Jia Baoyu’s Heart
Yesterday’s brief translation post was yet another example of how Jia Baoyu acts differently than everybody around him:
賈母等如何謝恩，如何回家，親友如何來慶賀，寧榮兩府近日如何熱鬧，眾人如何得意，獨他一個皆視有如無，毫不介意。因此，眾人嘲他越發呆了。
Baoyu was completely uninterested in the way that Grandmother Jia and the others gave thanks at court, how they returned home, how excited and busy the two mansions had been lately, and how happy everybody was. He saw it as nothing of value, and felt completely indifferent to it. And this only led to the others to make fun of him for seeming mentally checked out all the time.
Now, the thing to notice here is that Jia Baoyu seems to have the uncanny ability to see the way things really are, rather than reacting to the way things appear to be on the surface. And that’s pretty impressive, especially for a character that is still quite young.
