Jia Jia Jin Zhi Zong Zu
贾家近支宗族
“Ranked by Generation, Silent”
Their Story
The near branches of the Jia clan, taken as a body. No individual is named on the sheet.
The clan is large and mostly poor. Jia Zhen of the Ningguo mansion holds it as clan head (Chapter 4), and the two great houses carry the rest — the family school, the New Year allowances, and the small appointments that keep men like Jia Qin, Jia Yun and Jia Qiang fed. They come when they are called: to Qin Keqing’s funeral in Chapter 13, where the whole clan roll observes the old forms; to Jia Jing’s in Chapter 64, where the clansmen are left to receive the guests after the close family has gone home.
The one time the book draws them up in full is Chapter 53, the New Year’s Eve sacrifice at the Jia ancestral temple. They are arranged 昭穆, by generation: those whose names carry the 文 radical headed by Jia Jing, those with 玉 headed by Jia Zhen, those with the grass radical headed by Jia Rong; men to the east, women to the west. The dish is passed hand to hand up the whole line to Grandmother Jia, who sets it on the altar. The five-bay hall, its side rooms, the eaves and both courtyards are packed so tight there is no gap left, and the novel notes that not a sound could be heard from any of them — only jade pendants swinging and the shuffle of boots.
A hundred people, and the text records them as a noise.
In Xiang Li's Hands
A crowd going back in tiers, and two men out in front: one in slate blue thrown flat with his forehead near the floor and his bare feet turned up behind him, and behind him an old man with a white beard, palms pressed together, eyes wide open. The rest are heads in black caps, brown and rose and mint, thinning into wash; at the top, boys and women carry a scroll and a green box. She gives the sheet to the prostration rather than to the altar — the rite is entirely offstage, and what we see is the clan doing what it is for.
The Calligraphy
贾家近支宗族, six characters down the left in a plain upright column — the surname, the degree of kinship, the word for clan. A category, not a person.
Connections
- 贾珍 Jia Zhen — clan head, who opens the ancestral temple and presides.
- 贾敬 Jia Jing — chief celebrant at the Chapter 53 sacrifice, senior of the 文 generation.
- 贾母 Jia Mu — who sets the offering on the altar and takes the first kowtow.
- 贾蓉 Jia Rong — head of the youngest generation in the line, and the one who passes the dishes.
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
