Jia Yucun
贾雨村
“False Words in a Country Village”
His Story
姓贾名化，表字时飞，别号雨村 — the last of a scholarly line from Huzhou, so poor in Chapter 1 that he lodges in the Gourd Temple in Suzhou and lives by copying documents. The gentleman next door, Zhen Shiyin, feeds him and hands him fifty taels of silver and two suits of winter clothes for the journey. Yucun does not wait for the auspicious day chosen for him: he leaves before dawn on the nineteenth and sends his thanks by way of a monk.
He passes, is given a prefecture, and is impeached inside a year: 「生情狡猾， 擅纂礼仪，且沽清正之名，而暗结虎狼之属」 — crafty, trading on a reputation for probity while making private arrangements with wolves. He receives the news smiling. Friends in Yangzhou find him work as tutor to Lin Ruhai’s daughter, and in Chapter 3 Ruhai’s letter to Jia Zheng puts him back in office, posted to Jinling.
Chapter 4 is his character in one case. A man named Feng Yuan has contracted to buy a girl and been beaten to death by Xue Pan’s servants, who bought her too. The court usher — once a novice at the Gourd Temple, the only man alive who remembers Yucun poor — produces the 护官符, the list of families no official may offend, and explains that the girl is Yinglian, stolen at three from Zhen Shiyin’s house. Yucun invents a vengeful ghost, fines the Xues burial money, writes to Jia Zheng and Wang Ziteng that the matter is closed, and later has the usher transported. He does not look for the girl.
In Chapter 48 Jia She wants twenty antique fans from a man called Shi Daizi who will not sell. Yucun charges him with owing government silver, seizes his property, and delivers the fans.
Chapter 120 collects the bill: convicted of extortion, stripped of rank, pardoned into commoner status — 褫籍为民. At the ferry crossing 急流津觉迷渡口 he walks into a straw hut and finds Zhen Shiyin, who tells him what the whole book was, and what became of the daughter — 「小女英莲幼遭尘劫，老先生初任之时曾经判断」. Yucun falls asleep. The novel ends over his sleeping body.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Black winged cap, blue-grey robe, a rank badge with a white crane at the chest, moustache and pointed beard, the eyes turned aside. In his open right palm, held out flat and level, a small ivory-yellow seal with a crouching lion carved on the knob — displayed rather than used. A vast pale sleeve swings out lower right; the rest is bare paper. Set beside Lin Ruhai’s sheet the costume is nearly identical, cap for cap and badge for badge, and the whole difference between the two men is what each is holding. One has a stone. This one has the office.
The Calligraphy
贾雨村 in a fast, wet, top-heavy hand at the upper right. Of his three names the sheet takes the 别号 — not 化, the name on the examination roll, nor 时飞, the style — and that is the name the novel itself uses and the one that carries the joke: 贾雨村 sounds out 假语村言, false words in rustic speech, which is what Chapter 1 calls the book you are reading. The names his parents and his examiners gave him are nowhere on the paper.
Connections
- Zhen Shiyin 甄士隐 — paid his way to the capital in Chapter 1 and explains the world to him in Chapter 120.
- Lin Ruhai 林如海 — his employer at Yangzhou, whose letter of recommendation restores him to office.
- Xiangling 香菱 — born Zhen Yinglian, his benefactor’s stolen daughter, whose case he decides against her.
- Xue Pan 薛蟠 — the killer he declines to convict, in deference to the 护官符.
- Jia Zheng 贾政 — his patron in the capital, whose family he later serves and does not save.
Others of the same kind · official / noble / royal Qin Zhong 秦钟 · Bei Jing Wang 北静王 · Leng Zixing 冷子兴 · Zhang Rugui 张如圭 · Menzi 门子 · Xiping Junwang 西平郡王 · Nan'an Taifei 南安太妃 · Zhangshiguan 长史官 · Feng Ziying 冯紫英 · Sun Shaozu 孙绍祖 · Yun Guang 云光 · Fu Shi 傅试 · Fu Qiufang 傅秋芳 · Li Yanei 李衙内 and 9 more
Named on these pages Lin Ruhai 林如海 · Zhen Baoyu 甄宝玉 · Zhen Shiyin 甄士隐 · Feng Su 封肃 · Jiaoxing 娇杏 · Feng Yuan 冯渊 · Shi Daizi 石呆子 · Leng Zixing 冷子兴 · Zhang Rugui 张如圭 · Menzi 门子 · Guai Zi 拐子 · Bao Yu Zhi Zi 宝玉之子 and 3 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
