Jul 16, 2026 · 56 min · 11 segments
Yuanyang 鴛鴦 (Faithful in the Hawkes translation) emerges as an iconic proto-feminist heroine! One of the most important and memorable subplots of Hongloumeng 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber), Yuanyang’s…
William JonesHost
Kevin WilsonHost
So we were just dealing with the fallout of Xifeng's birthday when she got very drunk and discovered her husband having an affair.
And there was lots of fighting and shouting and, you know, kind of allegations and accusations thrown around.
Oh, sorry, in the previous chapter, 45... a lot of the attention initially is focused on Xifeng.
First, she has a visit from Li Wan, who's the older sister-in-law of our main character, Jiabaoyu.
She's the widow of his elder brother, and she kind of acts almost as a mother hen for many of the younger members of the family.
And so she's come over with some of those younger members to ask Xi Feng for two favours.
One of them is that she join the poetry club that they run as a kind of, not for her poetic stylings, but for her to act as a disciplinary officer, basically to crack down on anyone who is late to their sessions or who fails to attend without good cause.
And the other favour is to ask for some supplies for this grand painting project, where one of the granddaughters of the family, Xichun, is going to do a painting of the whole garden.
During this conversation, an argument breaks out between Li Wan and And Xifeng, particularly about Xifeng's recent treatment of her chief maidservant, Ping'er, patients in the Hawkes translation, whom she mistreated terribly while under the influence of alcohol.
anyway shortly afterwards an old servant arrives Lai Mama she's called so she's one of these servants whose entire family is with the Jia household and her grandson has managed to move up in the world kind of thanks to their benevolence and is now the kind of minor official and so she's meant to be there to ask them to come to a kind of party to celebrate his recent elevation but instead she goes on the a kind of long rambling rant about how ungrateful her grandson is, and frankly all young people, and how they ought to be beaten more to kind of teach them good manners.
Anyway, shortly afterwards her daughter-in-law, who is also a servant, and two other servants show up.
So they've come to find her, and so they make the request instead that Xifeng and the others attend the aforementioned party.
And while they're talking, Xifeng thinks of a related matter, which is she wants to dismiss another one of the servants.
And the reason for wanting to dismiss him is that he was drunk and abusive and disorderly recently.
And so we get to see this contrast between how her own drunken behavior hasn't resulted in anything more than kind of mild abuse or disapproval from others whereas one of the servants doing the same thing or less is facing dismissal.
Anyway, she's convinced by the others not to dismiss him but instead to have him beaten but allowed to remain on staff.
She's a kind of rather waif-like beauty, and she's suffering a recurrence of her old illness, which seems to flare up multiple times a year.
So she's kind of bedridden, and she's visited by various people, among them her other cousin Xue Baochai who um talks to her for a bit and we see the kind of deepening of friendship and intimacy between them and among other things she recommends that she change the medicine that she's taking um because it's clearly doing her no good.
Then Dayu is left alone and it being autumn time it begins to rain and it's very dark and gloomy and so she's overcome with sentiments of that sort and writes a long poem of her own on the theme and then she is visited by her cousin Ballyu who is dressed in a ridiculous outfit that makes him look like an old fisherman but which apparently is very good at keeping off the rain.
So we were just dealing with the fallout of Xifeng's birthday when she got very drunk and discovered her husband having an affair.
And there was lots of fighting and shouting and, you know, kind of allegations and accusations thrown around.
Oh, sorry, in the previous chapter, 45... a lot of the attention initially is focused on Xifeng.
First, she has a visit from Li Wan, who's the older sister-in-law of our main character, Jiabaoyu.
She's the widow of his elder brother, and she kind of acts almost as a mother hen for many of the younger members of the family.
And so she's come over with some of those younger members to ask Xi Feng for two favours.
One of them is that she join the poetry club that they run as a kind of, not for her poetic stylings, but for her to act as a disciplinary officer, basically to crack down on anyone who is late to their sessions or who fails to attend without good cause.
And the other favour is to ask for some supplies for this grand painting project, where one of the granddaughters of the family, Xichun, is going to do a painting of the whole garden.
During this conversation, an argument breaks out between Li Wan and And Xifeng, particularly about Xifeng's recent treatment of her chief maidservant, Ping'er, patients in the Hawkes translation, whom she mistreated terribly while under the influence of alcohol.
anyway shortly afterwards an old servant arrives Lai Mama she's called so she's one of these servants whose entire family is with the Jia household and her grandson has managed to move up in the world kind of thanks to their benevolence and is now the kind of minor official and so she's meant to be there to ask them to come to a kind of party to celebrate his recent elevation but instead she goes on the a kind of long rambling rant about how ungrateful her grandson is, and frankly all young people, and how they ought to be beaten more to kind of teach them good manners.
Anyway, shortly afterwards her daughter-in-law, who is also a servant, and two other servants show up.
So they've come to find her, and so they make the request instead that Xifeng and the others attend the aforementioned party.
And while they're talking, Xifeng thinks of a related matter, which is she wants to dismiss another one of the servants.
And the reason for wanting to dismiss him is that he was drunk and abusive and disorderly recently.
And so we get to see this contrast between how her own drunken behavior hasn't resulted in anything more than kind of mild abuse or disapproval from others whereas one of the servants doing the same thing or less is facing dismissal.
Anyway, she's convinced by the others not to dismiss him but instead to have him beaten but allowed to remain on staff.
She's a kind of rather waif-like beauty, and she's suffering a recurrence of her old illness, which seems to flare up multiple times a year.
So she's kind of bedridden, and she's visited by various people, among them her other cousin Xue Baochai who um talks to her for a bit and we see the kind of deepening of friendship and intimacy between them and among other things she recommends that she change the medicine that she's taking um because it's clearly doing her no good.
Then Dayu is left alone and it being autumn time it begins to rain and it's very dark and gloomy and so she's overcome with sentiments of that sort and writes a long poem of her own on the theme and then she is visited by her cousin Ballyu who is dressed in a ridiculous outfit that makes him look like an old fisherman but which apparently is very good at keeping off the rain.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
