Jia Huan Cheats
New here? I’m translating all 120 chapters of 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber) into modern American English, one passage at a time. Each passage comes with the Chinese text, a comparison with Hawkes and the Yangs, and notes on the hard words. We’re now in Chapter 19.
Today’s post pushes us up to the New Year in the Jia household. That means that school is out. Nobody is allowed to sew, which means that everybody is bored. Jia Huan, Baoyu’s half-brother by Concubine Zhao, joins a dice game with Baochai and her maid Ying’er, and when the dice go against him, he cheats.
Even though this is a small scene, it gives us our first look at Jia Huan and his mother. It also gives us some ideas of what it means to be the son of a concubine in a house where Baoyu is everyone’s favorite. Baoyu shrugs it off, Concubine Zhao turns her anger onto her own son, and Wang Xifeng steps in with a “defense” of the boy that is really a public humiliation of his mother.
As usual, paid subscribers get the full translation, the Chinese text, and notes on the names, idioms, and the dice game itself, including how Concubine Zhao scolds her son.
