《紅樓夢》裡，死去的女孩太多了。
有的人死於愛情，有的人死於權勢，有的人死於羞辱，有的人死於病痛。她們像落花一樣，一片一片飄下來，最後埋進那座叫賈府的大墳墓裡。
可是，在這一片死亡之中，卻有一個人，僥倖活了下來。她就是平兒。如果說晴雯像火，黛玉像詩，鴛鴦像劍，那麼平兒，就像水。她不耀眼， 看上去平和無華， 卻有最強的生命力。
平兒在賈府的地位十分特殊， 平兒兼具丫鬟和小妾兩種身分：她名義上是王熙鳳的陪嫁丫鬟，同時也是賈璉的通房丫鬟。以實質地位來說，她就是賈璉沒有正式名分的小妾。
她隨王熙鳳嫁入賈府，是王熙鳳的心腹，主要協助她處理榮國府龐雜的家務。 由於王熙鳳善妒且掌權，平兒在主子默許下成為賈璉的通房丫鬟，意即可以與男主人同房的近身侍婢，但是不能正式成為賈璉的小妾。她平時仍打扮成丫鬟的模樣，但地位高於一般大丫鬟，實質上是賈璉的愛妾，等同於賈璉未正式迎娶的側室，小妾。
所以劉姥姥初進賈府時，看到平兒滿身綾羅綢緞，還誤以為她就是王熙鳳。而在大觀園中，賈府上下也都知道她是賈璉的愛妾。
平兒聰明絕頂， 她不是看不見賈府的黑暗。恰恰相反，她比任何人都更早看清了，因為她一直活在王熙鳳身邊。《紅樓夢》裡，死去的女孩太多了。
有的人死於愛情，有的人死於權勢，有的人死於羞辱，有的人死於病痛。她們像落花一樣，一片一片飄落，逝去。賈府， 那座如花似錦，繁華如夢的大觀園，更像是一個無聲無息， 吃人不吐骨頭的可怕墳墓。
可是，在這一片死亡潮中，卻有一個人，能僥倖活下來。她就是平兒。如果說黛玉像詩，鴛鴦像劍，晴雯像火，那麼平兒，就像水。她不耀眼， 看上去平和無華， 卻有最強的生命力。
平兒在賈府的地位十分特殊， 兼具丫鬟和小妾兩種身分。她名義上是王熙鳳的陪嫁丫鬟，同時也是賈璉的通房丫鬟。以實質地位來說，她就是賈璉沒有正式名分的小妾。
她隨王熙鳳嫁入賈府，是王熙鳳的心腹，主要協助她處理榮國府龐雜的家務。 由於王熙鳳善妒且掌權，平兒在鳳姐的默許下成為賈璉的通房丫鬟，意即可以與男主人同房的近身侍婢，但是不能正式成為賈璉的小妾。
她平時仍打扮成丫鬟的模樣，但地位高於一般大丫鬟，實質上是賈璉的愛妾，等同於賈璉未正式迎娶的側室，小妾。
所以劉姥姥初進賈府時，看到平兒滿身綾羅綢緞，還誤以為她就是王熙鳳。而在大觀園中，賈府上下也都知道她是賈璉的愛妾， 只是沒有正式名份。
平兒聰明絕頂， 她不是看不見賈府的黑暗。恰恰相反，她比任何人都更早看清了，因為她一直活在王熙鳳身邊。
王熙鳳是什麼人？她是《紅樓夢》裡最厲害，也最可怕的女人 。她精明、能幹、潑辣，卻也狠毒、狡詐，貪婪。 是個勝過賈府一眾男子的厲害角色。 她可以翻手為雲，覆手為雨， 一切行動以維護她的個人利益為準。整個榮國府，從上到下，幾乎沒有人不怕她。
而平兒，偏偏就是她最貼身的人。她每天都跟在鳳姐身邊，她知道鳳姐怎麼算計人，知道鳳姐怎麼害尤二姐，知道鳳姐怎麼整治下人。知道這座大宅門裡，在鳳姐的笑臉背後，都藏著什麼樣的陰謀算計。
平兒最可貴， 也最難得的地方，是她沒有把自己變成另一個鳳姐。她始終還保留著做人的善良本性，這就太難得了。
人在黑暗裡待久了，往往也會變黑，可平兒卻沒有。她像出污泥而不染的蓮花。雖然知道世道骯髒，卻仍盡力保持自己乾淨。
所以《紅樓夢》裡，許多真正讓人心暖的小事，往往都和她有關。
賈璉在外面金屋藏嬌， 偷娶的小妾尤二姐，被鳳姐騙進大觀園後，處境一天比一天慘。丫鬟秋桐辱罵她，下人怠慢她，連飯菜都不給她好好吃。因為整個賈府，人人都知道她是鳳姐要慢慢折磨死的人。
只有平兒看不過去， 偷偷幫她，她拿自己的月錢接濟尤二姐，暗中替她說話，甚至悄悄照顧她， 試圖保護她。可她也只能做到這一步，因為她知道，靠她的力量，保不了尤二姐，也救不了尤二姐。尤二姐是鳳姐一心要害死的人， 她若硬和鳳姐作對，最後自己也會死。
