Zhao Gongzi
赵公子
“The Boy Who Went Into the Water”
His Story
He is betrothed to Jin’ge, the daughter of the rich Chang’an gentleman Zhang Yuanwai, and he is the half of that engagement that keeps its word.
When Li Yanei — brother-in-law of the local prefect, with money behind him — asks for the girl instead, her father wants the better match and demands the first engagement be returned. This young man’s family refuses, keeps the betrothal gifts, and threatens to go to law. They would have won. What defeats them is not law but influence: three thousand taels reach Wang Xifeng through the abbess Jingxu, a letter goes out in Jia Lian’s name to the military governor of Chang’an, and the commander’s family is left with nothing to stand on. The engagement is broken.
Jin’ge hangs herself. He hears of it and drowns himself.
He never appears on the page. He is reported, in a single sentence, as the second death in a transaction he had no part in arranging. Editions vary even on his family name — some call him 林秀才 — which is why this collection holds sheets for both him and his father, 赵守备.
That is the striking thing here. This episode occupies half a chapter and no principal character in it ever returns. Xiang Li painted all five of them anyway: 张员外 #506, 金哥 #379, 赵公子 #538, 赵守备 #559, 李衙内 #378. The whole cast of a passing atrocity, each on his own sheet, at the same scale she gave the Jia family.
In Xiang Li's Hands
A young man standing, in a soft blue-grey scholar’s cap with its tail down his neck, wrapped in a pale robe drawn in heavy black outline. He is turned back over his left shoulder and looking straight out, brows down, mouth set — the only openly hostile face among the five. Wind takes the sleeves out to the left in broad dry strokes. At the sash hangs an ornament in red and green, and from it a thin red streamer runs the length of the robe to the hem.
No water, no body, no river. She paints him upright and furious, at the last moment when he could still have been argued out of it.
The Calligraphy
赵公子, three characters down the right margin. Not a name — 公子 is “young gentleman of the house”, the form used for a son whose own name nobody involved in the transaction bothered to record. The surname stands in for a person, and the sheet lets the omission show.
Connections
- Jin’ge 金哥 — his betrothed, who hangs herself when the engagement is broken.
- Garrison Commander Zhao 赵守备 — his father, who refuses to return the betrothal gifts.
- Zhang Yuanwai 张员外 — Jin’ge’s father, who takes the richer offer.
- Li Yanei 李衙内 — the richer suitor, and the reason the match is broken.
- Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — takes the three thousand taels and applies the pressure that kills them both.
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
