Dream of the Red Chamber, Volume 1

Dai-yu is the young pupil of Yu-cun, and the daughter of Ru-hai. Yu-cun travels with Dai-yu to the capitol when he learns that some ministers may be reinstated in their positions. She is chronically ill, and a “scabby-headed monk” ask to take her away as a nun, but her parents refuse. Dai-yu begins her time in the mansion as a relatively humble girl, but she ultimately proves to be spoiled, quick to anger, sensitive, and difficult to manage. Her personality often mirrors Bao-yu’s, and the two are always fighting and upsetting each other. Dai-yu, considered a great beauty, strikes Bao-yu and many other characters with her appearance. Dai-yu is chronically jealous, particularly of Bao-chai, who is much sweeter and more pleasant, comparatively. Dai-yu realizes at the very end of the novel that she has strong romantic feelings for Bao-yu. 

As the matriarch of the Jia family, Grandmother Jia often spends time with the children, and she loves noisy parties where the children can spend time together and be themselves. She spoils Bao-yu and has a soft spot in her heart for Bao-chai, who she hopes will marry Bao-yu one day. She most often spends time with Lady Wang and Xi-feng. When Dai-yu first arrives at the mansion, Grandmother Jia makes her feel welcome. 

An undersecretary of the ministry of works, Jia Zheng is a prominent member of the Jia family. Yu-cun goes to meet him in the capitol to get himself reinstated in the ministry. Jia Zheng is Bao-yu’s father, Lady Wang’s husband, and Grandmother Jia’s son. He is skeptical of his son, who he sees as too romantic and not committed to studying. He spends a lot of time with his “literary gentlemen,” who talk with him about classic books and poems. 

Wang Xi-feng is the young wife of Jia Lian and a cousin of Jia Zheng. She is stunningly beautiful and was raised among boys, so she is thought of by the other women as “brash and unmannerly” (156). She is now the “lady of the house” and is known for “talk[ing] down ten grown men any day of the week” (156), if need be. She is a powerful woman and often the person people seek to get their needs met because she is more proactive than other members of the family. She is the target of Auntie Zhao’s rage when she explores black magic and becomes addled in her head. She is probably the most powerful woman in the house in terms of her ability to get what she wants and give to others, despite her lower rank.  

Lady Wang is the wife of Jia Zheng and the mother of Bao-yu. She coddles Bao-yu, but not as much as Grandmother Jia. She is kind to Dai-yu and Bao-chai when they arrive and takes care of their needs.

Bao-chi is the sister of Xue Pan. She is an intelligent and kind girl who cares for her mother and is beloved by all, including the maids. She doesn’t like dressing up or wearing makeup and is considered level-headed and sweet. She also has a chronic sickness that she takes a very special pill for, prescribed by a monk, called Cold Fragrance Pills. 

Qin-shi is the wife of Jia Rong and is a family member living on the property of the Rong Mansion. In her younger years she went by Ke-qing, but nobody in the Rong mansion knows that name. Qin-shi is sweet to Bao-yu and introduces him to his best friend, her brother Qin Zhong. She dies after a prolonged illness caused by chronic nervousness, and everyone in the family mourns her. After her death, she demonstrates a gift for prescience and is made a “Noble Dame” when Jia Rong acquires a title after her passing. She is buried in the family plot at the Temple of the Iron Threshold.  

 Qin Zhong is the younger brother of Qin-shi whom Bao-yu meets and loves immediately. Qin-shi warns Bao-yu that Qin Zhong has a bad temper, but the two are a match in terms of their shared temperaments. Qin Zhong is slightly more level-headed than Bao-yu and is a good and loyal friend to him. They attend school together, and Bao-yu witnesses Qin Zhong’s first romance with a girl named Sapientia. After Qin-shi’s funeral and his romantic escapades, Qin Zhong becomes gravely ill and dies. Bao-yu mourns his death for many weeks. 

Aroma is Bao-yu’s special servant, who was sent to him specifically by Grandmother Jia. She is also the first object of his sexual attentions, which she enjoys. She is a few years older than Bao-yu and more grounded. She caters to him as a servant should, but she also reasons with him and often keeps him in check. Aroma is one of the most fleshed out servant characters in the novel; Bao-yu meets her family and sees her home, and they talk about how she was sold into slavery. She is loyal to Bao-yu and plans to remain with him as a faithful servant for the rest of her life. She is also incredibly clever and often uses that cleverness to manipulate Bao-yu into improving his behavior.

