Siqi

Her Story

Chief maid to Jia Yingchun, and the one servant the book calls physically large: 高大丰壮, tall and strongly built. She behaves accordingly. In Chapter 61 the kitchen refuses her a bowl of steamed egg on the grounds that eggs are dear; Siqi marches a squad of little maids down there and has the food thrown out to the dogs. Nobody disciplines her. She serves the meekest mistress in the garden and compensates for it.

In Chapter 71 Yuanyang, crossing the garden at night, walks into Siqi and a young man behind a rockery. Siqi drops to her knees and begs her not to shout. The man is her maternal cousin, Pan Youan 潘又安. He runs from the household soon afterwards.

Chapter 74 is the search of the Prospect Garden. It is pushed for by Wang Shanbao’s wife, eager to catch somebody out — and the box that yields the evidence is her own granddaughter’s. Inside are a man’s shoes and socks, a perfume sachet, a string of scented beads and a letter signed 表弟潘又安. Xifeng reads it aloud and laughs. Siqi neither denies it nor weeps. In Chapter 77 she is turned out of the gates, Yingchun in tears and saying nothing.

Her death is reported at second hand in Chapter 92, by a messenger to Xifeng. Pan Youan came back for her; her mother tried to beat him and swore she would never give her daughter up. Siqi answered that she had given herself to one man and would have no other, and that if her mother meant to marry her off she would die first — 一头撞在墙上, straight into the wall, and she was dead. Pan Youan produced the gold he had gone to earn, bought two coffins instead of one, buried her without weeping, then cut his own throat.

In Xiang Li's Hands

The tallest figure here, and the only one who looks straight out of the sheet. Siqi stands full height on bare paper — no rockery, no garden, no household — hair in two heavy round knots, one hand at her collar, in a dusty-mauve jacket over a slate-blue robe. From her waist a red cord runs down with a jade pendant knotted into it, and the loose ends of that cord trail across the floor for the whole width of the picture. Xiang Li paints none of the scandal. She paints a big calm girl and one red thread going somewhere.

The Calligraphy

司棋, low on the right and unusually large — two characters of the given name set at the height of the sitter’s hip rather than in the customary top corner, and brushed heavier and blacker than the delicate figure beside them. No surname is given; the novel supplies none. Among the eight sheets in this group it is the inscription that most nearly competes with the painting for the page.

Connections

• Jia Yingchun 贾迎春 — her mistress, too passive to protect her and reduced to tears when she was expelled.
• Pan Youan 潘又安 — her maternal cousin and lover, who fled, returned with money, and killed himself over her coffin.
• Yuanyang 鸳鸯 — who caught them in the garden in Chapter 71 and kept the secret.
• Wang Shanbao’s wife 王善保家的 — her grandmother, who instigated the search of Chapter 74 and exposed her by it.
• Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — who read out the letter that condemned her, and later paid to settle the deaths.

Others of the same kind · maid – Yingchun, Tanchun, Xichun, Li Wan, Xiangyun 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 · Xiaojixiang'r 小吉祥儿 and 5 more

Named on these pages Jia Yingchun 贾迎春 · Yuanyang 鸳鸯 · Lianhua'r 莲花儿 · Wang Shanbao jia de 王善保家的 · Qin Xian jia de 秦显家的 · Pan You'an 潘又安 · Zhang Ma 张妈

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