Dream of the Red Chamber – Chinese TV Series – 2010
Dream of Red Mansions (2010 TV series)
1.
A strange opening, seemingly unrelated to the main characters. See my essay on the Framing Story.
2.
Uninteresting episode.
3.
Baoyu has a dream in Qin-shi’s room. See my essay on the Mysterious Woman in the Dream of the Red Chamber.
4.
Baoyu goes to school with his new friend Qin (Qin-shi’s brother). Baoyu’s father does not approve of the school.
5.
A man from the Ning Gu Fu tries to seduce Xifeng. She has him wait in the cold one night and then 3 days later, when he comes again, she sends him to a storage room where two men beat him (after he tries to have sex with one because he was dressed like the woman) and after that humiliation, he goes mad and dies. {Chapters 11 & 12}
6.
Daiyu must go south to be with her dying father. The Grandmother sends Jia Lian to escort her on the trip. The wife (Qin-shi) of the eldest son of one of the Masters - Jia Gen, dies after six months of illness. A big funeral is held for her. The master of the House, Jia Gen, bribes an imperial eunuch 1,200 taels of silver so that his son (Jian Geng, husband of Qin-shi) can be appointed a captain of the Imperial guards (an honorary rank) and this looks better on the mourning placards. He is now a Rank 5 official and his dead wife is now of higher status. Qinshi’s chief maid servant also commits suicide. She will be buried with Qin-shi. With his son’s wife dead, the job of running his household is now open (meaning that Qin-shi used to be running the house before getting sick). The master of the Ning Gu Fu (Jia Gen) asks Xifeng (Jia Lian’s wife) to take over running the funeral. She agrees happily. We see her ordering the hundred servants around for the funeral operations. {Chapter 13}
7.
Xifeng is having fun running the Ning Gu Fu household during the funeral for Qin-shi. She enjoys giving orders and seems to enjoy having one of the Ning Gu Fu servants beaten for being late to her morning meeting.
News comes that Daiyu’s father has died and Xifeng’s husband has to go south to attend his funeral, he doesn’t visit his wife before leaving.
At 7:00 in the TV show we see the huge funeral procession for the dead woman, Qin-shi. Most people wear white except for the musicians. This funeral is quite dramatic and it has only a few similarities to a modern funeral in China (the breaking of a clay pot before the casket heads off). There are two puppets of the 2 dead women carried aloft in the procession. On the route, several tents with ‘memorial feasts’ have been set up by four of the sons of the Huangdi (unnamed and never seen, could be Kangxi or Yongzhen). One prince is there in person, the Prince of Beijing. He is a young, good looking fellow who asks to meet the Baoyu. He invites Baoyu to come to his house and ‘Listen to the discourse of my learned friends.’ He gives Baoyu prayer beads as a ‘meeting gift’. {Chapter 14}
They take Qinshi’s body to the Iron Threshold Daoist temple which is some miles and over a bridge from the Ning Gu Fu & Yung Gu Fu mansions. At the temple, Qin meets a girl wearing Buddhist garb with a shaved head, for some reason the two know each other and are in love (how this happened is unexplained). {Chapter 15}
Soon after is Baoyu’s father’s birthday (I think). In the middle of the festivities (the women inside one room, the men outside) Qin has a secret visit from his ‘nun’ girlfriend who says she has fled the temple. Qin’s father finds them together (having sex) and while trying to beat his son, he suffers a heart attack and dies.
The next day an imperial edict arrives, summoning Lord Jia Zheng to the palace. Everyone is worried and then they learn that his daughter (and Baoyu’s sister) Yuanchun, has been chosen as an Imperial Concubine. (This suggests that the Huangdi is Yongzheng because Kangxi’s would have been nearly dead in 1720. Yongzheng took the throne in 1722 when he was in his mid 40s). The family is happy! Daiyu returns with Jia Lian. He is happy to see Xifeng. {Chapter 16}
For no obvious reason, Qin is dying. Baoyu goes to see his friend and the 3 spirits of the underworld who are collecting Qin’s spirit briefly let him go back to the real world. Qin says a few words to his friend, then dies. [Why Qin dies just after his older sister died is not explained.]
The episode ends with a tour of the newly built gardens, built to impress Jia Zheng’s daughter, the new Imperial wife who is allowed to visit her family on at least one occasion. Baoyu names some of the buildings with clever expressions but he irritates his father for showing off his knowledge of rare plants. [Note: Throughout the entire series, Baoyu never has a single friendly interaction with his father, Jia Zheng].{Chapter 17}
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