Quick Answer: Who Is Granny Liu?
Granny Liu (刘姥姥, Liú Lǎolao) is a countrywoman in Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦, Hónglóu Mèng). She visits the wealthy Jia household for help and later makes the family laugh during a banquet in the Grand View Garden (大观园, Dàguānyuán). When the family’s fortunes fall, she offers shelter to a girl whose mother had helped her.[1][2][4]
- In Chapter 6, she arrives with her grandson and receives silver from the household manager.[1]
- In Chapter 40, the family serves her pigeon eggs with unwieldy chopsticks. She plays along with the joke.[2]
- In Chapter 119 of the 120-chapter edition, she helps the girl escape an unwanted marriage arrangement.[4][5]
The garden episode is the best-known part of her story. The opening visit and the later rescue connect it to the fortunes of two households.
The first time Granny Liu enters the Rong mansion, a steward’s wife gets her past the gate. When a girl needs to leave the same household much later, Granny Liu knows where she can take her. The two episodes turn on who has a door to open for whom.
A First Visit for Help
In Chapter 6, Granny Liu brings her grandson Ban’er (板儿, Bǎn’er) to the Rong mansion as winter approaches. The family’s connection to the household runs through a tenuous claim to kinship. A steward’s wife helps her gain an audience with Wang Xifeng (王熙凤, Wáng Xīfèng), who gives her twenty taels of silver. The steward’s wife remembers that Ban’er’s father once helped her husband with a land purchase. She has a reason to help beyond the connection Granny Liu invokes at the gate.[1]
The Banquet and the Joke
At the garden banquet in Chapter 40, Xifeng and the maid Yuanyang (鸳鸯, Yuānyāng) set up a joke for Granny Liu to play. She boasts about her appetite, then struggles to pick up a pigeon egg with the chopsticks they have supplied. The outburst of laughter reaches from Shi Xiangyun, who spits out a mouthful of rice, to the older women.[2]
The quieter scene after the meal changes how the joke reads. Yuanyang apologizes, and Granny Liu says she had understood the setup and wanted to amuse the family matriarch. Elsewhere on the same visit, she sees the home from within, including the writing implements and paintings in Jia Tanchun’s room.[2]
In Chapter 41, Granny Liu loses her way and falls asleep in Jia Baoyu’s (贾宝玉, Jiǎ Bǎoyù) room. The scene takes her from a formal meal into a private space that an ordinary guest would have little reason to see.[7]
How Granny Liu Helps Qiaojie
In Chapter 42, Xifeng asks Granny Liu to name her daughter. She chooses Qiaojie (巧姐, Qiǎojiě), drawing on the girl’s birth on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. In Chapter 119, with Xifeng dead and the family in trouble, relatives try to arrange a marriage for Qiaojie while her father is away. Ping’er (平儿, Píng’er) helps her get away, and Granny Liu offers a refuge in the countryside.[3][4]
That scene belongs to the final forty chapters of the 120-chapter version first printed in 1791. The authorship of those chapters remains disputed, so the rescue is best described as the ending in that edition.[5]
The Garden in Later Illustration
In 1908, Lu Zichang made a red-ink lithograph of the garden, now at the Princeton University Art Museum. A visitor has to move through the garden one room or path at a time. An illustration can bring the built setting into a single view, turning the place Granny Liu experiences as a guest into a subject in its own right.[6]
FAQs About Granny Liu
Is Granny Liu Grandmother Jia?
They are different characters. Granny Liu is the visitor. Grandmother Jia is the senior woman of the household and her host on the garden visit.
Why do some English translations call her Old Goody Liu?
H. Bencraft Joly used “Old Goody Liu” for the same character. “Granny Liu” and “Grandmother Liu” are other English ways of rendering her familiar title.
Which chapters should I read first?
Start with Chapter 6 for the first visit and Chapter 40 for the banquet. Chapter 42 explains the choice of Qiaojie’s name, and Chapter 119 returns to their relationship.
Sources
[1] Cao Xueqin, translated by H. Bencraft Joly. Dream of the Red Chamber, Book I, chapter 6
[2] Dream of the Red Chamber. Chapter 40, Chinese text
[3] Dream of the Red Chamber. Chapter 42, Chinese text
[4] Dream of the Red Chamber. Chapter 119, Chinese text
[5] Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. Controversy Over the Last 40 Chapters
[6] Princeton University Art Museum. Illustration of Prospect Garden from The Dream of the Red Chamber
[7] Dream of the Red Chamber. Chapter 41, Chinese text