魂兮歸來 不下幽都

return, O lost soul! / flee not to the dark city below!   |  all aboard the 陳情令 sideblog train | status: 重入冬眠 / archived

[hunxi-guilai]

about/how to: here

quick links:

linguistic meta

historical/worldbuilding/cultural meta

moment-specific meta

thematic meta

character meta

other links

PL translations

[pumpkinpaix]

江湖再会 | let's meet again in the jianghu

This concludes our chapter spotlights and featured posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling: The Untamed and Adaptation, Production, and Reception in Transcultural Contexts. Thank you for following and supporting us on our journey!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 8:

"'Censorship Made It Better': Anti-Fans and Purity Culture in English-Language Chen Qing Ling Fandom" by Abby Springman

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

Rejoice! MDZS has been cancelled!

What drew you to this topic?

When I got into CQL fandom and started lurking on its outskirts on Twitter, I started getting this weird sense of déjà vu. There was this bizarre similarity between the arguments I was seeing about the aspects of CQL/MDZS and their fandoms being "problematic" from a progressive, social justice point of view and the demands for censorship in American libraries that conservative groups were (and still are) making at an alarmingly increasing rate. In an attempt to make sense of this, I fell down what ended up being a really long rabbit hole, and, well, here we are.

Was there anything you were surprised to discover while researching?

I was surprised by the wide variety of fannish backgrounds found amongst members of English-language CQL fandom! I'm not used to seeing so many different "areas" of fandom intersect over a single piece of media like this. Some folks are primarily into the live action movies and TV shows side of things, some are mostly in bandom, some (like me) are traditionally a part of the anime, manga, and gaming contingent, etc. I think that's fascinating, honestly.

Did researching/writing your chapter change how you saw the text, the fandom, or the media? How so?

I didn't use the block button on Tumblr or Twitter for anyone in the fandom while I was working on my chapter. It definitely changed how I saw fandom on those platforms—literally. It really highlighted how much power social media algorithms have over what kind of content is presented to us front and center.

If there’s one thing you hope the fandom takes away from your article, what would it be?

I'll be thrilled if it makes people think about "problematic" content in less black-and-white terms. They don't have to necessarily agree with my conclusions! But if my words make even one person stop and think more about context before posting a reactionary comment, then that would be great.

If you were isekai-ed into MDZS/CQL, what sect affiliation would you choose and why?

The Lan. My existing skills are most likely to be applicable there (see: the library), it seems easy to find some peace and quiet when you need it, there are bunnies, and Hanguang-jun is there.

Chaotic one-sentence pitch to get your friends into MDZS/CQL?

My elevator pitch for CQL has historically been, "It's the adaptation of a book about a gay necromancer, except they can't actually show the gay romance or the zombies on screen."

What is one (1) book/media you would recommend to a MDZS/CQL fan? Tell us about it.

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. It's probably the most accessible collection of Chinese stories of the supernatural available in English. If MDZS/CQL was your first exposure to traditional Chinese cultural beliefs about ghosts, exorcisms, and the like, this is a great introduction to the less xianxia-specific aspects. If that isn't the case for you, I still highly recommend it on its own merits!

Character you keep getting in those "which MDZS/CQL character are you" quizzes?

Wen Ning

Anything to say to potential readers of the collection?

Thank you, and I'm sorry—no, that's a joke. More seriously, I really am thankful for anyone interested in the collection. It's the product of years of hard work by many people, and I'm sure there's an interesting chapter in there for everyone.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 7:

"Performing the Creative and Irritating/ed Fans: Discomfort, Flames and Social Media Spectacle in Xiao Zhan's RPS Fandom" by Celia Lam & Zhen Troy Chen

(interview questions answered by Lam)

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

This chapter is about how fan perception of the public image of celebrities influence fan creations

What drew you to this topic?