所以平兒的悲哀就在這裡，她有善良。卻沒有力量。她看得清一切，卻無法真正改變什麼。
而寶玉，是少數真正懂她的人。《紅樓夢》第四十四回，有一段極有名的情節。鳳姐因為賈璉偷情，遷怒平兒，狠狠打了她一頓。平兒受了委屈，躲起來哭。別人都怕惹麻煩，不敢管，只有寶玉急得不行。
寶玉把平兒帶到自己的住處怡紅院，親自替她理妝。曹雪芹寫得極細。寶玉替她梳頭、換衣、擦淚，怕她委屈難受，想方設法開導， 安慰她。
這一段，極動人。因為寶玉不把平兒當丫鬟，他是真把她當「人」，當成平等的姐妹。而平兒也第一次，在這冰冷的大宅門裡，感受到一點真正的溫暖。
她一輩子活得太小心了。在鳳姐面前，她需要懂進退；在賈璉面前，她需要知分寸；在下人面前，她不能擺主子的架子， 卻又不能失威信。她每天都像在走鋼絲。可只有在寶玉面前，她可以短暫放下戒備。因為寶玉真心對她， 不算計她，也不利用她。
寶玉對大觀園裡那些女孩，本來就有一種天然的憐惜。而平兒，是其中少數真正值得他敬重的人。
李紈曾說，平兒是鳳姐的「一把總鑰匙」，這句話準確說明，整個賈府那些最複雜、最隱秘、最黑暗的事情，平兒幾乎全知道。
她知道誰偷情，知道誰害人，知道誰貪污，知道誰在背後說誰的壞話，算計誰， 要害誰，可她從不輕易揭破。
因為她活得太明白了，在這種地方，很多事情一旦說破，人就活不了了。所以她選擇沉默，不是因為冷漠。而是因為清醒。
平兒不像晴雯那樣鋒利，也不像司棋那樣剛烈，更不像鴛鴦那樣寧死不屈。
她學會了另一種生存方式，那就是：看透，但不說透；知道，但不戳破；能讓一步，就讓一步；能救一點，就救一點；這其實比死更難。因為這樣違心地活著，有時比死更需要力量。
後來賈府敗落，鳳姐病死，大觀園散盡。許多女孩死了，瘋了，嫁了，失蹤了。可平兒，卻僥倖活了下來。
很多紅學家考證都認為，她後來陪著巧姐，跟著劉姥姥離開了賈府。如果真是這樣，那麼她也許是《紅樓夢》裡，少數真正走出那座墳墓的人。
她見過太多人死去，秦可卿、金釧兒、尤二姐、晴雯、司棋…… 她像一個倖存者。站在那座正在崩塌的大觀園廢墟前，靜靜看著這一切結束。
所以平兒的可貴，不在於她活得多麼轟轟烈烈。而在於：她在最黑暗的地方，還保留著人性。這比什麼都難。
在《紅樓夢》中，平兒最後的結局因為高鶚續書（後四十回），與曹雪芹原稿（前八十回伏筆）的分歧，存在兩種完全不同的走向。
高鶚續書的結局， 平兒苦盡甘來，被賈璉扶為正妻。
在目前最常見的 120 回通行本中，平兒迎來了一個相對圓滿的結局。
賈府敗落、王熙鳳死後，為了錢，王熙鳳的哥哥王仁和賈環等人聯手，企圖把王熙鳳的獨生女巧姐賣給藩王做使女。在這危急時刻，是平兒挺身而出，冒險救巧姐。陪伴並協助巧姐成功逃出大觀園，投奔了劉姥姥。
賈璉得知真相後對平兒極其感激與敬重。在王熙鳳大搞「醋罈子」的壓迫多年後，平兒最終被賈璉正式扶正，成為了他的正室妻子。
而曹雪芹原稿前八十回的伏筆， 平兒的最終結局， 應該與高鶚續書的結局，完全不同。
紅學界多數學者認為，高鶚續寫的平兒被賈璉「扶正」，雖然符合讀者對好人的情感期待，但可能並不完全符合曹雪芹的原意。
根據曹雪芹所寫的紅樓夢，前八十回中的蛛絲馬跡，脂批與學者推測，平兒的真實結局應該如下：
平兒與王熙鳳一同被休，被遣返回金陵王家。王熙鳳的判詞「一從二令三人木，哭向金陵事更哀」暗示她最終會被賈璉休妻，遣返回金陵王家。
平兒作為王熙鳳的「陪嫁丫頭」，隨著王熙鳳一起被送回王家， 是最正常不過的了。
另外一種推測， 則是平兒後來與巧姐、劉姥姥同住。 因為王熙鳳臨終前，最放不下的就是巧姐，她極可能將巧姐託付給唯一的親信平兒。當巧姐遭遇「狠舅奸兄」欺騙時，平兒在旁全力護佑，並在山窮水盡時，與巧姐一起被劉姥姥收留。
總體而言，無論在哪個版本中，平兒都憑藉著自己的善良、高情商與清醒的處事手腕，在賈府大廈傾塌的悲劇中，成為了整部《紅樓夢》中，極少數能夠保全性命、甚至得到善終的女性角色。
