The Beauties in "A Dream of Red Mansions" #2 Quiz

Answer: Jia Yuan-chun

The lyric is too long to write in full in the question. The above is only the first half and I will give the second half below. (I will do so too in the following questions.)
"So far the road back home did seem
That to her parents in a dream
Thus she her final duty paid:
'I that now am but a shade,
Parents dear,
For your happiness I fear:
Do not tempt the hand of fate!
Draw back, draw back, before it is too late!'"

Jia Yuan-chun is "selected for glorious promotion to the Imperial Bedchamber", but she tells her parents and grandmother that she is "walled up in That Place" and there is no use "of all this luxury and splendour if I am to be always separated from those I love". She is concerned about the destiny of her clan until death and has a strong presentiment that the Jia clan is bound to suffer a disaster, which makes her have a gnawing regret.

Answer: Jia Tan-chun

The second half of the lyric is:
"From of old our rising, falling
Was ordained; so now this parting.
Each in another land must be;
Each for himself must fend best as he may;
Now I am gone, oh. do not weep for me!"

Though born to a concubine, Jia Tan-chun has a noble mind; even Wang Xi-feng says she "belongs to the right lineage". She has three pains: the pain of birth (her mother is only a concubine and often brings trouble to her), the pain of being unrecognized for her talent (though she is capable and wise, she can't realize her aspirations because of her gender and background) and the pain brought by the clan tragedy (she "began to cry" when she talked of the mutual injury in the clan.)

Answer: Shi Xiang-yun

The second half of the lyric is:
"Matched to a perfect, gentle husband,
Security of bliss at last it seemed,
And all your childish miseries redeemed.
But soon alas! the clouds of Gaotang faded,
The waters of the Xiang ran dry.
In our grey world so are things always ordered:
What then avails it to lament and sigh."

When Shi Xiang-yun lodges in All-spice Court, Xue Bao-chai once jokes: "I have heard no mention of Crazy Caltrop's prodigious pertinacity or the linguipotent loquacity of Shi Xiang-yun", which means Xiang-yun is very talkative and gives Bao-chai a headache. Not only talkative, she is also too straightforward. Bao-chai once comments about her: "I won't say you are thoughtless, because you obviously mean well; but you really are a bit too outspoken."

Answer: Miao-yu

The second half of the lyric is:
"Sad it seemed that your life should in dim-lit shrines be wasted,
All the sweets of spring untasted:
Yet, at the last,
Down into mud and shame your hopes were cast,
Like a white, flawless jade dropped in the muck,
Where only wealthy rakes might bless their luck."

Miao-yu is intelligent and gifted; she is especially good at tea-making. Though a nun with uncut hair, she loves Jia Bao-yu secretly. She is beautiful and noble and thus envied by some people. Although a Buddhist, she loves Taoist literature very much. She comes to a bad end: the day after the funeral of old Lady Jia, she is kidnapped by bandits, for which Bao-yu is very sad. Afterwards the news comes that she was killed at the seaside.

Answer: Jia Ying-chun

The second half of the lyric is:
"A delicate young wife of gentle stock
To you was no more than a lifeless block,
And bore, when you would rant and rave,
Treatment far worse than any slave;
So that her delicate, sweet soul
In just a twelvemonth from its body stole."

Jia Ying-chun is not outstanding among the girls of Daguan Gardens, but she constitutes the main structural thread together with Yuan-chun, Tan-chuan and Xi-chun. She is kind and timid, and abides by female virtuousness of feudal time strictly. Her whole life is an epitome of the fate of a gentle and submissive girl bred in that era. Chun (spring) signifies light and hope, but the life of Ying-chun (welcome the spring) is contrary to the meaning of her name, which makes readers sigh deeply.

Answer: Jia Xi-chun

The second half of the lyric is:
"Amidst sad aspens mourners sob and sigh,
In maple woods the poor ghosts thinly cry,
And under the dead grasslands lost graves lie.
Now poor, now rich, men's lives in toil are passed
To be, like summer's pride, cut down at last.
The doors of life and death all must go through.
Yet this I know is true:
In Paradise there grows a precious tree
Which bears the fruit of immortality."

This lyric implies an illusory prosperity, and the author intends to show the great wealth in a tragic way. Though the lyric is devoted to Xi-chun, most of it is portraying the misery after the downfall of the Jia clan. The first line, "triple vanity as spring was seen", implies the bad end of her three sisters--- Yuan-chun, Ying-chun and Tan-chun.

Answer: Wang Xi-feng

The second half of the lyric is:
"And half a life-time's anxious schemes
Proved no more than the stuff of dreams.
Like a great building's tottering crash,
Like flickering lampwick burned to ash,
Your scene of happiness concludes in grief:
For worldly bliss is always insecure and brief."

Wang Xi-feng is, just as Joker says in Chapter 65, "soft of tongue and hard of heart", "two faces and three knives" and "will give you a smile and trip you up the while". She is insidious, vicious and calculating.

In this book, Wang Xi-feng performs the function of a pillar; she is the focal point in the artistic structure and sense. She is related with nearly every character in this book. Without her, there would be no "A Dream of Red Mansions".

Answer: Jia Qiao-jie

The second half of the lyric is:
"So let all men the poor and meek sustain,
And from the example of her cruel kin refrain,
Who kinship scorned and only thought of gain.
For far above the constellations
One watches all and makes just calculations."

Qiao-jie is the daughter of Jian Lian and Wang Xi-feng. Though she makes few appearances, her ending is the best among twelve beauties of Jingling. The author intends to show the personalities of some other people through her experience. Wang Ren, Jia Qiang and Jia Yun, whom Wang Xi-feng favors much, frames Qiao-jie and sells her. On the contrary, Grandmother Liu, whom Wang Xi-feng gives only a little help, saves Qiao-jie in the end.

Answer: Li Wan

The second half of the lyric is:
"And though each man desires
Old age from want made free,
True blessedness requires
A clutch of young heirs in the knee.
Proudly upright
The head with cap and hands of office on,
And gleaming bright
Upon his breast the gold insignia shone.
An awesome sight
To see him so exalted stand! - Yet the black night
Of death's dark frontier lay close at hand.
All those whom history calls great
Left only empty names for us to venerate."

Li Wan's husband dies young. During the widowhood, she is in a state of complete apathy. But after entering the Daguan Gardens, she takes on a new mood and image. She suggests creating a poetry society and changes the Daguan Gardens into a paradise of young girls.

Answer: Qin Ke-qing

The second half of the lyric is:
"The weakness in the line began with Jing;
The blame for the decline lay first in Ning;
But retribution all was of Love's fashioning."

Qin Ke-qing is "such a charming, delightful little creature, the favorite among her great-granddaughters-in-law", according to old Lady Jia. She is the first to die among twelve beauties of Jingling. Her death signifies the beginning of the downfall of the Jia clan.