives him his sister’s colours and lets the sideways look carry the indictment.
The Calligraphy
贾环 sits at the upper right, clan then given name, in the same broad upright hand and the same formal full-name form used for Jia Zheng and for Baoyu. The concubine’s son is inscribed exactly as the principal wife’s son is. Nothing on the sheet records the difference the household never lets him forget.
Connections
- Zhao Yiniang 赵姨娘 — his mother, Jia Zheng’s concubine, who supplies him with both the grievance and the slander.
- Jia Tanchun 贾探春 — his full sister, who refuses the position he embraces.
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — his half-brother, burned in Chapter 25 and flogged in Chapter 33 on his account.
- Jia Zheng 贾政 — his father, who takes his word in Chapter 33 and grades his poem in Chapter 78.
- Jia Qiaojie 巧姐 — his niece, whose sale to a border prince he proposes in Chapter 118.
Others of the same kind · Jia clan – Rongguo House Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 · Jia Yuanchun 贾元春 · Jia Tanchun 贾探春 · Jia Yingchun 贾迎春 · Jia Mu 贾母 · Jia Zheng 贾政 · Jia She 贾赦 · Jia Lian 贾琏 · Jia Lan 贾兰 · Jia Zhu 贾珠 · Jia Daishan 贾代善 · Jia Min 贾敏
Named on these pages Jia Tanchun 贾探春 · Jia Zheng 贾政 · Jia Lan 贾兰 · Zhao Yiniang 赵姨娘 · Wang Ren 王仁 · Caiyun 彩云 · Caixia 彩霞 · Qian Huai 钱槐 · Lin Si Niang 林四娘
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
