Lin Si Niang

Her Story

She does not live in the novel. She is a story told inside it, in Chapter 78.

Jia Zheng comes home from an outing with what he calls the finest subject for a poem — a thing in which “风流隽逸，忠义慷慨” are all eight present. A prince titled the Heng Wang, posted to Qingzhou, was fond of women and fond of arms, and so drilled his beauties daily in military exercise. Among them was a concubine surnamed Lin, fourth in her rank, first in looks and best of them all with a weapon. Everyone called her Lin Si-niang. The prince put her in command of the rest and styled her 姽婳将军 — General Guihua, two characters of delicate feminine beauty bolted onto the word for general. Jia Zheng’s hangers-on think the compound is the cleverest thing they have ever heard.

The next year rebel remnants regrouped and plundered Shandong. The prince rode out light and confident, lost twice, and was killed. The civil and military officers of Qingzhou said: the Prince himself could not win, so what are we — and prepared to hand over the city. Lin Si-niang called the women together and told them she had lived on the prince’s favour and would die where he had died; those who wished to come could come, the rest should scatter now. Every one of them came. They rode out by night into the rebel camp, killed several of the chiefs, and were killed to the last woman when the rebels realised how few they were.

Then Jia Zheng makes his son and his nephews write about it. Jia Lan produces a quatrain, Jia Huan a five-character regulated poem, and Baoyu the long ballad called the 姽婳词, which turns from the dead prince to her and asks the only question that matters: 何事文武立朝纲，不及闺中林四娘 — why do the civil and military men who hold up the court fall short of Lin Si-niang of the inner chambers? He ends 我为四娘长太息 — I sigh long for Si-niang.

It is the same chapter in which Qingwen dies. Baoyu writes the ballad in the afternoon and the elegy for Qingwen that night.

In Xiang Li's Hands

She stands almost with her back to us against a flat rose-red ground, chin lifted, a long straight sword held point-up and quiet at her side, its guard set with green stones. Of the armour only the shoulders show: a scalloped blue and gold pauldron and a red-studded strap across the chest. Everything below is one enormous wet-ink robe in greys and blacks that pours to the floor and takes two thirds of the sheet. A white plume streams back from her helmet.

She chooses the vow, not the charge — the sword not yet raised, the face turned up and away from us. The red behind her is not a room or a sky. It is the only blood in the picture.

The Calligraphy

林四娘 — surname, birth order, and 娘, the way the prince’s household spoke of her before he gave her a rank. The title the novel makes so much of, 姽婳将军, is refused; three characters at mid-right are all the sheet will grant her.

Connections

• Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — writes the 姽婳词 for her, on the day Qingwen dies.
• Jia Zheng 贾政 — brings the story home from an outing and sets it as a poetry exercise.
• Jia Lan 贾兰 — writes a quatrain on her, praised as precocious.
• Jia Huan 贾环 — writes a five-character regulated poem on her.
• The Heng Wang 恒王 — the prince who trained her, promoted her, and died before her.

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