Grandmother Jia (Chinese: 賈母; Pinyin: Jiǎ Mǔ), née Shi, so often also called Dowager Shi (Chinese: 史太君; Pinyin: Shǐ Tàijūn) or simply the Dowager, is a major character in the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. She is the daughter of Marquis Shi of Jinling. She is also Baoyu and Daiyu's grandmother and the oldest and most respected authority of the Jia Clan. A doting figure, it was she who arranged for Daiyu, her only "outside" (i.e., maternal) grandchild, to come to the Rongguo Mansion. It was with her help that Baoyu and Daiyu became extremely close as childhood playmates, and eventually, kindred spirits and lovers.
The Dowager's descendants include:
- two sons, Jia She and Jia Zheng
- a daughter, Jia Min
- two daughter-in-laws, Lady Xing and Lady Wang
- many paternal grandchildren, such as Jia Baoyu, Jia Lian, the 4 "Springs" (Jia Yuanchun, Jia Yingchun, Jia Tanchun, Jia Xichun)
- a maternal grandchild, Lin Daiyu
- a granddaughter-in-law, Wang Xifeng
- a son-in-law, Lin Ruhai
- a grandniece, Shi Xiangyun, and
- several great-grandchildren, including Qin Keqing, her great-granddaughter-in-law.
Famous quotes containing the word grandmother:
“Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,—thinking to live by some derivative old-country mode in this primitive new country.... With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)