Xiangling

Her Story

She is the first girl the novel introduces, and it takes her away in the same chapter.

In Chapter 1 she is Zhen Yinglian 甄英莲, four years old, the only child of Zhen Shiyin 甄士隐, a comfortable gentleman of Suzhou. On the night of the Lantern Festival a servant, Huo Qi 霍启, carries her out to see the lanterns, sets her down for a moment, and turns back to find her gone. Her father searches, fails, and shortly afterwards loses his house to fire and his mind to a lame Taoist priest, whom he follows out of the book. Readers have heard the pun in her name since the earliest commentaries: 英莲 sounds like 应怜, “ought to be pitied.”

She surfaces in Chapter 4, at about twelve, as merchandise. A trafficker has raised her to sell and sells her twice — first to a young gentleman, Feng Yuan 冯渊, who is so taken with her that he intends to keep her as his only wife, and then to Xue Pan 薛蟠, the Xue family’s brutal heir. Xue Pan’s men beat Feng Yuan to death over the dispute. The case comes before Jia Yucun 贾雨村, the magistrate whose career was paid for by Zhen Shiyin’s own money. Yucun recognises the situation, consults a chart of the untouchable local families, and rules in Xue Pan’s favour. He does not return the girl to anyone. She goes north with the Xue household as Xue Pan’s chamber-wife, and Xue Baochai gives her the name Xiangling 香菱, “fragrant caltrop.”

She remembers nothing of where she came from. In Chapter 7, when a servant asks about her parents, she says only that she cannot recall; the household notices the small vermilion mark between her brows and remarks that she looks a little like Qin Keqing. Everyone in the compound likes her. Nobody knows she is the daughter of the man whose story opened the novel.

Her one season of happiness is Chapter 48. Xue Pan, humiliated in a brawl, leaves the capital on a trading journey, and Xiangling moves into the Grand View Garden with Baochai — the only time she lives among the girls rather than beside her owner. She asks Lin Daiyu to teach her to write verse. Daiyu takes it seriously: read Wang Wei first, she says, then Du Fu, then Li Bai, and do not begin with the rules. Xiangling becomes obsessed. She writes a poem on the moon and it is judged too laboured. She writes a second and it is worse — she has tried too hard. She stops sleeping, stops talking sense, and the third poem arrives whole in a dream. That one is good, and the girls admit her to the poetry club. It is the only thing in her life she chose.

Chapter 62 gives her a last light scene: a grass-fighting game in the Garden, a fall, a new pomegranate-red skirt ruined in the mud, and Baoyu quietly arranging an identical one so that nobody will scold her.

Then Chapter 79. Xue Pan marries Xia Jingui 夏金桂, who arrives determined to hold the household alone. Jingui declares that a caltrop has no scent and renames her Qiuling 秋菱, “autumn caltrop” — taking from her the one name she had been given kindly. Through Chapter 80 Jingui frames her, turns Xue Pan against her, and has her beaten; the chapter title records her sinking into illness. Baochai takes her out of that courtyard and into her own.

Her fate is written in Chapter 5, on the single page of the Supplementary Register that Baoyu is allowed to see. The picture is a spray of cassia above a drained pool, the lotus withered and the root rotted. The verse reads:

根并荷花一茎香，平生遭际实堪伤。 自从两地生孤木，致使香魂返故乡。

Root and lotus share a single fragrant stem; a lifetime’s fortunes truly worth grieving. Once two earths gave rise to a lone tree, the fragrant soul returned to its native place. The riddle in the third line assembles the character 桂 — Jingui — out of its parts. Cao Xueqin’s plan was plainly that Xia Jingui would kill her.

The hundred-and-twenty-chapter completion softens it and does not spare her. In Chapter 103 Jingui prepares poison for Xiangling, the bowls are exchanged, and Jingui dies of her own dose. Xiangling is raised to principal wife. In Chapter 120 she dies in childbirth, leaving a son to carry the Xue line — the only child of the abducted girl, born into the family that bought her.

In Xiang Li's Hands

Five paintings — more than any other character in the collection. What she does with them is the argument.

Two are nearly the same picture: Xiangling on the ground, chin propped in one hand, an open book across her lap, a great white curve behind her like a moon or a drawn curtain. One is soft green and dusty rose; the other blue and celadon, with a red-ruled scroll and stacks of bound volumes at her feet. She painted the poetry lesson twice.

A third is a small child with looped buns, enormous eyes and a pink cape, holding a lotus lantern on a cord — the Lantern Festival of Chapter 1, the hour before she was stolen. It is the only sheet inscribed with her birth name.

The fourth is the loosest: a bowed figure in coral and grey, face reduced to three strokes and a flush, a duckling on her knee. The fifth walks and smiles in blue-grey, a wide fan of painted grasses in hand, mauve skirt dragging behind.

Not one shows Xue Pan, Xia Jingui, the courtroom or the beating. She is given the lantern, the book, the fan and the duckling; the rest is refused.

The Calligraphy

Four of the five sheets read 香菱, the name Xue Baochai gave her. The fifth, the child with the lantern, reads 英莲, the name her father gave her. Neither is 秋菱, the name Xia Jingui forced on her and the one she was still carrying when the eightieth chapter left her ill. Between them the five inscriptions restore both names given in kindness and withhold the one given in spite. Two sheets also carry a second, smaller dated column ending 于北京 — a studio inscription, separate from the name.

Connections

• Zhen Shiyin 甄士隐 — her father, who loses her in Chapter 1 and never finds her.
• Xue Pan 薛蟠 — the man who has Feng Yuan killed to take her, and whose chamber-wife she becomes.
• Xue Baochai 薛宝钗 — her mistress, who names her Xiangling and shelters her from Xia Jingui.
• Lin Daiyu 林黛玉 — her poetry teacher in Chapter 48, the one person who takes her ambition seriously.
• Xia Jingui 夏金桂 — Xue Pan’s wife, who renames her Qiuling and, in the Chapter 5 prophecy, destroys her.

Others of the same kind · Xue family Xue Baochai 薛宝钗 · Xue Pan 薛蟠 · Xue Ke 薛蝌

Named on these pages Xue Pan 薛蟠 · Jia Yucun 贾雨村 · Zhen Shiyin 甄士隐 · Xue Yima 薛姨妈 · Xia Jingui 夏金桂 · Zhen'er 臻儿 · Xiaoluo 小螺 · Baochan 宝蟾 · Xiaoshe'r 小舍儿 · Douguan 豆官 · Feng Yuan 冯渊 · Menzi 门子 and 2 more

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