Cao Xueqin’s Specialty
In yesterday’s post, we were suddenly and quite unexpectedly introduced to Jia Baoyu’s young servant Mingyan:
想畢，也裝出小恭去，走至後面，悄悄把跟寶玉的書童茗煙叫至身邊，如此這般，調撥他幾句。這茗煙乃是寶玉第一個得用且又年輕不諳事的
After Jia Qiang thought through all of this, he pretended to need to urinate. He went to the back of the room, quietly summoning Baoyu’s servant Mingyan to go along with him. When they were alone, he said a few words to Mingyan to stir him up.
This Mingyan was Baoyu’s favorite young servant, but he was also young and inexperienced.
This is one of those special traits that are characteristic of Cao Xueqin’s writing. Mingyan has not been introduced before this, and is given basically half a sentence of perfunctory introduction before we get down to business.
We’ve seen this before in Dream of the Red Chamber, and we’re going to see this again, too.
