Xi'er
喜儿
“Drunk in the Kitchen”
His Story
A Ning-guo page. His one appearance is at the little house Bao Er keeps outside the walls for You Erjie: while the masters are inside with the sisters, Xi’er drinks himself stupid in the kitchen. The novel uses him for a single purpose — to show what the servants are doing on the other side of the wall — and then has no further use for him.
In Xiang Li's Hands
He has slid half onto the floor, cap pushed back, eyes closed, mouth open. A wine ewer tips at his chest and a single unbroken silver line runs out of it, down the whole height of the sheet, into a puddle. She paints the waste, not the man.
The Calligraphy
The inscription 喜儿 pairs the character for joy with the diminutive 儿 — a lucky page-name given to a boy the book remembers only for being insensible.
Connections
- Jia Zhen 贾珍 — master of the Ning-guo house he serves.
- Xing’er 兴儿 — fellow page at the household outside the walls.
- You Erjie 尤二姐 — the woman that household was set up for.
Others of the same kind · page / boy servant Mingyan 茗烟 · Chuyao 锄药 · Saohong 扫红 · Saohua 扫花 · Moyu 墨雨 · Yinquan 引泉 · Tiaoyun 挑云 · Banhe 伴鹤 · Shuangrui 双瑞 · Shuangshou 双寿 · Li Gui 李贵 · Wang Rong 王荣 · Zhang Ruojin 张若锦 · Zhao Yihua 赵亦华 and 5 more
Named on these pages Qing'er 庆儿
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
