Ma Fanzi
马贩子
“Where to Find Ni Er”
His Story
A horse dealer, named once as an address.
In Chapter 24 Jia Yun, refused a loan by his own uncle, walks head-down into Ni Er the drunk — 醉金刚倪二, the neighbourhood usurer, a bully coming home from collecting interest. Ni Er hears the story, gets angry on Yun’s behalf, and pulls fifteen taels and change out of his belt-purse with no interest and no bond, refusing even to let Yun write one.
Then he says he is not going home tonight. If anything urgent comes up, his daughter should look for him first thing in the morning at the house of 马贩子王短腿 — the horse dealer Wang Duantui, Wang Short-Legs. He staggers off. That is the whole of the horse dealer: the place a moneylender goes when he does not go home. He never appears.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Bare-chested and barefoot, wading through shallow green water with the ripples and his own reflection drawn in, robe stripped to the waist and knotted, a coil of yellow rope over one forearm and a short red-handled whip trailing from the other hand. Grey rock behind. In a collection of court beauties she gives a labourer’s body full anatomical attention — the ribs, the working shoulders, the hair on the shins — and paints a man the book mentions only as a doorway.
The Calligraphy
马贩子, three characters at the middle right: the trade, not the name — the novel does supply him a name, 王短腿, and the inscription declines it in favour of what he sells.
Connections
- Ni Er 倪二 — the moneylender who names his house as where to find him.
- Jia Yun 贾芸 — who is standing there when the address is given, and who is
- carrying Ni Er’s silver.
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
