Jia Zhen
贾珍
“What Jiao Da Shouted in the Courtyard”
His Story
He is master of the Ningguo mansion, the senior of the two houses, and head of the Jia clan. His father Jia Jing has retired to a Taoist temple outside the city to refine elixirs and refuses to concern himself with anything, which means Jia Zhen answers to nobody. The novel shows what a man does with that.
Chapter 7: Jiao Da, the old servant who carried the founder off a battlefield on his back, is sent out on an errand drunk and stands in the courtyard shouting about what goes on in the house — 爬灰的爬灰，养小叔子的养小叔子, a father-in-law in the ashes, a wife with her husband’s younger brother. They stuff his mouth with mud and horse dung. The book never confirms the charge and never takes it back.
Chapter 13: Qin Keqing, his son’s wife, dies. Jia Zhen weeps like a man made of tears, says openly that he would spend anything, takes for her coffin a plank of 樯木 laid by years ago for a disgraced prince, and buys his son a brevet rank of Imperial Guard for twelve hundred taels so the funeral inscription will read better. He borrows Wang Xifeng to run the whole thing.
Chapter 63: Jia Jing dies of his own elixir. In mourning, Jia Zhen and his son turn to the You sisters, his wife’s stepsisters; by Chapter 66 You Sanjie has cut her own throat with a sword rather than be what they took her for. Chapter 75 has gambling and archery parties at Ningguo, and on the night before the Mid-Autumn feast a long sigh comes out of the wall of the ancestral hall.
In Chapter 105 the Embroidered Jackets search Ningguo first. The edict of Chapter 107 strips his hereditary rank and sends him to the maritime frontier to work off the sentence.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Two sheets, one posture, and only the object changes. Both put him in strict profile, bent from the waist with the head thrust out and both hands up before the face; in both, the far hand holds a small bright thing at eye level and his mouth is open at it. In the first it is a gold phoenix hairpin — a woman’s — and he wears a blue cap with hanging lappets over a mauve-grey robe, against thin pink wavy lines. In the second it is a red flower, the cap red and gold, the robe green, the ground blue-grey. He does the same thing twice: appraising something small he means to have.
The Calligraphy
贾珍 sits low on the right on both sheets, clan then given name. He is 珍大爷 to the household and clan head to the lineage, and neither designation appears; he is written down as a man rather than as an office, which is the harsher of the two options. The characters are compact and pressed hard, set below the level of the face.
Connections
- Jia Jing 贾敬 — his father, absent in a Taoist temple, dead of his own elixir in Chapter 63.
- Jia Rong 贾蓉 — his son, bought a rank of Imperial Guard in Chapter 13 to dress the funeral.
- Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — his daughter-in-law, whose death and extravagant funeral he presides over.
- You Shi 尤氏 — his wife, whose stepsisters he and his son pursue in Chapters 64 to 66.
- Jia Lian 贾琏 — his cousin, whom he helps to marry You Erjie in secret in Chapter 65.
Others of the same kind · Jia clan – founders & Ningguo House Jia Xichun 贾惜春 · Jia Jing 贾敬 · Jia Daihua 贾代化 · Jia Fu 贾敷 · Jia Qiang 贾蔷
Named on these pages Jia Xichun 贾惜春 · Qin Keqing 秦可卿 · You Sanjie 尤三姐 · Jia Jing 贾敬 · You Shi 尤氏 · You Laoniang 尤老娘 · Jia Qiang 贾蔷 · Jia Qiong 贾琼 · Jia Ping 贾萍 · Jia Qin 贾芹 · Jia Xing 贾荇 · Peifeng 佩凤 and 19 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