I was interested in examining the 227 Incident, but not from the perspective of warring fan factions. Rather, to explore different fan perspectives, especially when creating works inspired by CQL and the celebrities involved. Together with my co-author Troy Chen, we set out to analyse fan works about CQL, Xiao and Wang, with the view to highlight the association between fan conceptualisation of celebrity figures, and how they are featured in fan creations.

Was there anything you were surprised to discover while researching?

I was surprised by one fanmade video that cleverly summarised media reporting of the 227 Incident in a creative and intertextual imagined scene from a completely different television series. I was not expecting to find that type of commentary when setting out on the project.

Did researching/writing your chapter change how you saw the text, the fandom, or the media? How so?

I already respected the creativity of fandom, and the process of writing the chapter reinforced this respect as I discovered the depth of fan innovation and ingenuity.

You can find Celia on Twitter/X @celialamyc and on LinkedIn as Celia Lam.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[hunxi-guilai]

so I know that a lot of chinese names are references to specific poems. Is there a way to determine this (vs general auspicious meaning) and which poem specifically? I'd love to be able to figure this out for character names and I haven't been able to find any resources (in case it's helpful, I'd say I'm my understanding is maybe HSK4-level so I can clumsily make my way through the chinese internet with the help of a dictionary)

feel free to make this public so that others can benefit if you have any suggestions

oof... unfortunately I suspect that this, along with one's repertoire of chengyu, is something that one simply Just Learns with reading more. my personal repertoire of poetry is embarrassingly thin, so the horrible horrible process I've been going through is, well, throwing the name into a search bar and hoping for the best.

here's an example of how I (think I) went about doing this for Xiao Xingchen's name, way back when I wrote this post:

I went ahead and dropped "星尘 诗词" ("Xingchen poetry") into the search bar, which turned up this:

Generally speaking, I'll only put the name (minus the surname) because putting the character's full name into a search bar will probably turn up the character themselves, and if someone's name is being derived from a poem, it's usually independent of the surname anyway.

Xiao Xingchen's name is an interesting example because it doesn't quite come from a poem, but it doesn't not come from a poem. you can see that the search engine has automatically assumed that I am looking for poems about constellations, as "星辰" and "星尘" are homonyms, and one of these is more commonly seen. I usually consider that a solid indication that "星尘" (the name) is a novel formation of characters in a name, and not likely a poetic reference.

but! in for a penny, etc. I'm a huge fan of the first search result, gushicimingju, since it's a solid database of poetry and some prose. clicking into that listing informs me that gushicimingju is turning up. oh my. 119 possible matches:

note that these are matches for "星辰" (constellation), not actually our character's name. still! you can click in and peruse the selection if you'd like.

now that you're on gushicimingju's site, you can also use the search function within the site to search for more exact matches, without worrying that you'll accidentally activate the fandom itself.

looks like there's a few matches for "晓星," but nothing for the full name.

so! gushicimingju is a solid database I like to refer to most of the time. if for some reason I'm feeling particularly academically rigorous, I might also do some searches on ctext as sometimes names will come out of famous turns of phrases (a la Zhao Yun 赵云 / Zhao Zilong 赵子龙 from that post I linked earlier) rather than poems. searching the dictionary sometimes (Pleco, or zdic) doesn't hurt either. basically, I throw spaghetti at the search engine wall to see what results come back for these characters in this particular order to try and get the original referent (if any) to show up; I'll probably give up after a few permutations of search terms if nothing is actively jumping out at me

but back to the search results: sometimes, if your character is famous enough, straight up searching for "what poem is this character's name from?" will help you find like-minded people on baidu zhidao (basically yahoo answers):

although of course, take baidu zhidao result with all of the salt you would take with any yahoo answers (look for alternate sources to validate, good for a laugh most of the time)

best of luck!

[fwoopersongs]

Poetry + Names? :D!!!! Can't resist adding ~

Stacking on to Hunxi's 晓星尘 example

How to search for possible poetry references Another great resource that I love a lot besides gushicimingju and gushiwen (highly recommend the gushiwen app for its clean and user friendly interface if you're interested in reading poetry/exploring classics and keeping track of what you've learnt) is sou-yun.cn, which is particularly useful for searching up names and possible references because there are lots of parameters for advanced searching to chose from - like exact vs approximate match, position, dynasty etc.

