贾兰

His Story

He is Li Wan’s son, and Jia Zhu’s. Chapter 2 disposes of his father in one sentence: entered the school at fourteen, married before twenty, fathered a son, fell ill and died. Jia Lan is that son. He grows up inside the narrowest programme in the book, watched by a widowed mother for whom his examinations are the only future left, in a house where his uncle Baoyu is loved for refusing to study.

He behaves. Chapter 9, in the schoolroom brawl, he holds back his desk-mate Jia Jun with 好兄弟，不与咱们相干 — good brother, this is nothing to do with us — and the novel calls him a boy who avoids trouble. Chapter 26: Baoyu finds him out in the garden with a small bow, shooting at two deer, and asks what he thinks he is doing. 这会子不念书，闲著作什么？所以演习演习骑射 — I’m not at my books just now, so what else is there? I’m practising riding and archery. Even his idleness is a syllabus.

Chapter 78, aged thirteen, he is called on with his uncles to write on the woman general Lin Siniang and produces a quatrain: 姽婳将军林四娘，玉为肌骨铁为肠，捐躯自报恒王后，此日青州土亦香. The room praises it. His grandfather says only that it is a child’s mouth, and creditable enough for that.

Chapter 119 is the payment. He and Baoyu go into the examination hall together. Baoyu places seventh; Jia Lan places one hundred and thirtieth. Only one of them comes out of the gates. The family’s hereditary standing is restored on the strength of it.

His mother’s Chapter 5 verse names him before he can walk: 桃李春风结子完，到头谁似一盆兰 — the peach and plum have borne and are finished; in the end, who is like the orchid in its pot. The song attached to it promises her a coronet and a gold seal, and the road to the Yellow Springs immediately after.

In Xiang Li's Hands

He is a child and she paints him as one — the youngest face in this group by a wide margin. He sits back on the ground in a loose sea-green robe, both arms up beside his head, hands open, one pressed to his own round cheek; a gilt cage crown with a red pompom on the topknot, a heavy turquoise-and-coral collar at the chest. An open book lies before him on the floor: white leaves ruled in vermilion columns, filled with fast illegible cursive — the same book his mother holds across her lap on both her sheets. He is not reading it.

The Calligraphy

贾兰 sits low on the right, clan then given name, brushed in the same upright form the grown men of the house receive. The child gets no diminutive and no softening. His name is the orchid of the prophecy, and the inscription sets it down beside a boy who is looking away from his book.

Connections

• Li Wan 李纨 — his mother, whose widowhood is spent entirely on his studies, and whose two paintings hold the same vermilion-ruled book.
• Jia Zhu 贾珠 — his father, dead before twenty, whom he cannot remember.
• Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — his uncle, who sits the same examination in Chapter 119 and does not come home.
• Jia Zheng 贾政 — his grandfather, who sets him the poem in Chapter 78 and calls it a child’s work.
• Jia Huan 贾环 — his uncle, who writes against him at the same sitting and is thought to have the better idea.

Others of the same kind · Jia clan – Rongguo House Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 · Jia Yuanchun 贾元春 · Jia Tanchun 贾探春 · Jia Yingchun 贾迎春 · Jia Mu 贾母 · Jia Zheng 贾政 · Jia She 贾赦 · Jia Lian 贾琏 · Jia Huan 贾环 · Jia Zhu 贾珠 · Jia Daishan 贾代善 · Jia Min 贾敏

Named on these pages Li Wan 李纨 · Jia Zhu 贾珠 · Jia Jun 贾菌 · Lou Shi 娄氏 · Suyun 素云 · Bao Yu Zhi Zi 宝玉之子 · Lin Si Niang 林四娘

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