【未完待續】There are far too many young women who die in Dream of the Red Chamber.
Some die because of love. Some die because of power. Some die because of humiliation. Some die because of illness. Like fallen blossoms, they drift away, petal by petal, and vanish. The Jia household—that Grand View Garden, so radiant with flowers and so dreamlike in its prosperity—resembles, more than anything else, a silent and terrible tomb that devours people without leaving even their bones behind.
Yet amid this tide of death, one woman manages, by sheer fortune, to survive. Her name is Ping’er. If Daiyu is like poetry, Yuanyang like a sword, and Qingwen like fire, then Ping’er is like water. She is not dazzling. She appears gentle, plain, and unadorned. Yet she possesses the strongest vitality of them all.
Ping’er holds an extremely special position within the Jia household, combining the identities of maid and concubine. In name, she is Wang Xifeng’s dowry maid; at the same time, she is Jia Lian’s chamber maid. In practical terms, she is Jia Lian’s concubine without formal status.
She enters the Jia household with Wang Xifeng and becomes her trusted aide, mainly assisting her in managing the vast and complicated domestic affairs of the Rongguo Mansion. Because Wang Xifeng is jealous by nature and holds real power, Ping’er, with Xifeng’s tacit permission, becomes Jia Lian’s chamber maid—a personal attendant allowed to share the male master’s bed, but not formally recognized as his concubine.There are far too many young women who die in Dream of the Red Chamber.
