The Story of the Stone (part three)

Since I'm not able to find a large enough picture of the cover to Volume 3, I will post this picture of a couple in the Grand View Garden from www.beijingguide2008.com.  It looks like this couple may be actors dressed as Bai-yu and Lin-yu. 

However, this picture is idyllic and belies the overall tone of this volume, "The Warning Voice."  At the end of the volume, Bai-yu is still living in the garden with *most* of the young people who were there at the beginning, and he and his father have begun to be reconciled to each other, but it is clear that things have begun to fall apart for the family.  Throughout the end of Vol. 2 and the whole of Vol. 3, the adult women (especially Wang Xifeng and Lady Wang but also Bao-chai) are concerned about its financial situation.  Xifeng herself is bedridden at the beginning of the volume after giving birth to a stillborn son.  Bai-yu's half-sister Tan-chun and his sister-in-law Li Wan have taken on Xifeng's duties, and they are constantly struggling to manage the family complex and its servants.  Much of the volume is taken up with the servants' jostling for power, prestige, and stolen goods as well as the family's efforts to discipline them for their thefts, gambling, and drunkenness. Moreover, the family is in mourning for Sir Jia Jing, its nominal head, and the Dowager Consort of the late Emperor.  She is not related to the family, but their social position requires that they enter mourning for her.

Below are 19th century painter Xu Baozhuan's depictions of two of Bai-yu's senior maids.  The first is Skybright, a skilled seamstress with a sharp tongue.  She will be one of the servants fired by Lady Wang, and she will die shortly after she is sent to live with her cousin and his vicious wife.  The second is Aroma, Bao-yu's chief maid and "chamber wife."





In addition, soon after her stillbirth, Wang Xifeng's husband Jia Lian marries another woman secretly and sets up a household with her outside the family's compound.  (As you may know from Raise the Red Lantern, men were permitted to have multiple wives.  However, Jia Lian is afraid how his wife and family will respond to his taking a second wife, and, as I have mentioned above, the family is in mourning.)  Once Xifeng finds out about her husband's secret marriage to You Er-jie, she brings her back to the family compound only to make her life miserable.  Er-jie, by the way, commits suicide after this mistreatment that includes the miscarriage of a son.  This miscarriage was induced by the incompetent doctor whom Xifeng hires for her. 

Jia Zheng's return to the family comes as a relief to them and even the reader.  (Remember that he nearly killed Bao-yu in Volume 2.)  Before his father's return, Bao-yu scurries around to complete all the tasks that his father has set him.  In fact, he has to ask his female cousins to help him compile enough calligraphy.  Nevertheless, father and son reconcile.  Jia Zheng even commissions his son to write a poem on a historical figure, the Winsome Colonel, a woman who goes to war to avenge the death of Prince Heng. 

Below is a picture of Mu Guiyung, another of China's woman warriors.


At the end of the third volume, Bao-yu's companions are beginning to move out of the garden.  Bao-chai chooses to move back in with her mother.  The maid Caltrop must move back in with her master Xue Pan once he returns from a long journey.  He soon marries a cruel and capricious woman who torments Caltrop.  Another companion, Ying-chun, marries, and others will soon follow.

I'll finish with a more desolate picture from the Grand View Garden in Beijing.