I Am Once Again Thinking About Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang Jun, Lan Er Gege And Literally How He's

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Zhou Shen’s new photo shoot from the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival performance. 😍🥰

Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!

MDZS Volume 4 Annotations

Part 9, pages 293 - 309

Here begin The Edits.

My understanding, gleaned almost exclusively from reading tumblr, is that there are at least 3 versions of MDZS:

1) Original serialized story, published as it was written.

2) Cleaned-up story after the story was all done.

(I think this is the version that got published in Taiwan.)

3) Censored version, the only one that you can easily find online these days.

(This is the version that the ♥️Audio Drama♥️ is based on!)

While it’s awesome that Seven Seas didn’t censor MDZS, it’s also very sad that they didn’t incorporate all the sweet extra little scenes and adorable lines that MXTX added when she had to brutally cut out all the blatant physical intimacy (😢 that must have hurt 😢).

Here’s what to add back in, folks!

⭐️ 1)

WWX: “What do you want to do next?” He just barely restrained himself from saying “Whose house are you going to wreck next?”

LWJ furrowed his brow slightly and corrected WWX: “We.”

WWX: “Ok, ok. We.” (As in, “What will we do next, together.”)

LWJ nodded his head, and he even gave WWX the jujubes again. WWX wiped them on his clothes and took a few bites, thinking about how, in the middle of the night, Hanguang Jun wants Yiling Laozu to disturb the peace and make mischief with him.

If word of this got out, it would be disastrous.

Much more below the cut:

⭐️ 2)

After a moment, he tilted his head and asked, “How is it?”

WWX: “Hmm? What? How is it? … Good! Very good. I gladly bow down to your superiority!”

These were true statements. Even though he was drunk, Hanguang Jun’s handwriting was, as usual, exceedingly proper; WWX was ashamed at his own inferiority (re: handwriting) (handwriting is a big thing in Chinese culture).

LWJ nodded his head, and passed Bichen to WWX.

WWX: “…?…”

LWJ again tried to pass Bichen to him, and WWX accepted. He looked at the wall and noticed how there was a lot of space after the words “Lan Wangji,” then understood.

LWJ was waiting for him to write his own name up there!

LWJ stared at WWX unrelentingly, and WWX finally couldn’t take it anymore, saying “Ok, ok, ok. I’m writing. I’m writing.”

Resigned to this action (this fate), in the space after “Gusu LWJ,” he wrote “Yunmeng WWX.” Now, both of their names were side by side on the wall.

“Gusu LWJ, Yunmeng WWX, travelled here!”

⭐️ 3)

The sect rules of Gusu Lan were so strict, there was no way LWJ had ever had so much wild, crazy fun when he was little.

⭐️ 4) (an entire scene of Drunk LWJ exerting his dominance over a dog for the sake of WWX)

“Woof woof woof arf arf arf!”

Suddenly, an torrent of barking exploded like firecrackers in WWX’s ears. He screamed and instinctively jumped on top of LWJ: “Lan Zhan, save me!”

This household raised dogs?

In actuality, in the middle of this quiet night, WWX’s awful hollering and howling was much more terrifying than any dog’s barking. He was scared out of his wits, but LWJ’s expression did not change, and with one hand he held WWX and patted him soothingly, with the other hand he held his sword, then leapt lightly to the top of the wall; and from that position of superior height he looked down upon the wicked dog, and with a cold expression seemed to engage in a confrontation with it.

WWX had all 4 limbs wrapped around LWJ and his face buried in LWJ’s neck. His whole body was stiff, paralyzed. He screamed, “Don’t confront it! Go! Let’s go! Lan Zhan, get me away from here! Aughghghgh!!!”

While WWX was madly crying, the dog, upon seeing LWJ, had tucked its tail between its legs, extended its tongue, lowered its head, and was splayed on the ground crying; it didn’t dare bark anymore.

LWJ saw that he had achieved complete victory, then gently patted WWX twice more, held him tightly, then leapt down from the wall.

They had walked quite a ways away and didn’t hear a single bark; only then did WWX peel himself off of LWJ’s body. His eyes stared straight forward and his legs still trembled. LWJ patted his shoulder, expression focused on WWX as if asking if he was ok. WWX hadn’t fully calmed down yet, and with some effort took a deep breath, casually praising LWJ as he did so: “Hanguang Jun, you really are extraordinarily brave. Unparalleled!”

Hearing this, LWJ seemed to smile.

