Ruizhu

Her Story

Maid to Qin Keqing. When her mistress dies in Chapter 13, Ruizhu dashes her head against a pillar in the room and dies with her. Jia Zhen, struck by it, has her coffined with the honours due a granddaughter of the house, and her fellow maid Baozhu asks to stand as Keqing’s mourning daughter. The novel never says why she did it — one of the several things about that death it declines to explain.

In Xiang Li's Hands

The most violent sheet in this group. The body is flung across the paper almost horizontally, head at the far left and nearly inverted, hair carried out behind in one dry stroke that runs off the edge. Grey wash, one blue seam. No pillar, no room: she falls through bare paper.

The Calligraphy

瑞珠 — the given name alone, set upright and unhurried in the top corner while the figure beneath it falls.

Connections

• Qin Keqing 秦可卿 — her mistress, whose death she does not survive.
• Baozhu 宝珠 — the fellow maid who takes the mourning daughter’s place.
• Jia Zhen 贾珍 — head of the Ning-guo house, who has her buried with a granddaughter’s rites.

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 Baozhu 宝珠

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