Jia Jing
贾敬
“Gold Swallowed, Cinnabar Eaten”
His Story
Jia Jing is the head of the senior branch of the clan, the Ningguo house, and the only man of his generation to take the metropolitan degree — 系进士出身, the novel says of him at his death. He does nothing whatever with it. He passes the hereditary office down to his son Jia Zhen while still alive, moves out of the city to the Taoist temple 玄真观, and gives himself to the furnace: 一味好道，只爱 烧丹炼汞，余者一概不在心上 (Chapter 2) — mad for the Way, caring for nothing but cinnabar and mercury. In Chapter 11 the family keeps his birthday without him; the feast is carried out to the temple and he will not come in for it.
Chapter 63 kills him, and does it inside the lightest chapter in the book. The girls are up all night at Green Delights drinking and drawing flower-cards when word arrives from the temple. His belly is 坚硬似铁, hard as iron; his face and lips are burned 紫绛皱裂, purple and cracked open. The physicians’ verdict is 吞金 服砂，烧胀而殁 — he swallowed gold and ate cinnabar and died of the burning and the swelling. His attendant Taoists explain that the master had newly compounded an elixir by a secret method of his own and took it during the 庚申 night vigil, certain he was about to ascend. They are seized and locked up.
The court is told only that a holder of the metropolitan degree has died in retirement. He is granted a posthumous rank of the fifth degree and a state-funded sacrifice, and the mourning that follows is the largest set piece the Ning house is given.
His absence is the reason the Ning house is what it is. For thirty years there has been no one over Jia Zhen, and everything that happens in that mansion happens because the man at the head of it left to look for immortality.
In Xiang Li's Hands
An old man on a rock ledge, wasted to the frame. White beard, white hair blown sideways, a dark cap, and the robe fallen open from throat to belly to show the ribs and the hollow stomach, hands folded in the lap. The colour is grey-green and almost none; the whole sheet is washed a dirty grey. At the bottom left corner, small and easy to miss, sits a single round vermilion disc. Read as the pill, the painting becomes a coroner’s report: the body the physicians described, and its cause set at the far edge of the paper.
The Calligraphy
贾敬 sits high in the top right corner, surname and given name, in a heavier and more upright hand than the young women’s sheets receive. There is no 老爷, no Taoist style or temple name, and not the fifth-rank title the emperor granted him, which is the only office he ever actually held. He is addressed by the family he walked out on.
Connections
- Jia Zhen 贾珍 — his son, who inherits the Ning house and the title, and is left unsupervised by his going.
- Jia Xichun 惜春 — his daughter, raised in the Rong mansion away from him, and the one who finally takes vows in earnest.
- You Shi 尤氏 — his son’s wife, left to manage his funeral single-handed, as the Chapter 63 title says: 独艳理亲丧.
- Jia Rong 贾蓉 — his grandson, of the third generation of the Ning house he abandoned.
- Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — his grandson’s wife, whose funeral he also declines to attend.
Others of the same kind · Jia clan – founders & Ningguo House Jia Xichun 贾惜春 · Jia Zhen 贾珍 · Jia Daihua 贾代化 · Jia Fu 贾敷 · Jia Qiang 贾蔷
Named on these pages Jia Xichun 贾惜春 · Jia Zhen 贾珍 · Jia Daihua 贾代化 · Jia Fu 贾敷 · Jia Chang 贾菖 · Jia Ling 贾菱 · Jia Xing 贾荇 · Jia Jia Jin Zhi Zong Zu 贾家近支宗族
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
