贾瑞贾代儒之孙 · 37
Leaf 37 of the Red Chamber · 塾师之孙 Grandson of the Schoolmaster
Jia Rui 贾瑞
In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (c. 1791) · in the household (当家) · nicknamed 塾师之孙 “Grandson of the Schoolmaster”
A penniless kinsman who mistakes one woman's politeness for an opening, and is taught better twice over by a punishment that keeps working after she has forgotten his name.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 9
Twenty Strokes for Breaking It Up
學房勸架He tries to settle a brawl in his grandfather's school by making the weaker side apologize; when the old master comes back it is Jia Rui who takes twenty strokes and kneels in the yard.
- ch. 11
A Night Locked in the Corridor
賈瑞起淫心At a Ning household banquet he stops Xifeng in a passage and hints that they were made for each other; she pretends to yield, and he spends the night locked in a walled corridor in the cold.
- ch. 12
The Trap of Filth and Debt
毒設相思局At her second appointment he is locked in a yard, drenched with filth thrown from the roof, then ambushed by kinsmen who make him sign away a debt. Sick, he gets a Taoist's mirror and one warning.
結局 The ending
He cannot keep to the warning: he looks at the mirror's front, where Xifeng beckons him out of the glass, and answers her until he cannot move. His grandfather burns the mirror to no purpose and Jia Rui dies in chapter 12, cured of nothing. Xifeng never once thinks of him again.
The book itself: what happens, how long it is, which English version to read — The story · How long it is · Which translation · The lamp-oil night · The family tree · The first expulsion