Chinese Literature

贾珍宁国府当家的族长 · 22

Leaf 22 of the Red Chamber · 珍大爷 the Chief Master of Ning

Jia Zhen 贾珍

In Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 (c. 1791) · in the household (当家) · nicknamed 珍大爷 “the Chief Master of Ning”

He rules the elder branch and treats the rule as a licence: no mourning, no banquet, no daughter-in-law of his own house is beyond him, and the house pays for all of it.

Office
head of the Jia clan and master of Ningguo, after his father gave up the rank for alchemy
Register
the Twelve Beauties' doom-line for the house: the first breach was made in Ning
Reputation
the servants' saying that nothing in his gate is clean but the two stone lions

The great deeds 大事記

  1. ch. 14

    A Nobleman's Coffin Board

    厚殮秦氏

    As head of Ningguo he spares nothing for Qin Keqing's obsequies: a coffin board cut for a nobleman, a palace rank bought for her husband, and Xifeng fetched across to run the mourning.

  2. ch. 64

    Court Paid in the Mourning Months

    戲尤姊妹

    Galloping home to his father's coffin, he makes first for the two young You sisters who have come to help with the mourning, and spends the mourning months paying court to the elder of them.

  3. ch. 75

    A Sigh in the Ancestral Hall

    祠堂悲音

    He keeps the Mid-Autumn banquet at Ningguo running till the small hours with singers and dice; the only rebuke is a long sigh heard in the ancestral hall while the household is at table.

結局 The ending

Ningguo is the mansion the officers search first, and his charges are his conduct at two funerals. Stripped of his rank he is sent into exile, his compound left to Lady You; the amnesty that afterwards reassembles the family hands its honours to Jia Zheng's branch, not to his.

In the same register & chapters 同冊

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