Zhou Yiniang

Her Story

Jia Zheng has two concubines. One of them fills chapters. The other is Zhou Yiniang, and what the novel does with her is refuse to write her down.

She has no children, which in her position is the whole of her fate: a concubine without a son has no claim on anything and no one to speak for her later. She is counted whenever concubines are counted, walked in and out of rooms in pairs with Zhao Yiniang, and given almost nothing to say. In Chapter 25 the two of them come together to look in on Baoyu while he is ill, and Wang Xifeng talks and laughs with Daiyu and does not turn her head to them. In Chapter 35, when Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang go to see Baoyu, Zhao Yiniang pleads illness, and it is Zhou Yiniang alone among the concubines who is there with the women hanging the curtain, setting the backrest and spreading the cushion.

Her one moment of definition is spoken by somebody else about her. In Chapter 60, scolding her own mother for brawling in the garden, Tanchun says: 「你瞧周姨娘， 怎不见人欺他，他也不寻人去。」 Look at Zhou Yiniang — nobody bullies her, and she goes looking for nobody. It is offered as praise. It is also an exact description of a woman who has worked out that the safest thing available to her is to leave no trace.

The novel gives her no arc, no quarrel, no illness and no death. After the house falls she is simply not mentioned again. What happened to her is not written, which is the most consistent thing about her.

In Xiang Li's Hands

She is standing, three-quarters on, half-smiling, looking past us to the left. The upper half of the sheet is a vast fur-collared mantle laid in with wet grey and black ink, and its shadow runs off the left edge in one enormous dry-brushed slab, much larger than the woman inside it. Under it a plum-brown gown banded in yellow and blue. Both hands are on a 如意 sceptre held diagonally across her body, jade-green head, coral inlay — the most ceremonial object anyone in this group is given. The novel leaves her hands empty. The painting does not.

The Calligraphy

The sheet reads 周姨娘 — surname, then the household designation, exactly the construction used for the other concubine of the same household. She has no personal name in the book either, and the inscription cannot invent one. Three characters down the right margin, evenly spaced and unhurried, with none of the speed given to the maids’ sheets.

Connections

• Jia Zheng 贾政 — his second concubine, who bore him no children.
• Zhao Yiniang 赵姨娘 — the other concubine of the same household, paired with her in every scene and her opposite in temperament.
• Jia Tanchun 贾探春 — who held her up in Chapter 60 as the example her own mother should have followed.
• Lady Wang 王夫人 — the principal wife whose household she lived under.
• Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — whom she came with Zhao Yiniang to visit in Chapter 25.

Others of the same kind · Jia household – wives, concubines, in-laws Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 · Li Wan 李纨 · Qin Keqing 秦可卿 · Wang Furen 王夫人 · You Erjie 尤二姐 · You Sanjie 尤三姐 · Xue Baoqin 薛宝琴 · Xing Xiuyan 邢岫烟 · Li Wen 李纹 · Li Qi 李绮 · Xing Furen 邢夫人 · You Shi 尤氏 · Xue Yima 薛姨妈 · Zhao Yiniang 赵姨娘 and 11 more

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