Some die because of love. Some die because of power. Some die because of humiliation. Some die because of illness. Like fallen blossoms, they drift away, petal by petal, and vanish. The Jia household—that Grand View Garden, so radiant with flowers and so dreamlike in its prosperity—resembles, more than anything else, a silent and terrible tomb that devours people without leaving even their bones behind.
Yet amid this tide of death, one woman manages, by sheer fortune, to survive. Her name is Ping’er. If Daiyu is like poetry, Yuanyang like a sword, and Qingwen like fire, then Ping’er is like water. She is not dazzling. She appears gentle, plain, and unadorned. Yet she possesses the strongest vitality of them all.
Ping’er holds an extremely special position within the Jia household, combining the identities of maid and concubine. In name, she is Wang Xifeng’s dowry maid; at the same time, she is Jia Lian’s chamber maid. In practical terms, she is Jia Lian’s concubine without formal status.
She enters the Jia household with Wang Xifeng and becomes her trusted aide, mainly assisting her in managing the vast and complicated domestic affairs of the Rongguo Mansion. Because Wang Xifeng is jealous by nature and holds real power, Ping’er, with Xifeng’s tacit permission, becomes Jia Lian’s chamber maid—a personal attendant allowed to share the male master’s bed, but not formally recognized as his concubine.
In daily life, she still dresses like a maid, yet her status is higher than that of ordinary senior maids. In substance, she is Jia Lian’s beloved concubine, equivalent to a secondary wife whom Jia Lian has never formally married.
That is why, when Granny Liu first enters the Jia household and sees Ping’er dressed in fine silks and satins, she mistakenly takes her for Wang Xifeng herself. Within the Grand View Garden, everyone in the Jia household also knows that she is Jia Lian’s favored woman, though she has no official title.
Ping’er is extraordinarily intelligent. It is not that she fails to see the darkness of the Jia household. On the contrary, she sees it earlier and more clearly than almost anyone else, precisely because she has always lived at Wang Xifeng’s side.
And what sort of person is Wang Xifeng? She is the most formidable—and the most terrifying—woman in Dream of the Red Chamber. Clever, capable, fierce, and decisive, she is also ruthless, cunning, and greedy. She is a woman more powerful than all the men of the Jia household combined. She can turn clouds into rain and rain back into clouds, and every action she takes is guided by the protection of her own interests. From top to bottom, almost no one in the entire Rongguo Mansion does not fear her.
And Ping’er happens to be the person closest to her. Every day, she follows at Xifeng’s side. She knows how Xifeng schemes against others, how she destroys You Erjie, how she disciplines and punishes the servants. She knows what kinds of plots and calculations are hidden behind Xifeng’s smiling face inside that vast mansion.
What is most precious and most rare about Ping’er is that she never allows herself to become another Wang Xifeng. She still preserves a fundamentally kind human nature. That is no small thing.
Li Wan once remarked that Ping’er was Wang Xifeng’s "master key."
That simple description reveals an important truth: almost every complicated, hidden, and darkest secret within the Jia household eventually passed through Ping’er’s hands.
She knew who was carrying on secret affairs.
She knew who had harmed whom.
She knew who was embezzling money.
She knew who was gossiping behind another's back, who was plotting against whom, and who intended to destroy whom.
Yet she almost never exposed anyone.
For she understood the rules of survival all too well.
In a place like that, once certain truths are spoken aloud, people do not live much longer.
Her silence was not born of indifference.
It was born of clarity.
Ping’er was not as sharp-edged as Qingwen，
Nor was she as defiant as Siqi.
Nor did she possess Yuanyang's determination to die rather than surrender.
Instead, she mastered another way of surviving.
To see through everything, yet not say everything.
To know the truth, yet not expose it.
To yield whenever yielding was possible.
To save whatever little could still be saved.
In many ways, this required even greater strength than dying.
For sometimes living against one's own heart demands more courage than death itself.
Then came the collapse of the Jia household.