Results are returned in their full poems with the text highlighted per the image below this paragraph. With the textual instability of ancient poems and all, you sometimes get alternate words - this site also displays them and their source, as you can see in the first example.

What's even cooler is that, hey, they may recognize me but I sure don't know them! What do these characters mean together? Click into the poem, select the word and you get both the pinyin and examples of usages in other poetry.

(I try to look at this only after doing the legwork for poetry club though, because this is seriously too much of a golden finger and my searching skills may grow rusty LOL)

Gushicimingju is fantastic for the purpose of telling us how many instances does the word show up. Gushiwen actually returns results from texts as well as poetry which is also desirable because name inspo for Chinese characters is not limited to poetry and auspiciousness. If you select the 古籍 tab (indicated with a red dot below) and if the search term actually exists in any of the texts within the site's archive, then it will turn up. In this case for 星尘, there is none.

But besides all these bells and whistles, the difference between these sites is the pool of works available. Gushiwen only returned 5 results with 星尘 across the Song to Qing Dynasties. Sou-yun.cn gave me 9 from Song to Late Qing, and a further 7 from the Republican Era to our times. See below xD

/got sidetracked LOL

Oh, ctext is another of my fav go-tos as well!!!! But we all know that the search function there can be a little bit broken sometimes. So when you suspect that it's not working for you, a workaround is googling like this: "the characters you're looking for" ctext.

But let's say we're looking for something different, so you want to search within the site. And if for some reason, you want to know if a particular usage of a word was more popular in older texts (like Pre-Qin and Han) or later ones (like Wei-Jin and after), then use the search box like this!

星辰 with 'Pre-Qin and Han' selected returns 177 results. 星辰 with 'Post Han' selected returns 385 results.

Another method of researching a name Looking at the words themselves! Sometimes a return to simplicity works just as well (or maybe I just like digging many rabbit holes).

The Chinese baike.baidu (like wikipedia) these days has this cool etymology section 字源解说 at the beginning of the article for most words.

If you've ever wondered how people from the Shang Dynasty wrote the same word (ok it's not as simple as that xD but for the sake of not making this a long ramble let's go with this), there we go.

For 晓

And since this is a surname, don't forget to check out its origins!

For 星

For 尘

What did the words mean originally? How did they extend and drift to other meanings and when were these drifts becoming popular? Does it fit in with what you know of the character?

Does the conclusion you're drawing about the meaning of their name feel a bit forced, or does it make perfect sense and you're happy to make this your headcanon / share it as a possible fun fact?

Happy searching!

[pumpkinpaix]

In the author's words:

CQL is, by nature, a product of censorship: while MDZS is explicitly a queer romance, CQL is only queer through implication. There are members of the English-language fandom that claim this censorship is actually beneficial to CQL on socially progressive and moral levels. In my chapter, I examine this phenomenon through the lens of various definitions of "anti-fans" and as a reflection of the growing presence of purity culture in English-language fandom spaces.

Stay tuned for the chapter spotlight, coming tomorrow!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

In the authors' words:

This chapter examines fan practices around the 227 Incident—the reporting of Real Person Slash which led to the banning of AO3—to explore the motivating factors for fan groups in China. It focuses on the production of RPS fanfiction and its reception by Xiao’s fans, arguing that reaction against RPS is related to how different types of fans conceptualize and utilize celebrity figures.

Stay tuned for the chapter spotlight, coming tomorrow!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 6:

"Vibe Checks: Chinese Overseas Labor as a Prerequisite Activism to Participation in Anglophone Chen Qing Ling Fan Communities" by Tina Tianyi Liu

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

My chapter is the result of one (1) pandemic's worth of trying to logic myself out of an identity crisis over my "Chineseness."

