Jia Lian
贾琏
“Second Master, and No Match for Her”
His Story
He is Jia She’s son, and he does not live with his father. Chapter 2 places him in his uncle Jia Zheng’s compound, married two years to Wang Xifeng, holding a purchased sub-prefect’s rank he never serves and running the household’s outside business instead — rents, loans, lawsuits, funerals. He is capable at it, and at very little else.
Chapter 21: Xifeng and their small daughter are down with smallpox and he is turned out of the bedroom, whereupon he sleeps with the wife of the drunk Duo Hunchong. Ping’er finds a lock of the woman’s hair in his things and quietly covers for him. Chapter 44: Xifeng leaves her own birthday party early, comes home and finds him with Bao Er’s wife; the two women fight, Jia Lian pulls a sword on his wife, and Bao Er’s wife hangs herself. Money is paid. The house moves on.
Chapter 48 gives him the one good line of his life. Beaten by his father over the seizure of Stone Fool’s fans, he says that ruining a household over such a trifle is nothing to be proud of.
Chapter 65: with Jia Zhen’s help he secretly marries You Erjie and keeps her in a rented house outside the walls. Chapter 68: Xifeng learns of it, goes in person, weeps, flatters the girl into the garden, then tears the Ningguo mansion apart. Chapter 69: Erjie, worn down and having lost a son, swallows raw gold. He weeps over a woman he installed and then left to his wife.
After the confiscation he is what holds the remainder together, and he is not equal to that either. In Chapters 118 and 119, while he is out of the capital, Jia Huan and Wang Ren arrange to sell his daughter Qiaojie to a border prince. Somebody else saves her.
In Xiang Li's Hands
The only man in this group she paints laughing. A mint-green robe with gold sash and tasselled red pendant, under a black coat with vast trailing sleeves lined in red; the lower half of the sheet is a bank of crimson peonies growing out of his own skirts. Black cap with a gilt ornament, small moustache, a wide grin. His left hand is up above the shoulder holding an unfolded fan with its own picture on the leaf. Behind him, a pale-green outline drawing of shrubs and rocks, no wash — a stage flat. He gets colour, flowers, an audience, and the one object his family destroyed a man to obtain.
The Calligraphy
贾琏 stands at the upper right, clan then given name, the strokes fast and looping — a lighter, quicker hand than his father’s and uncle’s sheets are given. The household calls him 琏二爷, Second Master Lian, and that is not what is written; the number, which is the whole of his standing in the family, is left off.
Connections
- Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — his wife and cousin by marriage, who outmanages him in every scene they share.
- Ping’er 平儿 — his chamber wife, who covers for him in Chapter 21 and stands between the two of them thereafter.
- You Erjie 尤二姐 — secretly married in Chapter 65, taken into the garden by Xifeng, dead by her own hand in Chapter 69.
- Jia She 贾赦 — his father, who beats him in Chapter 48 for refusing to be proud of the fans.
- Jia Qiaojie 巧姐 — his daughter, whom his half-brother arranges to sell while he is away.
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 Huan 贾环 · Jia Lan 贾兰 · Jia Zhu 贾珠 · Jia Daishan 贾代善 · Jia Min 贾敏
Named on these pages Jia Yingchun 贾迎春 · Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 · Jia Qiaojie 贾巧姐 · Ping'er 平儿 · You Erjie 尤二姐 · You Sanjie 尤三姐 · Jia She 贾赦 · Jia Zhen 贾珍 · Liu Xianglian 柳湘莲 · Lin Ruhai 林如海 · You Laoniang 尤老娘 · Qiutong 秋桐 and 16 more
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
