Lin Daiyu

Jia Baoyu's younger first cousin and his true love. She is the daughter of Lin Ruhai (林如海), an official in the lucrative Yangzhou salt commission, and Lady Jia Min (賈敏), Baoyu's paternal aunt. She is an icon of spirituality and intelligence: beautiful, sentimental, sarcastic, self-assured, an accomplished poet, but subject to fits of jealousy. She suffers from a respiratory ailment. In the frame story, Baoyu, in his previous incarnation as the Deity Shenying, watered Fairy Crimson Pearl, Daiyu's incarnation. The purpose of her mortal reincarnation is to repay Baoyu with tears. The novel proper starts in Chapter 3 with Daiyu's arrival at the Rongguo House shortly after the death of her mother.