Xue Pan, a cousin living in Nanking, commits murder when the slave girl he wants for his own, Caltrop, is sold to another man. He is suspected to be a powerful Nanking mob boss, with henchmen. He is a lazy “oaf king” with no real talents or intelligence, and a selfish man who expects others to take care of everything for him. He likes gambling, girls, and wasting time at the theatre or at parties, drinking. He moves to the Rong household, causes trouble in the school, and is rarely home. He gets along well with Bao-yu, but the other members of the family know he is trouble. 

Aunt Xue, the mother of Bao-chai and Xue Pan, comes to stay at the Rong mansion after Xue Pan’s legal troubles. She is accepted into the family and is relatively meek in character. 

Impervioso is a Buddhist monk who finds the stone at the bottom of Greensickness Peak and recognizes that a goddess has crafted and discarded it. He gives the stone new life through the magic of the fairy Disenchantment and sends it down to the mortal world. He also joins the human world and wanders as an eccentric, dirty monk. He and Mysterioso make several appearances, each time to provide opportunities for healing, primarily through commitment to a spiritual life.  

Mysterioso is a “Taoist illuminate” who accompanies Impervioso when he finds the stone. He joins Impervioso in the human world, though they separate on their journey in order to reach a larger number of troubled mortals. Impervioso also looks dirty and eccentric, and he does work similar to that of Mysterioso.

Feng-Yuan is the man murdered by Xue Pan’s henchmen. He is thought to be gay but falls in love with Ying-lian (Caltrop), whom he buys from her kidnapper. He spends his life savings on her and intends her as his wife.

Grannie Liu is a distant relation of the Jia family. Her son-in-law’s complaints about money inspire her to journey to the Rong mansion to ask for a hand-out, in the hopes that their generation’s old family connections will benefit them. She acquires her money and leaves soon after.

Euergesia is the Prioress of the Water-moon Priory and a friend of Xi-feng. She asks Xi-feng for a favor when Xi-feng stays at the Priory after Qin-shi’s funeral procession. 

Jokey Jin is a schoolboy whom Bao-yu and Qin Zhong have trouble with, after Jokey starts a rumor that Qin Zhong is having romantic relations with another boy in the school. 

Tealeaf is one of Bao-yu’s servants. He is a trouble-maker and is the inciter of the chaotic fight in the schoolhouse over the rumors about Qin Zhong. He brings out the worst in Bao-yu, and he is often caught breaking the rules, though Bao-yu rarely, if ever, rats him out.  

Vanitas is a Taoist in search of the secret of immortality. He finds the stone, now large and carved with “The Story of the Stone” on its side. He asks the stone about the meaning of its story, and the stone informs him that its message is about love. Vanitas becomes the first of a long line of monks to transcribe, alter, revise, rename, and publish this story, which is presumably the tale told in the novel.  

Zhen Shi-yin is a man of middle-class means living beside Bottlegourd Temple in the city of Soochow with his wife and daughter. He yearns for a son, is quiet and unambitious, and loves wine, poetry, and gardening. He has a dream about Impervioso and Mysterioso, which allows him to touch the magic stone and experience some tenants of Confucianist teaching. His daughter is kidnapped, and later he becomes a monk after his home burns down and he is forced to live in the country house of his greedy father-in-law. 

Feng-shi is the wife of Shi-yin. Very little is known about her personality; her daughter is kidnapped in Soochow and she is abandoned by her husband when he becomes a monk. She is left to live with her greedy father, Feng-su.

Feng-su is the father of Feng-shi, and he embezzles most of his son-in-law’s money after their catastrophe. He is greedy and complains often of having to care for his family in their time of need. 

Ying-lian is the daughter of Shi-yin and Feng-shi. When she is a child, a monk in the street, who appears to be a madman but is actually Impervioso, says that she will bring pain on her entire family with her romantic advances. She is kidnapped one day only weeks before her family’s house burns down due to a fire in the nearby Bottlegourd Temple. She is found years later, when she is sold to two different parties as a slave in Nanking, resulting in the death of a man named Feng-Yuan and a lawsuit that brings her new owner, Xue Pan, to the Rong household. Later, she becomes a slave and a maid at the Rong mansion to Lady Xue, Xue Pan’s mother, and is called Caltrop. She is noted for her beauty.

Disenchantment is a fairy who adopts the stone in its early days of wandering and sends it to Earth. She is the most prominent magical figure in the novel other than Impervioso and Mysterioso, and she tries to teach Bao-yu about the hazards of love through her song cycles and other teachings. Ultimately, fails to get through to him. 