Was there anything you were surprised to discover while researching?

This was the first time where I realized that I might be more of a labour theorist than a critical race theorist. I'm still having a scholarly identity crisis over it.

If there’s one thing you hope the fandom takes away from your article, what would it be?

Cross-cultural communication is very complicated and multifaceted, and sensitivity checkers within Anglophone Chinese drama fandoms are semi-regularly at each others' throats.

Favorite adaptation, if any?

No competition: MDZS Q. What's better than adorable, unhinged chibis?

If you were isekai-ed into MDZS/CQL, what sect affiliation would you choose and why?

Lan, because I want Lan Qiren as a teacher.

Who's your favorite character?

Lan Qiren is my favourite character, but Lan Jingyi is a close second. I will (and have) subjected poor innocents to impromptu essays on why Lan Qiren is not a bad uncle.

Why am I so defensive of Lan Qiren?

Because I have been brainwashed by this fic and this meta.

Anything to say to potential readers of the collection?

Coming from an academic librarian: Talk to your local librarian to purchase a copy (or 3) of this collection for your community or university :3

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 5:

"Allegations of Chinoiserie: Gu(o)feng, Authenticity, and (Self-)Orientalization in Chen Qing Ling and Its Companion Album" by 墨客hunxi

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

Surprisingly absolutely no one whatsoever, I spend 4k+ words getting way too deep in the weeds regarding the translation choice of one (1) word. Now with bilingual footnotes in Chicago style!

What drew you to this topic?

I got distracted while working on translations of the CQL companion album back in the day and decided to make it everyone's problem.

Who's your favorite character?

How dare you try to make me choose between Lan Xichen and Xiao Xingchen!!!

Favorite line from the text?

To this day, I still really love the first line from the chorus of 《无羁》 Wuji:

煮一壶生死悲欢 / Warm a vintage of life and death, sorrows and joy 祭少年郎 / to commemorate the young men who have passed

Particular shout-out to the lyricist, 冥凰 Ming Huang — now that I've spent a little more time splashing about on the shallow end of Chinese internet fandom, I'm getting a better handle on which lyricists are out for blood.

Hey, so what's this gu(o)feng business?

Aha! Gu(o)feng is my terrible bastardization/smooshing-together of the terms 古风 gufeng and 国风 guofeng (lit. "ancient style" and "national style"). They are two contemporary Chinese music genres that intersect precisely at the confluence of authenticity and aestheticization, tradition and reception, fan production and original work, electric guitar and guzheng and suona and dizi. I can't get too far into it without really getting into it, so instead I will leave you with some links:

《倾尽天下》 by 河图

《琴师》 by 音频怪物

《风花雪月》 by 紫堂宿、林斜阳

《卷珠帘》 by 霍尊

《无约而来》 by 远皓zil、默默

《山外》 by 张远

You can find hunxi here on Tumblr @hunxi-guilai.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

In the author's words:

My chapter explores the racialization of Chinese overseas fans of The Untamed at the intersections of free labour online, affective labour in fan communities, and sharing Chinese cultural literacy with fans unfamiliar with Chinese culture. Overseas Chinese fans of The Untamed tend to be collectively referred to as a diaspora, but I argue that The Untamed created a diaspora through engagement with the Chinese cultural markers within the source material. At its core, my chapter is a roadmap through the process of diasporic making that I underwent through my engagements within virtual Untamed fan spaces.

Stay tuned for the chapter spotlight, coming tomorrow!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

In the author's words:

Authenticity is a thorny question to discuss at any point, much less in the fraught environment of cdrama/cnovel fandom online. In this chapter, I dive into CQL and its music in hopes of detangling chinoiserie, authenticity, and genre to examine the difficult questions of historical authenticity and contemporary reception.

Stay tuned for the chapter spotlight, coming tomorrow!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 4:

"Iterative Violence: English (mis?)Translations of Modao Zushi and Chen Qing Ling" by Chant Y. Ng

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

A work by any other translation would NOT smell as sweet!!! In fact!!!!

