Zhan Ziliang

His Story

Not a member of the household but a professional painter outside it. In Chapter 42, when the family is arguing over how Prospect Garden can possibly be painted, Baoyu names him: 詹子亮的工细楼台就极好 — nobody does fine-ruled halls and terraces better. He is named in the same breath as Cheng Rixing, whose speciality is beauties. Then the novel moves on, and the picture stays Xichun’s to make.

In Xiang Li's Hands

The most crowded sheet here. A great scroll unrolls diagonally across the page, and inside it, in miniature, green hills and coloured roofs — a painting within the painting. Below sit brush-pots, vases, the cut ends of rolled scrolls. He looks out from behind his own work, half hidden by it.

The Calligraphy

詹子亮 at the left, three characters set down among the scroll-ends and brush-pots — a working painter given his full name and no studio title.

Connections

• Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — names him in Chapter 42 as the hand for architecture.
• Cheng Rixing 程日兴 — named alongside him, the painter of beauties.
• Jia Xichun 贾惜春 — the one actually left with the Garden picture.

Others of the same kind · literary gentleman (清客) / hanger-on Zhan Guang 詹光 · Shan Pinren 单聘仁 · Cheng Rixing 程日兴 · Hu Silai 胡斯来 · Wang Ertiao 王尔调 · Ji Haogu 嵇好古

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