Jia Yuanchun is a character in the novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Wikidata's Chinese label and the Chinese Wikipedia article title are both Jia Yuanchun, and it is her name in the book, so the heading stays the same. She is a daughter of Jia Zheng and Lady Wang and the elder full sister of Jia Baoyu, and was named Yuanchun because she was born on the first day of the first month. Wikidata records her as a character of the novel, set in the dynasty of the novel.[1][2]
Her story
According to the Chinese Wikipedia article, Yuanchun taught Jia Baoyu to read when he was small and was later chosen for the palace. In chapter 16 the Jia house receives an imperial edict making her secretary of the Fengzao palace and Virtuous Consort. When the court later allows palace consorts to visit their families, the Jia house builds the Grand View Garden to prepare for her visit, and she personally gives names to many of its buildings. The article says that in the last forty chapters published by Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan (the Cheng Jia edition), she dies in the palace of an illness after putting on weight, her mouth choked with phlegm, and is posthumously named Virtuous and Gentle Consort. In chapter 18, during her visit home, she chooses four plays, all tragedies; by the commentary of Zhiyan zhai they foreshadow the fall of the Jia house, the death of the consort, Zhen Baoyu's return of the jade and the death of Daiyu.[2]
Contradictions about her age
The article points out that the book contradicts itself on her dates. Chapter 86 says she was born on the first day of the first month of a jiashen year, and chapter 95 says she died on the nineteenth of the twelfth month of a jiayin year at forty-three, but by the first statement she would be about thirty-three, and the later revised Cheng Yi edition changes it to thirty-one. It also notes that on the Cheng Jia text she would be twenty-five years older than Baoyu, while Lady Wang bore Baoyu at thirty-five, which would make her ten when Yuanchun was born, which is impossible. Liu Xinwu reads the song line about her fair spirit drifting away as hinting she was strangled in court intrigue, which the article says has no basis in the text.[2]
Verse, riddle and name
The article gives her fate verse, with lines such as the pomegranate blossoms lighting up the palace and the tiger and hare meeting in a great dream, and lists the song Hate of Impermanence in the Dream of the Red Chamber suite, in which her life has gone to the underworld and she tells her parents in a dream to withdraw early. Her lantern riddle has the firecracker as its answer. Her maid is Baoqin. The article quotes Zhiyan zhai's remark that the names of the four sisters Yuanchun, Yingchun, Tanchun and Xichun sound together like the phrase meaning she should be sighed over.[2]