What drew you to this topic?

Hi yes it's me, your pal cyan, you may know me from such hit posts as 8k words of rage-crying about the translation of 知己 as soulmates (which is about translation as violence), or maybe that other one about translation as violence (shockingly, it's really about translation as violence), or perhaps even that other other one about how one might translate Lan Xichen's title— (you know, I think this one is also about translation as violence)

If there’s one thing you hope the fandom takes away from your article, what would it be?

I hope that people think harder about how impossible it is to translate a text, and that they choose to extend more grace and compassion to authors and translators alike. A translation is not a window but a painting. Also, I'm manifesting better pay and respect for the work of translation into the cosmos. Please consider this a memo I am posting on the great message board of the universe. Thank you.

What is your MDZS/CQL origin story? (i.e. how did you come to this text?)

Started watching, made some gifs, read the book. Had a breakdown. Bon appetit.

Favorite adaptation, if any?

Audio drama! The love, care and effort put into it continues to astound me. Sometimes, to get the sound of a dizi hitting the ground, you gotta throw a dizi on the ground, y'know?

If you were isekai-ed into MDZS/CQL, what sect affiliation would you choose and why?

Please let me live my life in peace, I am but a feeble scholar.

Most compelling relationship in the text?

Twin Jades!!!!

Chaotic one-sentence pitch to get your friends into MDZS/CQL?

*gripping you tightly by the shoulders* don't

If you could ask MXTX one question, what would it be?

你最近怎么样啊？

Anything to say to potential readers of the collection?

Thanks for checking us out! It's been a wild and unpredictable (four-year!!) ride but everyone worked very hard on their parts. Means a lot even if you're just here for our little promo. :) If you'd like a copy of my contribution for classroom use, please do reach out!

You can find Chant (cyan) here on Tumblr @pumpkinpaix.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 3:

"A Full Account: Queer Structures and Narrative Democratization in Mo Dao Zu Shi" by Andrea Acosta and Lillian Lu

Did researching/writing your chapter change how you saw the text, the fandom, or the media? How so?

This is less a change on how we saw the text, fandom, or media and more on how we view academia and academic work. For each of us, this was a first experience in co-authoring a critical essay with another person—beyond it being a productive (and joyful) experience for us, we also really appreciated the way it moved us away from the so-called "cult of individual genius" that dominates academia and toward something more honest, collaborative, and relational in our respective scholarly practices.

If there’s one thing you hope the fandom takes away from your article, what would it be?

Against the fandom urge to "pin down" the text, we want to highlight how queer, unsettled, and plurivocal the novel is—and how much more interesting and beautiful it is because of its form! The ethos of Wangxian is baked into the novel's queer and potentially revolutionary structure.

What is your MDZS/CQL origin story? (i.e. how did you come to this text?)

One night in 2019 (before The Untamed was released but after the donghua had come out), Andrea held Lilly captive for two hours so that she could show her a self-made PowerPoint about the series. Later, we experienced the release of The Untamed together and never looked back.

Favorite adaptation, if any?

For Lilly, the audio drama. For Andrea, a Frankenstein-ed mix of season 1 of the donghua and The Untamed in its entirety.

Who's your favorite character?

In true compatible fashion, Lilly's favorite character is Lan Wangji, and Andrea's is Wei Wuxian.

How did this chapter come about, especially as a co-authored production?

The chapter and its sections (imperfectly parsed and intentionally uneven) carry with them all the ephemera of the conversations that produced them: the late-night conversations from our apartments during the 2020 lockdown, the Zoom conversations held in different states during the winter holidays, and the sunnier days we worked together in cafés on Wednesday mornings. Our chapter mirrors these small affective, relational, and quotidian moments that make acts of academic writing not just possible but desirable. Writing this chapter has been, in short, a labor of love.

