Li Wan and Jia Lan in A Dream of Red Mansions

Li Wan, Official Letter of Twelve Women in Jinling

Who is like an orchid after the spring breeze of peaches and plums bears fruit?

Like ice water, you are jealous in an empty space, and you play jokes on others in vain.

Analysis: The first sentence reads "Peach and plum spring breeze bears fruit." "Li" and "Wan" here imply Li Wan's name. Li Wan married Jia Zhu and gave birth to a son. Her husband died of illness before he was 20. Her youth is like plum blossoms in the spring breeze. Once it bears fruit, it will wither.

The second sentence "Who is like a pot of orchids" refers to Jia Lan and also refers to the picture. This sentence says that among the last descendants of Jia Fu, no one can compare with Jia Lan's "promise".

The third sentence "as real as ice water" and "as real as ice water" is written about Li Wan's young widowed husband's respect for ceremony and chastity, which is as clean and beautiful as ice water for feudal rulers. "Empty envy" means that although Jia Lan won the lottery and Li Wan won the reputation of "chastity", it can't save the decline of Jia Fu, but it can only be envied in vain.

The fourth sentence "making fun of others for nothing" refers to the "three obedience and four virtues" that Li Wan pursued all his life, and is a typical wife and mother, a wife and mother in feudal society. After her husband died, "dreaming of success" became her only purpose. Jia Lan won the lottery and temporarily satisfied her wish, but the decline of Jia family is inevitable and the situation is irreversible. In the end, Li Wan only ended up as a "deadwood" and became a martyr of feudal ethics. Cao Xueqin arranged this loyal follower of feudal ethics in a "unlucky story" and satirized it as a "false name" of "joking with others", which was really a wonderful irony to feudal ethics.

As for Jia Zheng, he doesn't love Jia Lan, because A Dream of Red Mansions is an autobiographical novel with a life prototype. Jia Zheng adopted Jia. Jia Lan and Li Wan are Jia's granddaughter-in-law and great-grandson. Jia Zheng naturally doesn't love Jia Lan.