Zhao Yiniang
赵姨娘
“The Mother Her Daughter Would Not Claim”
Her Story
She is Jia Zheng’s concubine and the mother of two of his children, Jia Huan and Jia Tanchun. That is the whole of her position, and in this house it is worth very little. A concubine’s children belong to the principal wife: Tanchun is brought up as a young lady of the Rongguo house, and her mother remains a servant who happened to bear her.
The novel gives her almost no scene in which she is not aggrieved. In Chapter 25 she pays Mother Ma, a nun who deals in charms, to work a spell on Baoyu and Wang Xifeng; both go mad and come close to dying. In Chapter 55 her brother Zhao Guoji dies and she comes to Tanchun, then acting as household manager, to demand more than the twenty taels the precedent allows for a servant of the house. Tanchun refuses, and answers with the sentence that fixes them both: 「谁是我舅舅？我舅舅 年下才升了九省检点，哪里又跑出一个舅舅来？」 Who is my uncle? My uncle was promoted this year to Inspector of Nine Provinces. She means Wang Ziteng. Her own mother’s brother she will not name as kin.
In Chapter 60 the actress Fangguan fobs Jia Huan off with jasmine powder in place of rose-nitre; Zhao Yiniang goes into the garden, throws the powder in the girl’s face, slaps her twice, and is set upon by four young actresses who pin her where she stands. In Chapter 72 she asks Jia Zheng to give the maid Caixia to Jia Huan, and is put off.
Her end is Chapter 112, at the temple where Grandmother Jia’s coffin lies. She falls down foaming, eyes fixed, tongue out, and speaks in another voice: 「我是阎 王差人拿我去的，要问我为什么和马婆子用魇魔法」 — the King of Hell has sent for her over the business of the spell. She confesses it to Xifeng’s face. She dies there in Chapter 113, and Jia Huan weeps.
In Xiang Li's Hands
She is the only woman in this group who is seated, and the only one given no clean paper: the ground is a mottled grey and ochre wash that closes her in. She sits sideways on a heavy black chair in a rose jacket and a pale skirt strewn with white blossom, one hand raised to her cheek, the other holding a round fan low in her lap by its yellow cord. The face is turned away, the eyes cut to the side. Everything she owns is on her — hair ornaments, jade earrings, gold bracelet — and she is dressed for a room she is listening to from outside.
The Calligraphy
The sheet reads 赵姨娘: her surname, then the household word for a concubine, 姨娘, “aunt”. There is no personal name to give — the novel never supplies her one, and after two hundred years she is still called by her husband’s family name and her rank in his house. Three characters down the left margin, in a fast running hand that thins to a wire at the end of each stroke.
Connections
- Jia Zheng 贾政 — his concubine, and the mother of two of his children.
- Jia Tanchun 贾探春 — her daughter, who publicly refused to acknowledge Zhao Guoji as her uncle.
- Jia Huan 贾环 — her son, whose grievances she carried and enlarged.
- Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — the favoured heir she paid Mother Ma to destroy.
- Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — caught in the same spell, and the person she confessed it to as she died.
Others of the same kind · Jia household – wives, concubines, in-laws Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 · Li Wan 李纨 · Qin Keqing 秦可卿 · Wang Furen 王夫人 · You Erjie 尤二姐 · You Sanjie 尤三姐 · Xue Baoqin 薛宝琴 · Xing Xiuyan 邢岫烟 · Li Wen 李纹 · Li Qi 李绮 · Xing Furen 邢夫人 · You Shi 尤氏 · Xue Yima 薛姨妈 · Zhou Yiniang 周姨娘 and 11 more
Named on these pages Jia Tanchun 贾探春 · Jia Huan 贾环 · Zhou Yiniang 周姨娘 · Xiaoque 小鹊 · Xiaojixiang'r 小吉祥儿 · Qian Huai 钱槐 · Wu Xindeng xifu 吴新登媳妇 · Fangguan 芳官 · Ma Daopo 马道婆 · Cai Xia Zhi Mu 彩霞之母
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
