Jin Wenxiang
金文翔
“The Brother Who Carried the Message”
His Story
Yuanyang’s elder brother and Grandmother Jia’s buyer. In Chapter 46, when Jia She decides he wants Yuanyang as a concubine and she refuses, the pressure is routed through her family: Jin Wenxiang and his wife are sent to talk her round, with the threat that refusing will do her no good since she will never escape the household anyway. Yuanyang answers by cutting off her hair in front of the matriarch.
In Xiang Li's Hands
A whole sheet given to a bow. He bends from the waist in a pale sage-green robe, black cap, face in sharp profile with a thin courteous smile, one hand turned palm-down toward someone outside the frame. A turquoise hem enters at the lower left and is all we get of that person.
The Calligraphy
The three characters of the full name run down the right edge, level with his bowed back rather than above his head.
Connections
- Yuanyang 鸳鸯 — his sister, whom he is sent to persuade into Jia She’s bed.
- Jia She 贾赦 — the master whose demand he is made to carry.
- Jin Cai 金彩 — his father, absent in Nanjing, which is why the errand falls to him.
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 · Jiao Da 焦大 · Li Shi'er 李十儿 and 8 more
Named on these pages Jin Wenxiang xifu 金文翔媳妇 · Jin Cai 金彩
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
