Jiang Yuhan
蒋玉菡
“The Scarlet Sash”
His Story
Jiang Yuhan plays female roles — 小旦 — in the private troupe of the Prince of Zhongshun, and everyone in the novel calls him by his stage name, Qiguan 琪官. He belongs to no Jia household. He changes two lives inside it.
Chapter 28: at a drinking party at Feng Ziying’s, each man must produce a verse. Xue Pan’s is obscene. Jiang Yuhan’s is a borrowed line, 花气袭人知昼暖, and Xue Pan pounces on it, because 袭人 is the name of Baoyu’s maid. Afterwards the two of them slip out and exchange sashes. Baoyu unties a green 松花 one, which had been Xiren’s; Jiang Yuhan gives him a scarlet one of 茜香罗, tribute silk from the Queen of the Land of Perfumed Silk, presented to him by the Prince of Beijing. Baoyu wears it home and that night ties it round the sleeping Xiren’s waist. She throws it off in the morning.
Chapter 33: the Prince of Zhongshun’s chamberlain arrives at the Rong mansion. 我 们府里有一个做小旦的琪官 — we have a boy in our household who plays the young female roles — and he has been gone for days. He also knows about the sash: 那红汗 巾子怎么到了公子腰里? Baoyu, cornered, gives up the hiding place — 紫檀堡, twenty li east of the city, where Jiang Yuhan has quietly bought a few acres and a house. That afternoon Jia Zheng beats his son nearly to death.
Chapter 120: Xiren, sent out of the Jia house, is married by her brother to a comfortable man in the south of the city. On the second morning the trunks are opened; her husband finds a scarlet sash and understands whose maid he has married, and brings out the green one. Her verse in Chapter 5 had already said it: 堪羡优伶有福，谁知公子无缘 — the actor gets the luck, the young lord gets nothing.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She paints him working. He is caught mid-turn in stage costume — gilt ornament in a high topknot, a pale blue neck-scarf snapping out to the left, a dark green patterned bodice, a lavender gown strewn with small white blossoms — one foot lifted, a white-stockinged leg showing through the skirt. Across both raised hands he carries a wide scarlet sash worked in gold and finished with a fringe. The face is made up and smiling, the same soft face she gives Qin Zhong. She chooses the red silk over the beating and the marriage, and leaves the paper behind him empty.
The Calligraphy
The sheet reads 蒋玉菡, surname and full given name, down the right-hand side in three characters. It is the one name almost nobody in the novel uses for him: to the Prince’s chamberlain, to Xue Pan, to Baoyu’s father he is Qiguan 琪官, a stage name attached to a piece of household property. Handing him back his own name is the inscription’s whole argument.
Connections
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — exchanges sashes with him in Chapter 28; the friendship helps bring on the beating in Chapter 33.
- Xiren 袭人 — Baoyu’s maid, whose green sash reaches him before she does, and whom he marries in Chapter 120.
- Xue Pan 薛蟠 — fellow guest at Feng Ziying’s party, and the one who spots the pun on Xiren’s name.
- The Prince of Zhongshun 忠顺亲王 — the owner of his troupe, whose chamberlain comes to the Jia house looking for him.
- Jia Zheng 贾政 — Baoyu’s father, humiliated before the Prince’s officer and flogging his son for it.
Others of the same kind · outsider – townsfolk, tenants, tradespeople Liu Xianglian 柳湘莲 · Liu Laolao 刘姥姥 · Wang Gou'er 王狗儿 · Liu Shi 刘氏 · Ban'er 板儿 · Qing'er 青儿 · Feng Yuan 冯渊 · Ni Er 倪二 · Bu Shiren 卜世仁 · Yinjie 银姐 · Fang Chun 方椿 · Shi Daizi 石呆子 · Yun'er 云儿 · Wu Liang 吴良 and 4 more
Named on these pages Xiren 袭人 · Bei Jing Wang 北静王 · Zhangshiguan 长史官 · Feng Ziying 冯紫英 · Hua Zifang 花自芳 · Chang Xiao Qu De 唱小曲的
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