Jia Yu-cun is from a once-wealthy but now poor family. He tried to seek his fortune, ran out of money, and now spends his days living in the Bottlegourd Temple working as a copyist and spending time with Shi-yin. He falls in love with a maid of the Zhen family during a visit to Shi-yin’s house. Shi-yin gives Yu-cun money to show his worth in the capitol, and he becomes a prominent magistrate through his demonstrated talent and intelligence. However, his personality causes some problems, and he is reported to the capitol and disbanded. Instead of being upset by this, he takes his family, including the maid Lucky, whom he eyed back at the Zhen house, and travels the countryside, working odd jobs as a tutor and seeing the sights. He is eventually reinstated as a magistrate and helps Dai-yu secure a place at the Rong mansion. 

Jia Rui is the grandson of the schoolmaster Jia Dai-ru and is put in charge in Dai-ru’s absence. He is a friend of Xue Pan, and he is equally as poor in character. He causes a brawl in the school yard between Bao-yu, Qin Zhong, and the other boys. He also harasses and ogles Xi-feng, who finally has enough of his gross behavior and sets him up to be ridiculed and punished. Jia Rui’s lust overcomes him when a monk instructs him not to look into a mystical mirror, which displays an image of Xi-feng. His disobedience kills him, and nobody is particularly sad at Jia Rui’s death. 

The grandfather of Jia Rui and the school master of the Jia clan school. He is a good schoolmaster and a strict chaperone.

Cousin Zhen is the head of the Ning-guo mansion and You-shi’s husband. He is also Jia Rong’s father and Qin-shi’s father-in-law. He is generally pretty lax in his management of the servants and running of the household, which Xi-feng seeks to fix when she takes over during the period of Qin-shi’s mourning. 

Bao-yu’s older sister, Yuan-chun, is selected to become an Imperial Concubine. Yuan-chun acts like a mother to Bao-yu and worries about his treatment even after leaving home. She enjoys word games and riddles, and she frequently challenges the children to write riddles and poems. She is sensitive and grief-stricken at the loss of her family because of her post, but her parents reassure her that she has given the family the highest possible honor. The garden where Bao-yu and the girls live is made in her honor.  

Musk, a lower maidservant of Bao-yu, at one point becomes the center of Bao-yu’s attention while Aroma is sick. 

Nannie Li is Bao-yu’s wet nurse. Now an angry and spiteful old woman, she steals the snacks that Bao-yu saves for his other servants, particularly Aroma. Nobody really likes her or listens to her, which makes her even more resentful and mean.

Jia Huan is Bao-yu’s half-brother by his father’s concubine, whom he calls Auntie Zhao. He and Bao-yu aren’t particularly close, but Bao-yu doesn’t boss him around like some older brothers customarily do. Jia Huan is deeply jealous of Bao-yu and becomes so spiteful when Bao-yu flirts with his maid Sunset that he pours hot wax all over Bao-yu’s face. 

Big Jiao is a servant of the Ning-guo family and has been with the family for many generations. He is now an old drunkard, and he accuses the family of their degeneracy, mourning the loss of his Old Master, whom he respected and under whom the family flourished. Because of his long-standing connection to the family, he is not punished for his accusations or his drinking.

Sapientia, a little nun who lives with the Prioress Euergesia in the countryside, falls in love with Qin Zhong. The two have a brief romantic relationship before Qin Zhong unexpectedly dies, following the death of his grandfather. 

Shi Xiang-Yun is a great niece of Grandmother Jia. She is an orphan with a strong lisp, which Dai-yu mocks. She grew up in the palace and now visits occasionally to see Grandmother Jia. 

Patience, a maid, is a loyal servant to Xi-feng and to her master, Jia Lian, though she obviously respects Xi-feng much more. Patience is relatively sharp-tongued, like her mistress, but she ultimately proves to be clever and kind-hearted, despite some of her more brash qualities. 

Jia Yun is a cousin of Jia Lian. Jia Lian wanted him to be chosen as a caretaker for the 24 nuns acquired for the visitation of Yuan-chun, but he is not selected. He is a poor but handsome boy of 18, whose father died and whose mother is quite poor. Jia Yun falls in love with the maid Crimson while he waits for a meeting with Bao-yu. He works his way into Xi-feng’s good graces and becomes a more regular presence in the house when he gets a job as a gardener.  

Mother Ma is a wise woman, and Bao-yu’s godmother. She practices witchcraft and black magic and helps Auntie Zhao cast a dark spell on Bao-yu and Xi-feng. 

Auntie Zhao is Jia Huan’s mother and Jia Zheng’s concubine. She is a resentful woman and becomes increasingly more resentful as Bao-yu grows up. She wants more for herself and her son, but Lady Wang and Grandmother Jia often reprimand her when her son treats Bao-yu badly.