Laitou Heshang
癞头和尚
“He Arrives at the Hinges”
His Story
The Buddhist half of the pair who walk in and out of the book. He offers to take the infant Yinglian from her father and is refused. He gives Baochai the golden locket and the words engraved on it, and the prescription for her Cold Fragrance Pills. He comes when Baoyu and Wang Xifeng are bewitched. He returns the lost jade. At the end he leads Baoyu away. He is never given a dharma name.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Bare-chested and pot-bellied, sprawled across the sheet in loose brown-grey rags, laughing with his eyes shut, a battered pale fan in one raised hand. One straw sandal on, one foot bare. Behind him nothing at all. She paints no holiness into him whatever — he is a cheerful vagrant.
The Calligraphy
Inscribed 癞头跣脚僧 — “the scabby-headed, bare-footed monk” — naming him by two bodily defects and a vocation, never by a name.
Connections
- The lame Taoist 跛足道人 — his counterpart, always named in the same breath.
- Xue Baochai 薛宝钗 — who receives the locket inscription and the pill formula from him.
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — whose jade he restores and whom he finally leads out of the world.
Named on these pages Nüwa 女娲 · Bozu Daoren 跛足道人
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