The moment was fleeting, and WWX thought that perhaps he was just seeing things. He was stunned.

A moment later, he sighed, rubbed his chin, and smiled. “Lan Zhan, now you know to regret not going to Lianhua Wu with me back then, right? Wait! Where are you going?! Don’t just run off!”

⭐️ 5)

WWX couldn’t help but tug on LWJ’s forehead ribbon. “You even order me around now?”

⭐️ 6)

WWX despaired. He gritted his teeth and pretended like everything was fine: “I’ll just help you pour over the bath water, ok? And the rest you can do yourself.” As he spoke, he made to dodge away from LWJ; suddenly, LWJ reached out and ripped off his sash.

⭐️ 7)

Seeing him this way, WWX’s heart inexplicably softened; he also felt it to be funny (Chinese doesn’t require subjects in sentences, so I’m not sure if WWX finds LWJ funny or the situation laughable or both). This person really has been this way since he was little — the things he wants, he would never say in words, but he would fiercely pursue with his actions. So, then, WWX dragged LWJ back to the tub, saying “Ok, I’ll help you bathe. Come here.” In his heart, he thought, “I’ve lost. I admit defeat. Ok, I’ll help him scrub a little — nothing more.”

⭐️ Alright!!

From here, pages 298 - 310, the edits were so many but also so subtle that I can’t just write them in. Instead, I highly highly recommend that you read the translation done by @boat-full-of-lotus-pods :

I’m annotating the Official Translation of MDZS before I lend it out to non-Chinese friends, and as I was reading I realized that the Chapters are different! Paper Book ch 1 = online book ch 1-4!

Which is ok, fine, sure…but that also means that there are no incredibly cute chapter titles to make the relationship between author and reader feel more intimate. I love MXTX as much as I do partially because every few chapter titles felt like it was a charming little inside joke that she wrote just for me (and her other millions of readers).

Here is a screenshot and link to Awesome Charming Cute Chapter Titles:

Here are the English Translations, courtesy of the MDZS wiki ❤️:

So my questions now:

do I just Pencil In the Cute Chapter Titles in the paper novel where they would/should appear?

Do they matter as much when it’s so difficult to translate the completely different style that they are written in — cutesy slang — vs. the writing style of the novel — proper “period” XianXia? I mean, of all the LWJ references in the chapter titles, she only writes his actual name Lan Wangji “properly” twice. Twice, in over 100 chapters. I learned how to read slang in Chinese because of these chapter titles! (And the end-chapter notes, and some of the comments :)

What’s the best way to introduce this story to a non-Chinese, non-XianXia, non-BL-reader?!?!?

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“他亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不可信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) 呢 (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “金光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (知道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

all right guys, let’s have a conversation about linguistic register, Lan Wangji, and I guess Wei Wuxian can come too

(and I do genuinely mean conversation, I’d love to hear other people’s input on this, because I did just write a long-ass post about the subjectivity of interpretation in translations)

So when I started interacting with the fandom and reading people’s fics, I got really confused by the way some folks were writing dialogue for Lan Wangji; he often sounded super awkward, spoke in fragments, and sometimes exclusively in third person. To be fair, all of those are elements of his speech at various times, but like, seeing it in English-language material felt like a really heavy-handed way of rendering it in translation?

I guess when you use third person within the first three episodes of the show, it makes a pretty big impression on the audience

This is not at all intended to be a criticism of people who are 1000% writing and creating wonderful work, which is more than I can say for myself, but I want to poke and prod and tease at some linguistic nuance here.

Take a deep breath, grab a pot of tea (this’ll take more than a cup), because we’re going to take the scenic route on this one–

Keep reading

I also just read Sha Po Lang! Those weapons and flying ships and wings have been in my head for months now - it’s lovely to see what they look like (according to idledee, which is gospel enough for me).

ive been reading sha po lang!

My books arrived from Taiwan. I’m going to start my Traditional Characters, top-to-bottom, right-to-left re-read from the inn in YunPing (where the bookmark is).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

😁

The Husky and His White Cat ShiZun, volume FOUR 四

So, again, the translators Rynn and Jun have amazed me with their prowess. I have all of three notes for this entire volume, and two are just extra cultural background for kids who didn’t grow up in Chinese culture.

So, yah - Chu Wanning put this hand in the window frame, then he heard a crack sound, and then he realized that he had broken the window frame. Oops.

If you grow up around Chinese people, you might hear them talking about some foods being too cold or others being too hot, but they’re not talking about temperature, they’re talking about the effect of the food on the body.

