postgres Li Wan, courtesy name Gongcai, is a character in Dream of the Red Chamber and one of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling in the main register. She is the wife of Jia Zhu, the eldest son of Jia Zheng. Widowed young, she raised her posthumous son Jia Lan, was kind and did not interfere much, was called the Great Bodhisattva, and served as head of the Begonia Poetry Club under the name Daoxiang Laonong. /en/people/li-wan.html person_cn_q10788075 person li-wan 李纨

Li Wan, courtesy name Gongcai, is a character in Dream of the Red Chamber and one of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling in the main register. She is the wife of Jia Zhu, the eldest son of Jia Zheng. Widowed young, she raised her posthumous son Jia Lan, was kind and did not interfere much, was called the Great Bodhisattva, and served as head of the Begonia Poetry Club under the name Daoxiang Laonong.

published category-literature category-people category-fictional-characters tag-fictional-character tag-classics tag-four-great-classics wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10788075 zhwiki https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%8E%E7%B4%88 2026-10-25T00:00:00+08:00 2026-10-29T17:21:32+08:00 user:admin 13 Li Wan is a character in the novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Wikidata's Chinese label and the Chinese Wikipedia article title are Li Wan, in traditional characters in one form and simplified in the other, and the article gives her courtesy name as Gongcai. It is her name in the book, so the heading stays the same. She is one of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling in the main register. Wikidata records the setting as the dynasty of the novel.[^wikidata][^zhwiki] ## Family and marriage According to the Chinese Wikipedia article, Li Wan came from an official family of Jinling. Her father, Li Shouzhong, was chancellor of the imperial academy and held that a woman without talent is a woman of virtue, so he did not much let his daughter study. He taught her works such as the Biographies of Exemplary Women and the Collection of Worthy Ladies so that she would know a few characters and remember a few virtuous women of past ages, and put more weight on needlework and womanly conduct, hence the name Li Wan and the courtesy name Gongcai. She married Jia Zhu, eldest son of Jia Zheng of the Rongguo house, who died of illness early and left a posthumous son, Jia Lan. She was widowed at seventeen or eighteen, kept strictly to her place and spoke and acted with care, so that her face became wasted. She knew only how to serve her elders and raise her son, and in public to keep her sisters-in-law company at needlework and reading. In the Jia house she was called Mrs Li, Zhu's daughter-in-law, or Zhu's Eldest Lady. The article says that because she had always been virtuous and kept her widowhood from youth, the Lady Dowager and Lady Wang respected her, and she also drew the largest monthly allowance in the garden, nominally ten taels of silver.[^zhwiki] ## Temperament and conduct The article says she was kind to servants and did not interfere much, so she was called the Great Bodhisattva. When Wang Xifeng was ill and recovering, she asked Li Wan, Jia Tanchun and Xue Baochai to run the Jia household, and the servants called them the three Taisui who guard the mountain. In chapter 7, when Aunt Xue had Zhou Rui's wife deliver palace flowers to most of the young ladies in the garden, Li Wan alone was passed over. In winter, when the sisters all wore scarlet wool-felt and feather satin cloaks, she wore a plain dark-blue woollen jacket, and Zhiyan zhai commented that it showed her nature. When Tanchun proposed the poetry club, Li Wan became its head with the name Daoxiang Laonong, and although she had the largest income in the garden she lived frugally and asked Wang Xifeng to be the supervising censor who paid for it. In chapter 45 she argues with Wang Xifeng, speaking up for Ping'er too, which shows a more emotional side and a tongue no less quick than Xifeng's. She is close to Ping'er and dislikes Miaoyu. The only complete poem by her is the Grand View Garden inscription written for Jia Yuanchun's visit. In chapter 63, at the flower-drawing game, she draws an old plum, a symbol of chastity.[^zhwiki] ## Verse, song and ending The article says her fate verse is the eleventh in the main register of the Twelve Beauties, with a picture of a pot of flourishing orchid and beside it a woman in phoenix crown and robe, and the poem says that peach and plum bear fruit in the spring wind but in the end none can compare to a pot of orchid. The matching song is The Late Glorious Years. The standard last forty chapters do not state her ending: after Lin Daiyu died she helped manage the funeral, and her son Jia Lan went to the capital with Baoyu for the examinations and in chapter 119 passed as the one hundred and thirtieth juren. The article says that readers speculate her end was a reward after hardship, or that Jia Lan rose in the world and then died suddenly, leaving her bereaved in old age.[^zhwiki] ## Critical readings The article notes that most studies approach Li Wan through the influence of feudal ritual on her character, calling her a type of asceticism or a living specimen of the three obediences and four virtues, while in 1997 Hu Wenwei praised her for holding to principle and so meeting a good end. Ou Lijuan argues one should not stop at the author's flat portrayal of her; her home at Daoxiang Village is planted with hundreds of red apricot trees, which suggests warmth and passion, while the design of green hills slanting across it suggests the restraint of ritual on her, so that she is a dormant volcano that is not fully extinct. Ji Xueyuan points out that her life in the garden shows much vitality, and that the division of tasks and the rules of the Begonia Poetry Club were her proposals.[^zhwiki] ## Basic facts - Name: Li Wan, courtesy name Gongcai, also called Zhu's Eldest Lady[^wikidata][^zhwiki] - Role: wife of Jia Zhu, mother of Jia Lan, one of the Twelve Beauties of Jinling[^zhwiki] - Setting recorded on this entry: the dynasty of the novel[^wikidata] - Appears in: [[work_cn_q8265|Dream of the Red Chamber]][^zhwiki] /people/li-wan.html en zh en Character in Dream of the Red Chamber true literary character tag-fictional-character fictional-character Fictional character Fictional or literary characters from classic works. 1026 tag-classics classics Classics Classic works and novels of pre-modern China. 1077 tag-four-great-classics four-great-classics Four Great Classical Novels Dream of the Red Chamber, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and their characters. 572 relation_cnworks_depicts_q8265_q10788075 work_cn_q8265 depicts person_cn_q10788075 work_cn_q8265 wikidata Related works work_cn_q8265 Dream of the Red Chamber /en/works/dream-red-chamber.html true work_cn_q8265 Dream of the Red Chamber /en/works/dream-red-chamber.html work 13 2026-10-29T17:21:32+08:00 当前版本 true /en/people/li-wan/at/13.html en zh en is_fictional Fictional yes person_category Person category literary character disambiguation Disambiguation Character in Dream of the Red Chamber 1 depicts true Related works 1 1