Lai Sheng Xi Fu
来升媳妇
“Made Answerable for Everyone”
Her Story
Wife of Lai Sheng, chief steward of the Ningguo house. Chapter 14: Wang Xifeng is brought across to run that household for Qin Keqing’s funeral, and her first act is to send for Lai Sheng’s wife and demand the roster of household dependents. Next morning she divides the servants into fixed details in front of her — so many for tea, so many for the family’s meals, so many for the lamps and the incense and the mourning curtains — and hands her the daily overall inspection: report anyone idling, gambling, drinking or brawling, at once. If you cover for anyone and I find out, Xifeng tells her, three or four generations of your old face will not save you.
She is given no reply anywhere in the chapter.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She stands under falling willow withes in a mulberry-purple jacket with a blue collar band and a long grey ink skirt, head bowed, hands folded low, eyes down. No roster, no coffin, no Xifeng.
The painting removes the room she is defined by and leaves the posture she took in it — a woman in a spring garden still standing as though she were being told.
The Calligraphy
来升媳妇 — her husband’s name and the word for wife, brushed down the right margin, because that is the only name the novel ever supplies her with.
Connections
- Lai Sheng 来升 — her husband, chief steward of the Ningguo house, who warns the staff to be careful the moment Xifeng is appointed.
- Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — summons her first, takes the roster from her, and makes her answerable for the whole staff.
- Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — whose funeral is the occasion for all of it.
- You Shi 尤氏 — mistress of the Ningguo house, too ill to manage the funeral herself.
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
