Yindie

Her Story

You-shi 尤氏’s maid. She attends her mistress through the long day of Chapter 75, which opens with the gambling at Ning-guo and ends at the mid-autumn feast, and she is in the room when the little maid Chaodou’r 炒豆儿 brings the washing-basin standing up and is corrected for it. Beyond waiting on You-shi the novel gives her nothing. Her name is a butterfly in silver.

In Xiang Li's Hands

Green jacket printed with swirls, wine-red bodice, pale green skirt. She holds a green jade bangle up between two fingers and smiles at it, not at us. A red tasselled sash falls to the floor. Bare paper behind, one ink smudge of ground underfoot — a maid painted at leisure rather than at work.

The Calligraphy

Inscribed 银蝶, the two-character servant’s name alone, brushed high in the empty left corner where the sheet has nothing else to hold.

Connections

• You-shi 尤氏 — her mistress, wife of Jia Zhen and mistress of the Ning-guo house.
• Chaodou’r 炒豆儿 — the little maid of the same household, corrected over the basin.
• Jia Zhen 贾珍 — master of Ning-guo, whose gambling parties fill the day she attends.

Others of the same kind · maid – Yingchun, Tanchun, Xichun, Li Wan, Xiangyun Siqi 司棋 · Xiuju 绣橘 · Lianhua'r 莲花儿 · Shishu 侍书 · Cuimo 翠墨 · Xiaochan 小蝉 · Ruhua 入画 · Caiping 彩屏 · Cai'er 彩儿 · Suyun 素云 · Biyue 碧月 · Cuilü 翠缕 · Baoqin 抱琴 · Xiaoque 小鹊 and 5 more

Named on these pages Chaodou'r 炒豆儿

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