What Jia Baoyu's Jade Means
A complex tapestry of meaning
What Jia Baoyu's Jade Means
Okay — let’s get the obvious part out of the way first.
Jia Baoyu’s piece of jade is indeed a sexual reference.
This is obvious both in English and in Chinese. This passage hints strongly that Jia Baoyu might be referring to his own genitalia:
家裡姐姐妹妹都沒有，單我有，我說沒趣兒；如今來了這個神仙似的妹妹也沒有，可知這不是個好東西。
None of my sisters have it. I’m the only one who has it. That’s not any fun! And now this new sister comes along, looking like an angel — and she doesn’t have it, either! It can’t be anything good!
As innocent as we like to pretend that Chinese people in the 18th century were, I would be absolutely shocked if an educated reader at the time was not able to understand the obvious implications of this statement.
And, of course, there are other sexual references throughout Dream of the Red Chamber. We’ll handle those in turn as we get to them. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that this is some morally pure and clean book. It’s realistic, and it can be somewhat frank at times in its realistic description of life.
That’s not to say that Dream of the Red Chamber is anything like, say, Plum in the Golden Vase (金瓶梅), of course. That book has passages that are so frank and graphic that I doubt I’d be allowed to publish it on Substack. And, of course, that should clue you in on the fact that sex did sell in the Qing dynasty, even if we feel scandalized by it today.
To drive the point home, Grandmother Jia calls Baoyu’s jade a 命根子. 命根子 refers to something absolutely precious and essential to one’s life. It’s also a slang term for male genitalia. Now, I don’t know if that noun took on the slang meaning as a result of Dream of the Red Chamber, or if it had that meaning beforehand. Either way, it’s pretty clear that there’s a certain pun at work.
Now that we have that out of the way, we can start digging deeper into just what Jia Baoyu’s jade means, and what it symbolizes.
One thing should be obvious to you by this point. The jade is the stone that we read about in the first chapter.
Jia Baoyu himself is the personification of the stone. However, he has the stone — that piece of jade — with him at all times. It’s kind of a symbol of his character in that way. In fact, it’s an interesting contrast to Lin Daiyu, whose entire character and personality is defined by her emotions. In a way of thinking, Lin Daiyu has no jade because she is the jade — and Jia Baoyu carries a piece of jade with him as a personal symbol of his divine origins.
But the crazy thing here is the way that Jia Baoyu’s family acts about the jade.
On the one hand, they don’t really understand why Jia Baoyu would think that Lin Daiyu has a piece of jade.
When Jia Baoyu asks Lin Daiyu if she has jade as well, everybody else was puzzled (眾人都不解). Now, it’s easy to be puzzled by this brief sentence. In fact, Gladys Yang was so puzzled by it that she neglected to translate it at all. It’s not that everybody is puzzled because they don’t understand that Jia Baoyu has jade. In fact, it’s obvious from the context that everybody knows about the jade, and that they value the jade more than he does. No — they seem to be puzzled here because they have no idea why he would ask a question like this of a distant cousin that he just met for the first time.
Jia Baoyu seems to ascribe some sort of magical properties to the jade. He calls it “靈” when he says “還說靈不靈呢” (what kind of magic is this?). Now, 靈 means “spirit,” not “magic,” and is actually a direct reference to the engraving on the jade — but we haven’t gotten to that part quite yet. The important thing, though, is that Jia Baoyu expects that the jade can somehow recognize the true nature of people. He expects that he has jade because he’s different than others. He can see that Lin Daiyu is clearly different from any girl he’s ever met, and, naturally, assumes that she must also have jade. And, when he discovers that she doesn’t, he goes into a rage, cursing the jade and trying to destroy it. After all, if the jade isn’t a mark of something divine about the holder, what good is it to him?
We’re too early in the book for me to make this statement, but I will anyway. The truth is that the jade doesn’t actually do anything. It stands for something, sure. But it never changes any events.
In fact, we don’t even know for sure how Jia Baoyu got the jade in the first place. It’s possible that it he did have it in his mouth when he was born. But we don’t know that. We only heard a rumor from Leng Zixing, who was gossiping with the notorious fraudster Jia Yucun at the time.
However, it’s obvious that the jade is of utmost importance to everybody else in the family. This is because they need it to be magical. Its true power is in convincing everybody that there actually is a future for their family, and that the family fortunes actually can be saved in the end.
We haven’t met all the men in the family yet, but we will soon. When we do, we’ll pay special attention to their abilities — or, more appropriately, to their lack thereof. The men in the Jia household are useless and waste away their time with tasks that are utterly trivial. The women, meanwhile, are skilled and quite resourceful. However, because they are not men, it is impossible for them to do anything meaningful to prevent the household from sliding straight into disaster.
Jia Baoyu himself is also pretty useless, as we’ll soon see. He doesn’t care much for studying, and would rather spend his time with his sisters and cousins, engaging endlessly in completely frivolous activity.
But the jade — perhaps the jade is a divine sign, or some sort of miracle worker, or an angel in disguise! It’s that hope that everybody is banking on, and it’s that hope that causes them to go into a frenzy when he dares rip the jade off his neck and throw it to the ground.
Jia Baoyu is basically the only hope that the family has. He understands his position to an extent, and clearly resents it. His act of frustration towards the jade is actually an act of frustration towards the pressure placed on him by the rest of his family.
And that takes us back around to the gender theory. There’s actually quite a bit of truth in all that. Jia Baoyu prefers to be with women, likely because they are the only people who treat him with respect and love. It is certainly possible that he regrets being born male, and that he feels that it is impossible for him to live up to the standards his society has imposed on him.
Now, the biggest question of all is whether we have our own jades around our own necks. Can we see examples of this same phenomenon in our own society?