Jiao Da
焦大
“The Drunk Who Says It Out Loud”
His Story
The oldest retainer of the Ningguo house. As a young man he carried the founder out of a battlefield and kept him alive on the road, going without water himself. Nobody in the fourth generation can discipline him for it. In Chapter 7, sent drunk on an errand he thinks beneath him, he stands in the courtyard and shouts what the household knows and does not say — 爬灰的爬灰，养小叔子的养小叔子. They stop his mouth with mud and horse dung.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She paints the moment mid-curse. White hair under a blue headcloth, mouth open, body rocked back off balance; one hand thrown out with fingers splayed, the other holding a white gourd flask trailing a red ribbon. The gourd is the loudest thing on the sheet.
The Calligraphy
Two characters at the lower right give surname and 大, eldest — the name of a man who never acquired a formal one.
Connections
- Jia Zhen 贾珍 — master of Ningguo, the head of the household he is cursing.
- Jia Rong 贾蓉 — the young master who has him gagged and dragged away.
- Qin Zhong 秦钟 — the guest whose ride home is the errand that sets him off.
Others of the same kind · steward / manager Lai Da 赖大 · Lai Er 赖二 · Lai Sheng 赖升 · Lai Shangrong 赖尚荣 · Lai Mama 赖嬷嬷 · Lin Zhixiao 林之孝 · Zhou Rui 周瑞 · Dai Liang 戴良 · Yu Lu 俞禄 · Wang Xin 王信 · Laiwang 来旺 · Jin Cai 金彩 · Jin Wenxiang 金文翔 · Li Shi'er 李十儿 and 8 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
