"The jade is in the coffin for a good price, and the hairpin will fly in the box"
My understanding: "The jade is in the coffin for a good price, and the hairpin will fly inside the box." "In the extended meaning of the couplet, "yu" refers to Daiyu, "shanzi" means "shanjia" refers to Jiayu Village, Chai is undoubtedly Baochai, and "Shi Fei" is also Jia Yucun.
"The jade is in the coffin asking for a good price, and the hairpin is waiting in the box to fly" appears in the first episode. At this time, Dai and Chai have not yet appeared but are about to appear, and Chai and Dai The appearances are all directly related to Jia Yucun. Needless to say, Daiyu’s appearance. If Jia Yucun had not manipulated Xue Pan in the Gourd Case, Baochai would not have been able to come to the capital to join Jia's Dream of Red Mansions drama. Therefore, a clear extended meaning of this couplet is to explain the plot that is about to unfold and the appearance of Dai and Chai.
However, this understanding seems to encounter a serious problem, that is, how can a person like Jia Yucun be called a "good Jia"? This is actually Cao Xueqin's deep intention when he wrote "The jade is in the coffin for a good price, and the hairpin is in the box waiting to fly". This profound meaning is also contained in Jia Yucun's discussion of "the fight between good and evil".
In this discussion, "the righteousness of heaven and earth is what benevolent people follow; the cruel and eccentric, the evil spirit of heaven and earth is what evil people follow" is the definition of "righteousness" and "evil".
Then, "Today, in the dynasty of Yunlong and Zuoyong, a peaceful and inactive world, people with a clear, bright and beautiful spirit can be found everywhere from the imperial court to the grasslands. The remaining beauty is endless. "With nowhere to go, it becomes nectar, it becomes gentle wind, and it reaches the whole world" should be the same as the previous "great benevolence and great evil" as a necessary sentence of "praising the saint", which was not Cao Xueqin's original intention.
Then let’s talk about “evil energy”: “The cruel and perverse evil energy cannot flow into the broad daylight, so it condenses and fills up deep ravines.” Obviously, the expressions of "righteousness" and "evil" here are not symmetrical. "righteousness is the mainstream and evil is the tributary." This asymmetry is also a requirement of "praising the saint" and not Cao Xueqin's original intention.
Then "Occasionally, due to the wind or being urged by the clouds, there is a slight shaking feeling, and a trace or a half of it leaks out by mistake. Occasionally, the spiritual and beautiful aura is in the appropriate state, and righteousness does not tolerate evil, and evil "Jealousy and righteousness, the two are incompatible, are like feng shui and thunder and lightning. When they meet in the ground, they can neither be eliminated nor let go. They will only end after fighting and setting off." This expounds the "unity of opposites between righteousness and evil"; among them "Good will not tolerate evil, and evil will be jealous of good, and the two will not be incompatible" means "the unity of opposites". "Like feng shui, thunder and lightning, when they meet on the ground, they can neither be eliminated nor let go. They will only be destroyed after they are struck and set off." Discuss the struggle of the unity of opposites. This is Cao Xueqin's own true thoughts.
Next, we will discuss the relationship between this "unity of opposites between righteousness and evil" and people's good and evil performance: "Therefore, the qi must also be given to people, and it will be dispersed after it is vented. It makes men and women even adhere to each other. A person born with this energy cannot be a benevolent gentleman at the top, nor can he be a great evil at the bottom. If he is placed among tens of thousands of people, his intelligence, wisdom, and grace will be superior to tens of thousands of people, and his eccentricity and evil will not come close to him. The human attitude is inferior to that of millions of people." The meaning here is: whether a person's behavior is good or evil depends on whether he shows "a clever and graceful spirit" or "a eccentric and unreasonable attitude"; in other words, each person's good and evil behavior does not matter. Not constant.
This view expressed by Cao Xueqin through Jia Yucun is completely different from the orthodox Confucian view of human nature. The Confucian view is as stated by Confucius: "There are gentlemen who are not benevolent, but there are no villains who are benevolent." (It means "People who strive to be gentlemen sometimes have unkind words and deeds, but villains will not occasionally do so.") Behavior with benevolence.") It can be seen that according to the orthodox view of Confucianism, a gentleman will always be a gentleman, a villain will always be a villain, and Jia Yucun will never have a "good" side. But Cao Xueqin used his vivid and realistic stories to express his own "unorthodox" view of human nature.
One situation that some readers may overlook is that Jia Yucun is Lin Daiyu’s teacher, and Cao Xueqin indirectly shows that Lin Ruhai appreciates Jia Yucun’s educational achievements for Lin Daiyu by describing Lin Daiyu’s father Lin Ruhai’s attitude towards Jia Yucun ; Daiyu's outstanding talent is directly related to Jia Yucun.
In fact, until Lin Daiyu was sent to Jia's house, Jia Yucun had always been a "good man"; yes, when he was an official before, he was involved in the investigation by his superiors because of the so-called "some corruption and cruelty, and he was insulting based on his talent." Yes, but that incident actually happened for a reason, and some scholars have made a very convincing and in-depth analysis and explanation of this (Note 1).
However, by the time Xue Baochai entered the Jia Mansion, the stage of Dream of Red Mansions, Jia Yucun, who had finished the Calabash Case, had transformed from a "good Jia" into a right and wrong person.
At the end of Chapter 120, Cao Xueqin asked Jia Yucun to interpret the Dream of Red Mansions while also interpreting the story of Jia Yucun - he returned to the state of an outsider who is neither good nor evil. At this point, Cao Xueqin has stated his views on human nature: a person's goodness and evil are neither innate nor immutable, but depend on the contradictory struggle between righteousness and evil he upholds. When this contradiction and struggle reaches a certain level, When transformation occurs under certain conditions, people's good and evil will also transform into each other. Good people can be transformed into evil people, and evil people can also be transformed into good people.
Although Cao Xueqin did not fully express his views on human nature in the article "The Fight between Good and Evil" (mainly because he did not mention "the transformation of good and evil under certain conditions", this It should be the concern of "obstructing language"), but he clearly expressed this point of view with the vivid and realistic story of Jia Yucun.
Such a view of human nature is diametrically opposed to the orthodox Confucian views of human nature, such as "There are no villains but benevolent people" and "A gentleman is selfless and only retains the laws of heaven and eliminates human desires", and is completely different. Progressive meaning. In "Dream of Red Mansions", this view is not only reflected in the creation of a character in Jia Yucun, but runs through the entire "Dream of Red Mansions" including the last 40 chapters (such as the description of Mrs. Wang in Chapter 120). This shows that Cao Xueqin's dialectical view of human nature is not simple, but has risen to the height of rationality.
From the perspective of artistic techniques, Cao Xueqin's original intention should also be to use the seeming mismatch between Jia Yucun and "good people" to trigger readers' in-depth thinking about human nature.
Note 1: "Jia Yucun, how the traitor was "refined"" see:
Tag used Jia Yucun