Shenying Shizhe

His Story

He is Baoyu before Baoyu — the celestial origin of the novel’s central figure, and he stands outside the mortal roster because everything he does happens before the book begins.

Chapter 1. On the bank of the Sacred River in the west, beside the Rock of Three Incarnations, there grew a single stalk of Crimson Pearl grass: 「西方灵河岸上三生石畔有绛珠草一株」. The attendant of the Court of Sunset Glow watered it daily with sweet dew, and because of him the plant did not wither. In time it shed its vegetable husk, took human form, and became the Crimson Pearl Fairy — wandering beyond the Heaven of Parting Sorrow, feeding on the Fruit of Secret Passion, drinking the water of the Sea of Sorrow. Nothing about this is romance. It is an unpaid debt.

Then his own restlessness. The attendant’s mortal heart takes fire, and he registers with the Fairy Disenchantment to go down into the world and live out an illusory karma. Crimson Pearl hears of it and answers with the sentence the entire novel is built on: 「他是甘露之惠，我并无此水可还。他既下世为人，我也去下世为人，但把我一生所有的眼泪还他，也偿还得过他了。」 He gave the kindness of sweet dew; she has no such water to return; since he is going down to be a man, she will go down too, and repay him with every tear of one lifetime. That vow is the plot. Baoyu and Daiyu’s whole story is the settling of a water debt in tears.

The received 120-chapter text places his descent alongside the descent of the Stone of Greensickness Peak, and treats Baoyu as his incarnation with the Stone hanging at Baoyu’s neck as jade. Whether attendant and Stone are one figure or two is disputed among scholars, and the novel never says outright. 瑛 means the lustre of jade, which is the only hint given.

In Xiang Li's Hands

He leans in from the upper right, head bowed, eyes closed, in a jewelled crown and pearl-and-coral collar, the robes broken into wide dry slabs of dusty rose and slate green. Both hands cup a shallow blue vessel; from its lip one thin white line of water falls the whole height of the paper to a small crimson plant in the lower left corner. No river, no bank, no rock — peach above, yellow below, and the dew line holding them together. The giver is enormous and half out of frame, the receiver tiny. The scale is the debt.

The Calligraphy

神瑛侍者, four characters down the right margin. It is a post, not a name — attendant of a celestial court — and no personal name for this figure exists anywhere in the novel to be used instead. The characters are brushed larger and more upright than the young women’s sheets receive, and they stop at 侍者: the one who waits, who serves, who pours.

Connections

• Jiangzhu Xiancao 绛珠仙草 — the plant he watered with sweet dew, who vowed to repay him with a lifetime of tears.
• Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — his incarnation in the mortal world, born with jade in his mouth.
• Lin Daiyu 林黛玉 — Crimson Pearl come down to pay; the tears in the vow are hers.
• Jing Huan 警幻仙姑 — the Fairy Disenchantment, with whom he registered before descending.
• Zhen Shiyin 甄士隐 — who overhears the monk and the Taoist telling this story in a dream in Chapter 1.

Others of the same kind · mythic frame / immortal Kongkong Daoren 空空道人 · Jinghuan Xiangu 警幻仙姑 · Zhongqing Dashi 钟情大士 · Yinchou Jinnü 引愁金女 · Duhen Puti 度恨菩提 · Jiangzhu Xiancao 绛珠仙草

Named on these pages Jinghuan Xiangu 警幻仙姑 · Jiangzhu Xiancao 绛珠仙草

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