Wang Xifeng died of illness.
The Grand View Garden disappeared.
Many of its young women died.
Some went mad.
Some were married off.
Some simply vanished.
Yet Ping’er, by sheer good fortune, survived.
Many scholars of Dream of the Red Chamber believe that she eventually accompanied Qiaojie and left the Jia household together with Granny Liu.
If that is true, then Ping’er may have become one of the very few people in the entire novel who truly escaped that living tomb.
She witnessed the deaths of so many others—
Qin Keqing.
Jinchuan.
You Erjie.
Qingwen.
Siqi...
She stood like a survivor before the ruins of the collapsing Grand View Garden, silently watching the end of an entire world.
That is why Ping’er is so precious.
It is not because she lived a glorious or heroic life.It is because, in the darkest place of all, she never lost her humanity.And that is far more difficult than anything else.
In Dream of the Red Chamber, however, Ping’er’s ultimate fate differs greatly because of the divergence between Gao E's continuation of the novel (the final forty chapters) and the clues left by Cao Xueqin in the original first eighty chapters.
According to Gao E's continuation, Ping’er finally enjoys a happy ending.
After enduring years of hardship, she is elevated by Jia Lian to the position of his lawful wife.
In the widely circulated 120-chapter edition that most readers know today, Ping’er ultimately receives a relatively satisfying conclusion.
After the Jia household fell into ruin and Wang Xifeng died, a struggle over money erupted.
Wang Ren, Wang Xifeng's elder brother, joined forces with Jia Huan and others in an attempt to sell Wang Xifeng's only daughter, Qiaojie, to a feudal prince as a servant girl.
At that critical moment, Ping’er stepped forward.
Risking her own safety, she rescued Qiaojie.
She accompanied her, protected her, and helped her escape successfully from the Grand View Garden.
Together, they sought refuge with Granny Liu.
When Jia Lian later learned the truth, he was filled with gratitude and respect for Ping’er.
After enduring years under Wang Xifeng's suffocating jealousy and tyranny, Ping’er was finally acknowledged by Jia Lian and formally elevated to the position of his lawful wife.
That is the ending presented in Gao E's continuation.
The clues left in Cao Xueqin's original first eighty chapters, however, point toward a very different conclusion.
Most scholars of Dream of the Red Chamber believe that Gao E's decision to make Ping’er Jia Lian's principal wife satisfies readers' emotional desire to see a good person rewarded.
Yet it may not reflect Cao Xueqin's original intention.
Judging from the many scattered clues throughout the first eighty chapters, together with Zhiyanzhai's annotations and later scholarly research, Ping’er's true fate may have been quite different.
One possibility is that Ping’er was dismissed together with Wang Xifeng and sent back to the Wang family in Jinling.
Wang Xifeng's prophetic verdict—
"First obeyed, then commanded, then cast aside; Weeping toward Jinling, her sorrow grows ever deeper."
—has long been interpreted as foreshadowing that Wang Xifeng would eventually be divorced by Jia Lian and sent back to her natal family.
As Wang Xifeng's dowry maid, it would have been only natural for Ping’er to accompany her mistress back to the Wang household.
Another possibility is that Ping’er eventually lived together with Qiaojie under Granny Liu's protection.
Before Wang Xifeng died, the one person she worried about most was her daughter, Qiaojie.
It is therefore quite possible that she entrusted Qiaojie to the only person she truly trusted, Ping’er.
Later, when Qiaojie fell victim to the schemes of her "cruel uncle and treacherous cousin," Ping’er remained steadfastly by her side.
And when every path seemed blocked, both of them were finally taken in by Granny Liu.
Overall, regardless of which ending one accepts, Ping’er survives the collapse of the Jia household through her kindness, emotional intelligence, and remarkable wisdom in dealing with people.
Among all the women in Dream of the Red Chamber, she becomes one of the very few who not only preserve their lives, but also manage to reach a relatively peaceful ending.
(To be continued)