You can find Andrea and Lillian on Twitter/X @a_priyd and @lillyluwrites.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[hunxi-guilai]

so I know that a lot of chinese names are references to specific poems. Is there a way to determine this (vs general auspicious meaning) and which poem specifically? I'd love to be able to figure this out for character names and I haven't been able to find any resources (in case it's helpful, I'd say I'm my understanding is maybe HSK4-level so I can clumsily make my way through the chinese internet with the help of a dictionary)

feel free to make this public so that others can benefit if you have any suggestions

oof... unfortunately I suspect that this, along with one's repertoire of chengyu, is something that one simply Just Learns with reading more. my personal repertoire of poetry is embarrassingly thin, so the horrible horrible process I've been going through is, well, throwing the name into a search bar and hoping for the best.

here's an example of how I (think I) went about doing this for Xiao Xingchen's name, way back when I wrote this post:

I went ahead and dropped "星尘 诗词" ("Xingchen poetry") into the search bar, which turned up this:

Generally speaking, I'll only put the name (minus the surname) because putting the character's full name into a search bar will probably turn up the character themselves, and if someone's name is being derived from a poem, it's usually independent of the surname anyway.

Xiao Xingchen's name is an interesting example because it doesn't quite come from a poem, but it doesn't not come from a poem. you can see that the search engine has automatically assumed that I am looking for poems about constellations, as "星辰" and "星尘" are homonyms, and one of these is more commonly seen. I usually consider that a solid indication that "星尘" (the name) is a novel formation of characters in a name, and not likely a poetic reference.

but! in for a penny, etc. I'm a huge fan of the first search result, gushicimingju, since it's a solid database of poetry and some prose. clicking into that listing informs me that gushicimingju is turning up. oh my. 119 possible matches:

note that these are matches for "星辰" (constellation), not actually our character's name. still! you can click in and peruse the selection if you'd like.

now that you're on gushicimingju's site, you can also use the search function within the site to search for more exact matches, without worrying that you'll accidentally activate the fandom itself.

looks like there's a few matches for "晓星," but nothing for the full name.

so! gushicimingju is a solid database I like to refer to most of the time. if for some reason I'm feeling particularly academically rigorous, I might also do some searches on ctext as sometimes names will come out of famous turns of phrases (a la Zhao Yun 赵云 / Zhao Zilong 赵子龙 from that post I linked earlier) rather than poems. searching the dictionary sometimes (Pleco, or zdic) doesn't hurt either. basically, I throw spaghetti at the search engine wall to see what results come back for these characters in this particular order to try and get the original referent (if any) to show up; I'll probably give up after a few permutations of search terms if nothing is actively jumping out at me

but back to the search results: sometimes, if your character is famous enough, straight up searching for "what poem is this character's name from?" will help you find like-minded people on baidu zhidao (basically yahoo answers):

although of course, take baidu zhidao result with all of the salt you would take with any yahoo answers (look for alternate sources to validate, good for a laugh most of the time)

best of luck!

[hunxi-guilai]

Now I'm struggling to recognize you without the polygon bahaha - the mandarin student

I'll be honest I'm also thrown by how ~ proper ~ this new profile photo looks hhh it makes me look like I should be taken seriously

[pumpkinpaix]

In the author's words:

How does translation change the way a work is perceived through the eyes of an audience that cannot access the original text? This chapter aims to explore the abstract violence of translation on the text of MDZS and how that violence manifests into something more concrete.

Stay tuned for the chapter spotlight, coming tomorrow!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[pumpkinpaix]

In the authors' words:

Our chapter analyzes and illuminates the formal queerness of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s novel and argues that the queer structures of Mo Dao Zu Shi function to critique the cishet patriarchy of the diegetic cultivation world as well as trouble potentially violent and hierarchal readings of the novel. The question of “reading” and, by extension, “knowing” therefore come to occupy the center of the novel’s critique. We frame Mo Dao Zu Shi as a novel that democratizes narrative power in order to both craft and perform its own queer ethics of storytelling.

Stay tuned for the chapter spotlight, coming tomorrow!

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)