And once you’ve lost your internal health-balance and are experiencing the negative effects of being too “hot,” you explain away your weird symptoms of not sleeping well, sore throat, acne, etc as being the result of eating too many chili peppers or chocolate muffins the day before.

It’s strange, but it all makes sense. Just eat your chocolate muffins in moderation.

If you watch enough period dramas, you see a lot of saluting, often but not always accompanied by a bend at the waist.

And in case you didn’t remember: -xiong means “brother.” Polite way to address a man of roughly even status.

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Volume 3, Notes 2/5, Pages 97 - 151

This was actually a really easy read, maybe because it's been almost a year since I last read this in Chinese and so I am not remembering awesome idioms every page; but, anyway! Here we continue <3

In case you don't already know， a huli jing 狐狸精 is a fox spirit. Famous for being super sexy.

In the online Chinese version I read, there was no actual mention of Gu Yun's movements, but more his mindset: 失魂落魄地走了 = "walked off in a daze". Because of the steel plates and all his injuries, I guess it was not a smooth "walking off" so much as a forlorn stumbling, but I don't like the word "hobbled" used on Gu Yun.

Chinese: "整日里便是在我耳边嘀咕." The meaning is the same as "yakking my year off," but it sounds much more elegant in Chinese, of course: "All day, is at the side of my ear, muttering / whispering / chatting quietly...”

Top: again, it just sounds better in Chinese. English is "like a house on fire," Chinese is "投缘" = "kindred spirits" or, broken apart, "thrown, fate."

Bottom: many official ceremonies are carried out with official, kneeling, head-to-floor bows. In this case, it will be an official ceremony to celebrate Ge Chen becoming Zhang Fenghan's adopted son.

(I love how Chang Geng never actually says "So! Ge Chen wants you to adopt him," but instead says a bunch of nice things to Master Fenghan, and Master Fenghan says some nice things back, and then Chang Geng concludes with "We'll call you with the date of the Adoption Ceremony. Bye!")

I love names in Chinese!

So, Du Wanquan is 杜万全， where

Wan 万 = 10,000 ("a very large number") and

Quan 全 = "complete, all", and

the two words together 万全 = absolutely safe / surefire / thorough （mdbg.net).

Good name for the God of Wealth, yah?

In case you don't remember, Zhong-lao is Old Master Zhong / General Zhong, who came out of retirement to help lead the forces in the South. He trained up both Gu Yun and, much later, Chang Geng.

"Speak of the Devil" in Chinese is "说曹操曹操就到."

曹操 Cao Cao was the king of Wei during the 3 Kingdoms Period (the very very beginnings of the 3 Kingdoms period).

Though I think in the actual story, Cao Cao actually saved a fellow ruler who had been thinking of asking him for help against an attack; but before the fellow could send out his messenger with the request, Cao Cao and his army suddenly appeared and crushed the attackers.

The translation is fine. I just feel like in the phrase 朝廷挤出点口粮实在不容易, using "must have" for the English just feels better.

"When a person hid their wounds WITH THEIR TWO HANDS so that none could see, no one had the right to pry AWAY their hands."

It all makes sense once you realize that the verb used here is 捂 wǔ = "to enclose / to cover with the hand (mdbg.net)."

脏癖 dirty habits/inclinations (because Liao Ran didn't like bathing）

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

MDZS Vol 4 Annotations

Part 1, pages 1-49

I finally finished Book 4! It was beautiful! I loved it! But a lot of word and phrasing choices didn’t fit my personal interpretation of the MDZS world, and the final chapter of Book 4 was translated based on an earlier version of MDZS, so I have a ton of notes.

Alright. Here we go:

The author is very affectionately roasting LWJ here, and simultaneously showing how LXC is an expert at reading his enigmatic little brother. The contrast between the high-register language of the brothers’ conversation vs the relatively informal narrative language is obvious in Chinese, and serves to make this short and otherwise rather somber exchange more interesting and a little bit fun.

I had a hard time with contractions and slang in this book. I’m sure it’s in all the other books, too, but this time the “gonna”s and “gotta”s and “yah”s rubbed me the wrong way.

Every single character in MDZS (except Xue Yang) is highly educated and speaks with care and precision. WWX talks more colloquially than LWJ (or, rather, LWJ speaks like ancient poetry and WWX just talks), and JC tends to punctuate conversations with criticism and threats, but they all speak like they endured years of formal schooling and have hundreds of classical poems and ancient texts memorized.