Dream of the Red Chamber Character Map

Dream of the Red Chamber loses readers in its first chapter and keeps losing them, and the reason is not the length — this map covers only the first 24 of the novel’s 120 chapters — but the names. One surname, Chia, covers two mansions and five generations. The household addresses people by rank rather than name, so “Mr. Secundus” is a name on three figures here, Chia Cheng, Chia Lien and Pao-yü. The same girl is Ying Lien on one page and Hsiang Ling on another. A cast list cannot hold any of that. This map charts Book I of the public-domain Joly translation end to end: 249 figures and 524 relationships, each carrying a short quote from the text, so you can check the line rather than take our word for it.

The novel supplies its own character map, and this one is built to be checked against it. In Chapter II, Leng Tzu-hsing recites the Chia genealogy to Yü-ts’un over wine — “the duke of Ning Kuo and the duke of Jung Kuo were two uterine brothers” — and eight of the map’s lines cite that single paragraph. Select the Duke of Ning Kuo and the eastern mansion unrolls as he tells it: Chia Tai-hua; Chia Ching, who “ceded the succession of the official title” to his son; Chia Chen, who runs the house; Chia Jung and his wife, Mrs. Ch’in. Select the Duke of Jung Kuo and the western one does the same: Chia Tai-shan and his widow, the Dowager; the brothers Chia She and Chia Cheng; then Chia Lien, Chia Chu, the consort Yuan-ch’un and Pao-yü, “born with a piece of jade in his mouth”; and under them Chia Lan, the fifth generation, reached through his mother Li Wan, Chia Chu’s widow. Pao-yü is the fourth. Everyone else famous married in or arrived sideways, and the map draws each route as its own line: Lady Feng is Madame Wang’s niece and Chia Lien’s wife; Tai-yü is the daughter of Chia Cheng’s sister, Chia Min; Pao-ch’ai is the daughter of Madame Wang’s sister.

Search a name to jump to it — accents are optional, so “Pao-yu” finds Pao-yü. Solid lines are kinship, dashed lines are unions and allegiances, dotted lines are social ties, and selecting a figure dims everyone they are not connected to. Select Pao-yü and 85 of the 524 lines light up, to 54 figures, more than a fifth of the map; five of them run to Tai-yü, five to Pao-ch’ai, and the two cousins hold four between themselves, one of them a rival line. 162 of the 524 lines are family and 19 are marriages. Forty-four are service, because the maids and pages are figures here too: Hsi Jen, Pao-yü’s waiting-maid, is mentioned 183 times, more than Pao-ch’ai.

Two honest notes. The counts surprise: 131 of the 249 figures are filed under “Chia family,” but the label means the house, not the blood — 27 of them are on the map only by a line of service and 20 have no line at all. Lady Feng is the second most-mentioned figure, 500 to Tai-yü’s 349, and twelve nobles from the funeral roll of Chapter XIV each appear once and connect to no one. And the map was made by software reading an 1892 translation, so it can be wrong. Joly spells two different men “Chen” — Chen Shih-yin of Chapter I and Chia Chen of the Ning mansion — and the map confused them once: Chia Chen carries “Chen Shih-yin” among his names, and Ying Lien’s child line runs to him instead of to her father. Hsi Ch’un carries “T’an-ch’un,” her cousin’s name. Chin Jung’s mother, “née Hu,” is folded into Mrs. Ch’in. Yü-ts’un is filed under historical figures. Madame Wang and Tai-yü’s mother each appear twice under different names. And the kidnapped Ying Lien and the maid Hsiang Ling are the same girl — the Retainer says so in Chapter IV — but the map holds her as two figures with no line between them, which is also how the household sees her. Every connection carries its quote so you can catch that kind of thing. The spellings are Joly’s, too: Pao-yü, not Baoyu; Tai-yü, not Daiyu; Lady Feng, not Wang Xifeng.

Who’s who in Dream of the Red Chamber

The short version, for the reader who just needs the thread back. Every name here is on the map, with the passage that puts them there.

Pao-yü (Jia Baoyu)

887 mentions and 85 lines to 54 figures — the center of the map by every measure. Twelve names, from “Chia Pao-yü” to “Master Secundus,” and lines to his grandmother (four), Tai-yü (five), Pao-ch’ai (five) and fifteen servants. Fourth generation of the Jung mansion: his parent line runs to Chia Cheng, Chia Cheng’s to Chia Tai-shan, and Tai-shan’s to the Duke.

Lin Tai-yü (Lin Daiyu)

349 mentions, 42 lines to 29 figures. Chia Cheng’s niece — Chapter II calls her mother his “uterine sister” — raised “as if she were a brilliant pearl in the palm of their hand.” Thirteen of her lines are kinship; four are rival lines, with Pao-ch’ai, Hsiang-yun, Nurse Li and T’an Ch’un. Yü-ts’un, her tutor in Chapter II, keeps a mentor line to her.

