The phoenix-head pearl hairpin (simplified: 凤头珠钗, traditional: 鳳頭珠釵, pinyin: Fèngtóu Zhūchāi, jyutping: fung6 tau4 zyu1 caai1) was a hairpin belonging to the Miao family, with a head in the shape of a phoenix set with pearls. Its hollow body concealed the treasure map to Li Zicheng’s Treasure. It passed from Nan Lan back to Miao Renfeng and his daughter Miao Ruolan, from whose hair Liu Yuanhe snatched it on Jade Brush Peak in Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain.
Description
The phoenix head was finely wrought, and its pearls were round and smooth, though they had yellowed with age (ch. 7). The shaft was hollow. A hair threaded into the phoenix’s mouth came out at the point of the pin; pulling both ends of the hair released a catch that sprang one side of the phoenix head open, and a folded paper, the map, dropped out. Pulling the hair again closed the catch (ch. 7, 8).
In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Nan Lan wore a gold phoenix-head hairpin set with pearls almost the size of a fingertip, round, smooth and lustrous (SIDE ch. 1). Side Story of the Flying Fox does not say that this hairpin held the map.
History
Nan Lan
In Side Story of the Flying Fox, when Tian Guinong was seducing Nan Lan in the Miao household, her gold phoenix pearl hairpin (金凤珠钗) fell to the floor, and he picked it up and gently set it back in her hair (SIDE ch. 2). When she fled with him and Miao Renfeng caught up with them in the rain at Shang Family Fort, she wore a gold phoenix-head hairpin set with pearls (SIDE ch. 1, 2).
Tian Guinong wanted the Miao family’s treasure map (ch. 10). The hairpin stayed near him for years, but he never knew the map was inside it (ch. 7). Nan Lan saw through him. When she was dying, she asked him to return the hairpin to Miao Renfeng or give it to Miss Miao, saying that it was a thing of the Miao family (ch. 7, 10).
Returned to the Miao family
On the night Tian Guinong closed his gates and sealed his jian, Miao Renfeng came to his room, and Tian Guinong laid the hairpin on the table. Miao Renfeng opened it with one of his own hairs, showed him the map, closed it again and left with it, telling Tian Guinong that he had kept the map all those years without knowing (ch. 7).
Miao Ruolan wore the hairpin at her temple on Jade Brush Peak. After Liu Yuanhe had told how he watched Miao Renfeng open it, and Baoshu had pointed out that the dao was useless without the map, Liu Yuanhe pulled the hairpin from her hair, opened it in the same way and took out the map (ch. 7, 8).
Later that night Miao Ruolan told Hu Fei that her mother, having seen through Tian Guinong, had given the hairpin holding the map back to her father when she died (ch. 10).
See also
- Treasure map, which the hairpin concealed
- Nan Lan, who wore it
- Miao Ruolan, from whom Liu Yuanhe took it
- Miao family, whose heirloom it was
- Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain items