Cao Xueqin continues his epic tale of the fortunes of the Houses of Ning-Guo and Rong-Guo, descended from two brother Dukes of the Jia clan, both favorites of the Emperor. His second volume largely follows the hectic lives of Grandmother Jia’s grandchildren, all living within the Garden. “‘We’re all cousins,’ said Bao-yu. ‘What one of us does concerns all the others. If they have done you an injury, it’s up to me to apologize.’” The teenagers hang out with each other everyday, while also developing jealousies, rivalries, and cliques among each other, as well as between the larger household, their elders, and the staff. “None of the others present had understood what the four of them were talking about and treated these exchanges as a joke.” In this volume, the kids have just established a poetry club, where they spend their time eating, drinking, and making jokes, just as much as composing verse. “Why should the founding of poetry clubs be the sole prerogative of the whiskered male, and female versificators allowed a voice in the tunable concert of the muses only when some enlightened patriarch sees fit to invite them? Will you come, then, and rhyme with us?”
As well as the youngsters, this novel also details the day to day work of Xi-Feng, one of the youngest of the married Jia in-laws, who is tasked with accounting for the expenses of their sprawling household. As such, much of this novel involves the household help, especially the divisions that arise between the senior maids and the petty staff. “It was customary in the Jia household to treat the older generation of servants—those who had served the parents of the present masters—with even greater respect than the younger generation of masters.” The servants, also, would treat their young masters with almost matronly devotion and care. “Even we servants that have been with him for a few years get worried about him. The most that we can ever hope for is to do our duty and get by without too much trouble—but even that won’t be possible if he goes on the way he’s been doing. I’m always telling him to change his ways. Every day—every hour—I tell him. But it’s no use; he won’t listen.” Romantic jealousies between senior wives, chamber wives, concubines, mistresses, and favored maids also lead to household rivalries and maneuverings. “The ancients used to say that for one smile of a beautiful woman a thousand taels are well spent. For a few old fans it’s cheap at the price!” One gets the sense that, in these elaborate Manchu mansions, the servants are the ones who actually wield much of the power and know all the secrets going on. “I just dread talking to servants nowadays. They take such an interminable time to tell you anything—so long-winded! And the airs and graces they give themselves! and the simpering! and the um-ing and ah-ing! If they only knew how it makes me fume!”
Finally, the extended clan kinsmen from the countryside make appearances on the Jia households, begging for and expecting money, jobs, or favors, which cannot so easily be refused. “I was born for a hard life, d’ye see, just as Your Ladyship was born for a soft one. We couldn’t all be like Your Ladyship, or there’d be no one to do the farming.” Of course, the entire clan is eventually taken care of, to varying degrees, by Grandmother Jia and her abundant largesse. “Although Grandmother Jia had sent invitations by word of mouth to every clansman and clanswoman residing in the city, some of them were too elderly to stand up to the noise and excitement of the party, some were unable to come because they had no one to look after the house for them while they were away, some had intended to come but were prevented from doing so by illness, some stayed away from envy of their richer clansmen or because they were ashamed of their own poverty, others because they could not stand Xi-Feng, and yet others because they were so unused to company and incapacitated by shyness that they dared not come.” The members of the House of Rong-Guo, old and young alike, do not, as yet, have to concern themselves with the sordid business of making money, just on how to spend it. “‘Which of these is the one tael mark?’ she said. ‘That’s rich,’ said Bao-Yu, ‘your asking me! Anyone would think you were new here.’ Musk laughed. She was about to go outside and ask, but Bao-Yu stopped her. ‘Just pick out one of the larger pieces and give her that. There’s no need to bother with the exact amount. We aren’t shopkeepers.’”
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