Hsüeh Pao-ch’ai (Xue Baochai)

157 mentions, 22 lines to 13 figures. Daughter of Mrs. Hsüeh, Madame Wang’s sister, so Pao-yü’s cousin on the other side from Tai-yü. Five lines to Pao-yü: among them the lover line the map draws for the dream song’s “disconsolate gold trinket and an unfortunate piece of jade,” and a mentor line for the “green wax” she whispers to him in Chapter XVIII — “Sister, you really can be styled my teacher.” Nine names; a bare “Pao Ch’ai” is also a second, unconnected figure.

Lady Feng (Wang Xifeng)

500 mentions, second only to Pao-yü; 59 lines to 42 figures; 18 names, more than anyone. Madame Wang’s niece and Chia Lien’s wife, introduced by the Dowager as “a cunning vixen, who has made quite a name in this establishment.” Nine of her lines are to servants, two to Goody Liu, and two to Chia Jui — his lover line and her enemy line back: “I shall soon enough compass his death.”

Dowager Lady Chia (Grandmother Jia)

208 mentions, 16 names, 28 lines to 18 figures. Chia Tai-shan’s widow — “the daughter of Marquis Shih” — with parent lines to both Chia She and Chia Cheng, four lines to Pao-yü and three to Tai-yü, the two grandchildren she keeps beside her. The map lists “Dowager lady Shih” among her names.

Chia Cheng (Jia Zheng)

201 mentions, 31 lines to 24 figures, six of them parent lines to his children — Chia Chu, Yuan-ch’un, Pao-yü, T’an Ch’un, Chia Huan, and “the jade-born son” of Chapter II, who is Pao-yü again under another name. Favored by the Emperor over his elder brother Chia She, “a man of amiable and genial disposition” who “gives no thought to the direction of any domestic concern.”

Madame Wang (Lady Wang)

156 mentions, 22 lines to 17 figures. Chia Cheng’s wife, Pao-yü’s mother, Lady Feng’s aunt, Mrs. Hsüeh’s sister, and the Wang connection Goody Liu comes to claim in Chapter VI. The map also holds her a second time, as “Lady Wang (wife of Chia Cheng),” from Leng Tzu-hsing’s account — two mentions, two lines.

Hsi Jen (Xiren; Aroma in Hawkes)

183 mentions — sixth on the map, above Pao-ch’ai — and 14 lines to 9 figures. Pao-yü’s waiting-maid, reassigned from the Dowager; the map keeps both servant lines. Her family is on the map too, her mother and her brother Hua Tzu-fang, for the Chapter XIX visit where they decide not to redeem her. Nurse Li has two hostile lines to her.

Mrs. Ch’in (Qin Keqing)

130 mentions, 16 names, 23 lines to 15 figures. Chia Jung’s wife and the Ning mansion’s daughter-in-law; Chia Chen’s relative line to her is his worry over her illness. The Fairy of Monitory Vision calls her “young sister” and gives her to Pao-yü in the dream of Chapter V — the one lover line on the map that happens in a dream. She dies in Chapter XIII, “She has already departed this life,” and her maid Jui Chu follows her. Three of her 16 names belong to another woman, Chin Jung’s mother.

Ch’in Chung (Qin Zhong)

119 mentions, 15 lines to 13 figures. Mrs. Ch’in’s brother and Pao-yü’s friend from the family school. Two lover lines, to the pupil Hsiang Lin and the young nun Chih Neng; two enemy lines, from Chin Jung and from the devils who come for him in Chapter XVI. His father Ch’in Yeh dies of anger at him, and then “Ch’in Chung, to resume our story, departed this life.”

Chia Yuan-ch’un (Jia Yuanchun)

101 mentions and 26 lines to 19 figures, fifteen of them kinship — the whole family at once, because her one appearance is the visit home in Chapter XVIII, when the garden is built for her. Nine names, from “eldest young lady” to “Her Majesty.” Pao-yü’s elder sister, who tutored him as a child; the map’s sibling line says so.

Chia Yü-ts’un (Jia Yucun)

152 mentions, 18 lines to 16 figures, and the map’s oddest filing: the parse put him under “Historical/Legendary figures,” though he is the penniless scholar of Chapter I whom Chen Shih-yin funds, Tai-yü’s tutor in Chapter II and the magistrate who buries the Feng Yüan case in Chapter IV. Four ally lines, a mentor line to Tai-yü, and a spouse line to Chiao Hsing, the Chen family maid who glanced back at him twice.

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