In the novel "Dream of the Red Chamber", there are two people in stark contrast, one is Jiao Da and the other is Lai Da. The same is a slave, Jiao Da is poor and poor, and Lai Da is rich and developed.
Jiao Da's credit to Ning Guofu is great, look at the original text in the book:
Yu Shi said, "Don't you know that this jiao is big?" Even the old man ignored him, and your big brother Zhen ignored him. Because he had followed his grandfather three or four times since he was a child, and carried him out of the pile of dead people, he was killed. He was hungry, but he stole something for his master to eat; for two days he had no water, and he got half a bowl of water, and gave it to his master to drink, and he drank his own horse. But with these credits. When there are ancestors, they all look at each other differently. Who's going to be hard for him now? He himself was old again, and he did not care about decency, blindly good wine, drunk and no one did not scold. I often say it to the steward: there is no need to send him an envoy in the future, only when he is dead. He was sent again today! ”
From this point of view, Jiao Da saved the life of Ning Guogong, but what treatment did he get? The master did not let him get out of slavery, nor did he buy him a house to buy land. When Ning Guogong died of illness, he did not make proper arrangements for the focus on the big pair, but let him work as a servant in the Ningguo Mansion. As a result, when he reached the age of seventy or eighty, he was still sent as an envoy, and he went to give people away in the middle of the night.
It is reasonable to say that at the age of seventy or eighty, even ordinary workers have retired, and when they go home to retire, they are on the job, and they do not arrange specific work.
And Li Shi, Jia Baoyu's nursing mother in the Rongguo Mansion, also told the old man to go home early in the morning, and ran to Yihong Courtyard to eat and take it when he was idle. However, Jiao Da saved the life of his master, and he did not get any glory and wealth, not even the qualifications to return home for the elderly, and he still had to work at the age of seventy or eighty and accept the management of the steward Lai Er.
Lai Da and Lai Erben are brothers, and they have a common mother, Mamma Lai. Lai Da was the steward of rongguo mansion, Lai er was the steward of ningguo mansion, and the two brothers simply contracted rongning mansion. How rich Lai Er is, the book does not describe. However, Lai Da's wealth is described in detail in the book.
There is a garden in Lai, it is simply a small grand view garden, although the garden is not as good as the big view garden, but it is also very neat and wide, with spring stone trees, pavilions, and several moving places.
In the fifty-sixth "Min Tan Chun Xing Li To Eliminate The Evils of The Xian Bao Chao Xiao Hui Quan" mentioned Lai's garden, the original text is as follows:
Tanchun said, "Therefore,......。 The second thing: I went to everyone in the year, and you also went, and you look at his little garden, how is it better than ours? Ping'er smiled, "It's not half as big as we are, and there are fewer trees and flowers." Tanchun said, "Because I was gossiping with the girls in their family, he said that in addition to the flowers they wore and the bamboo shoots, vegetables, fish and shrimp they ate in this garden, there were still people who wrapped them up in a year, and there were two hundred taels of silver left at the end of the year." From that day, I learned that a broken lotus leaf and a dry grass root are all valuable. ”
As the steward of the Rong Guo Mansion, Lai Da's income was all based on the Rong Guo Mansion, could his salary have the money to build a garden that was only half smaller than the Grand View Garden? Lai Da must have coveted rongguofu's money.
Lai Da not only has money, but also has a higher social status. His son held a banquet, and Xue Pan and others came to cheer up, and it was at this banquet that Xue Pan flirted with Liu Xianglian, causing Liu Xianglian to beat Xue Pan. Xue Pan was originally a descendant of official eunuchs, even if his father did not become an official, he was also an imperial businessman, and the people he interacted with were all the children of official eunuchs, but Lai Da's son could make friends with Xue Pan, which showed that Lai everyone had become a decent person in high society.
Jia Qiang, the grandson of the Ning Dynasty, actually called Lai Da "Grandpa Lai", and begged Lai Da, hoping to get a good messenger. Who is the master and who is the slave?
Later, Lai Shangrong, the son of Lai Da, was freed from slavery from an early age, living the life of a rich prince and brother, raising like a phoenix, reading and writing, and at the age of twenty, the grace of Mengjia Province donated his future. At the age of thirty, he was elected to be a Zhi County.
Later, after rongguofu was raided, Jia Zheng helped Jia Mu's coffin back to the south, because the soldiers of the banshi crossed the river, the river was crowded, could not travel fast, the coil was not enough, wrote a letter, sent someone to Lai Shangrong to borrow five hundred and two silver, but Lai Shangrong only gave fifty silver.
Look at the end, the master asked the slave to borrow money, and the slave did not give it. This is the slave raised by the Rongguo Government. Rong Guofu was so poor that Wang Xifeng stole Jia Mu's things to sell, and Lai Da,a slave, was so rich. All the money from rongguo mansion went to Lai Da's house.
What credit did Lai Da have to Jia Fu? He was just a migrant worker, and he also transferred the money of the Rong Guo mansion to his own family wealth. However, Jiao Da had great merits to Jia Fu, if it were not for his salvation of his master Ning Guogong, where would the Jia family be rich later?
Looking at Lai Da and Jiao Da, it makes people understand that the final fall of the Jia family is inevitable, not only are their descendants unworthy, they violate the law and discipline, and they do all kinds of things that harm the imperial court and the people, but they are also wise and foolish, and the servants who saved his life are not treated favorably. The slave who stole his money, but he laughed and made a fortune, improved his social status, and became a rich man in the upper class.