Xiaochou

Her Story

The little clown of the household’s opera troupe, nine years old. She has no name in the novel — only her role.

In Chapter 22, at Baochai’s birthday, Grandmother Jia takes a liking to her and to the eleven-year-old who plays the young female lead, and has them brought out and given sweets and money. Then Wang Xifeng looks at the child and says she looks remarkably like someone. Nobody will say who. Baochai knows and says nothing; Baoyu knows and warns Xifeng off with a look. It is Shi Xiangyun who says it out loud — she looks like Cousin Lin.

What follows is one of the sharpest small scenes in the book. Daiyu is not merely compared to an actress, which is insult enough in that household; she is compared to a child paid to be laughed at. Xiangyun, told off for her bluntness, turns on Baoyu instead. Baoyu, trying to placate both, offends both. He goes back to his room and writes a bitter little Chan verse about it, and Daiyu and Baochai read it and tease him out of his despair.

The nine-year-old is the cause of all of it and is never spoken to again.

In Xiang Li's Hands

She kneels on the floor in rose-pink with green cuffs, hair in two round buns with red flowers pinned in, holding a small brass cymbal on a tasselled cord in one hand and touching her mouth with the other. Her eyes are shut and she is laughing. There is no stage, no audience, no adults. She paints the child enjoying herself, entirely unaware — which puts the whole cruelty of the scene outside the frame, where the adults are.

The Calligraphy

小丑 — the role, not a name: the clown, the comic part in a troupe. Two characters at upper left, and the only identification anyone in the novel ever gives her.

Connections

• Lin Daiyu 林黛玉 — whom she is said to resemble, setting off the quarrel.
• Shi Xiangyun 史湘云 — the one who says it aloud.
• Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 — who makes the comparison without naming it.
• Grandmother Jia 贾母 — who has the child brought out and rewarded.

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