Jia Zheng
贾政
“Correct in Everything but His Son”
His Story
He is the second son, and he lives in the main apartments while his elder brother is put out in a compound to the east — an inversion the whole novel is quietly built on. He never sat the examinations. Chapter 2 explains that when his father died the Emperor, in pity for an old servant, confirmed the elder son in the hereditary rank and then asked how many other sons there were; Jia Zheng was granted a secretaryship in the Board of Works outright, and has risen to vice-director. He is the family’s only genuinely upright officeholder, and the novel is unsentimental about what that buys him.
Chapter 17 walks him through the new garden testing Baoyu’s couplets, scolding the boy for every answer he privately admires. Chapter 22 has him reading the family’s lantern riddles as omens: the Imperial Concubine’s firecracker is 一响而散之物, a thing that bangs once and scatters. Chapter 33 is what he is remembered for. Jia Huan kneels and tells him Baoyu forced Lady Wang’s maid Jinchuan and drove her into the well; his face goes the colour of gold paper; he calls for the heavy stick, beats his son past forty strokes, snatches the board away to do it himself, and has to be stopped by his wife and then his mother.
Chapter 37 sends him out as Examination Commissioner; Chapter 71 brings him back. Chapter 96 grades him first class and makes him grain intendant of Jiangxi; in Chapter 102 his own clerks over-levy the grain and he is impeached for failing to watch them. After the confiscation the edict of Chapter 107 spares him — 居官尚属勤慎 — and hands him his brother’s forfeited Rongguo title. In Chapter 120, moored in snow at Piling Station with his mother’s coffin, he sees a figure in a red felt cape bow to him on the bank and go away between a monk and a Taoist.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Two versions, one body. Both turn him three-quarters away and make him glare back over the shoulder; both bring the right hand bare out of the sleeve, fingers spread, holding nothing. The first is ink — a wet grey-black robe with a panel of blue and red dragon-work at the breast, an official’s cap with rigid horizontal wings, a long grey beard — against a pink swirl over the ghost of a temple eave. The second dresses him in white covered with gold roundels and drops him into a red vortex. The father with the stick, painted twice with an empty hand.
The Calligraphy
贾政 runs down the right margin on both sheets, clan before given name — the full formal name, the same treatment Baoyu receives and almost no one else in the collection does. It is how an office is addressed rather than a person. The hand is heavier and more upright than the young women’s sheets are given, the strokes set down square and left alone.
Connections
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — his second son, flogged in Chapter 33 and bowed to for the last time in the snow in Chapter 120.
- Wang Furen 王夫人 — his principal wife, who throws herself over Baoyu to stop the beating.
- Jia Mu 贾母 — his mother, the only authority in the house above his own.
- Jia She 贾赦 — his elder brother, who holds the rank and the eastern compound and forfeits both.
- Jia Huan 贾环 — his son by the concubine Zhao Yiniang, and the informant of Chapter 33.
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 She 贾赦 · Jia Lian 贾琏 · 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 Baoyu 贾宝玉 · Jia Yuanchun 贾元春 · Jia Mu 贾母 · Wang Furen 王夫人 · Jia She 贾赦 · Jia Huan 贾环 · Jia Lan 贾兰 · Jia Zhu 贾珠 · Jiang Yuhan 蒋玉菡 · Jia Dairu 贾代儒 · Zhen Baoyu 甄宝玉 · Jia Yucun 贾雨村 and 26 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
