Qin Ye
秦业
“Twenty-Four Taels”
His Story
A Director in the Board of Works, nearly seventy, widowed, with no children of his own — so he took a boy and a girl from the foundling hospital. The boy died; the girl was Qin Keqing, who married into the Ning-guo house. A son, Qin Zhong, was born to him later. In Chapter 8 he scrapes up twenty-four taels for Qin Zhong’s fees at the Jia family school. In Chapter 16, after Keqing’s death, he beats the boy over the affair with the novice Zhineng and dies of rage days later.
In Xiang Li's Hands
Almost no colour: black ink robes, white head-cloth, long white beard, a brown staff gripped in both hands. He sits low, eyes shut. A few thin dry lines to the right stand for a bare branch — the entire background. The poorest sheet in the group, and the poorest man.
The Calligraphy
秦业 is the personal name alone, without the office he held and without the 邦 that the Cheng editions print in the middle of it.
Connections
- Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — his adopted daughter, married into the Ning-guo house.
- Qin Zhong 秦钟 — his son, whose beating precedes both their deaths.
- Zhineng 智能 — the young nun whose attachment to Qin Zhong brings on the beating.
Others of the same kind · official / noble / royal Qin Zhong 秦钟 · Jia Yucun 贾雨村 · Bei Jing Wang 北静王 · Leng Zixing 冷子兴 · Zhang Rugui 张如圭 · Menzi 门子 · Xiping Junwang 西平郡王 · Nan'an Taifei 南安太妃 · Zhangshiguan 长史官 · Feng Ziying 冯紫英 · Sun Shaozu 孙绍祖 · Yun Guang 云光 · Fu Shi 傅试 · Fu Qiufang 傅秋芳 and 9 more
Named on these pages Qin Zhong 秦钟
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
