I have a question about the Imperial concubine system. Where did they all *live*? In cdramas the consorts are always depicted as masters of their own palaces (at least in the ones I've seen), but not *every* concubine would merit such a thing, nor could there be enough space, so where did they live? Did lower-ranked concubines live in the same palace as a high-ranked one? Did they live together in one palace and only supervise their own apartments?
Hi friend,
Hmm, the answer is they all lived in the Forbidden City (for the Qing and Ming dynasty). I think people underestimate just how big the Forbidden City actually is. I remember when my granddad took me there as a teenager, it took me 3 hours to walk through it from north to south, and I only briefly glimpsed about 40% of the palace because at least half of it was under repair/maintenance and also used as government/military offices now.
There's a saying in Chinese: 后宫佳丽三千, which roughly translated to the harem has three THOUSAND beauties. This is of course an exaggeration, but the palace is designed to house A LOT of people. I think if you watch Empress in the Palace, you'll notice not every concubine has their own "court", aka an enclosed property contained within a courtyard, as part of the over all palace. This "court" could called a "gong" 宫, a "yuan" 苑, a "ge" 阁 etc, determined mostly based on their size and who lives in it.
An empress or a consort of high station will live within a "gong". Now the gong is not one singular building. As you propably have seen in harem dramas, particularly of the Qing or Ming dynasty, Chinese "houses" are not very big, in and of itself, but what makes a court big is that it has a lot of houses that make up one court. Typically, a gong is headed up by a consort of a certain station. Concubines of lesser stations may not have their own own court but live within the court of a higher consort. The main consort of each court will live within the main building of the court, and if she had lower concubines living under her juridiction, they will occupy a smaller side building.
The buildings you see in dramas like Story of Kunning Palace, Story of Yanxi Palace, Empresses in the Palace, are all in the design of the Forbidden City in Beijing, which served as the royal palace for the majority of the Ming dynasty, and all of the Qing dynasty until the early 20th century when the Qing dynasty dissolved. It is not actually filmed in the Forbidden City. Most shows are shot in man-made film cities built for the tv and movie purposes. These are replica buildings designed to look almost identical to the layman's eye to the actual thing.
I highly encourage people to actually visit it; it is very cool. Although..I will warn you that the "south front" of the Forbidden City, which is also its grand main entrance, opens up to... Tianmen Square.
Umm idk if you still answer some ask about fem! lan wangji if you dont then feel free to delete this ask, but I just wanna ask if wuxian ever get to see his son with lan wangji? And i wanna know how he would react to it, thank you and have a great day/night !!!
Oh I think I wrote a little something earlier. [here]
But actually I think it would be hilarious if after Jiang Cheng told Wei Wuxian "you're a dead beat, bruh, shame on your for leaving lan wangji preggers and stuff", WWX shows up to break up a bad night hunt and rescue the juniors (sizhui included) and pulls a Molly Weasley against Bellatrix Lestrange move. Eyes demonically red, hair flying, dark smoke all around.
1/3 Hi! Congratulations on your residency, good luck! Hard work but I hope it goes very well. If you have time, I was wondering if you would mind helping me with an Untamed hypothetical? I've been reading about the duty of vengeance that JC has against the Wen, that after the LP massacre, culturally it was his duty to exterminate the Wen to pay them back. And clearly there were other clans that had this duty as well, because the Wen massacred a few clans iirc. Putting all the other motivations
2/3 for the war & extermination of the Wen aside (e.g. Jin clan's desire for Yin Iron) I'm curious whether there's any way this vengeance can be satisfied other than total extermination? Like, if WRH, WX and WC had all died before the end of the war and WQ ascended as overall sect leader to a clan that was nowhere near as wiped out, is there any way she can walk it all back? Can she offer reparations and gift the Nie some land and negotiate for a treaty to stop the war?
3/3 Or is it just going to be endless blood fued from there, no matter what? I'm really just interested in your opinion, no pressure! Thanks for your time <3
Hi! Thank! :) You kind of hit the nail on the head there. Because the Wen clan never really.... did anything to like stop WRH and such, that's why there wasn't really room for more politically saavy manuvers. Jiang Cheng and Yunmeng Jiang saw Qishan Wen as mortal enemies. To be honest, did the clans have round up the farmers and whatever? No. They didn't. If the Jins, who were political leaders at the end of the war, were more fair, they would have let the farmers go. Qishan Wen was screwed either way. But because the Jins, as leaders of the cultivation world, labelled ALL the Wens enemies, then it really puts the Jiangs in a tough spot. On one hand it's like...sure I know the 75 yro grandma had nothing to do with WRH, but on the other hand, am I really gonna make myself look like an asshole for defending the clan that slaughtered my parents and my clan. Do I even want to?
A little bit of historical background for clans being implicated in the crimes of select individuals. People criticize the treatment of Wen remnants because they were innocent, as in they didn't particiate in WRH's craziness. But in anicent china logic, that just doesn't track. The opposite of that would be: well you didn't do anything to stop him either? Why didn't you?
Of course we know well wtf could they have done, WRH was like... crazy and had the Yin Iron. But the counter argument would've been, you could've gone to any other major sect and reported him. And yes, they absolutely could have. And it would've been justified. There is a term called "大义灭亲" - loosely translating to "the greater rightouseness eliminates kinship". If you see your family, you blood, commit horrible moral crimes, it is "understandable" by ancient society if you do nothing, but the morally upright thing would still be to stop them, or at least do what you can to try to stop them. If you don't, then you're complacent, especially if you directly or indirectly benefiting from their morally abhorrent actions. Some crimes that has greater implications for society at large, if you don't stop your crime-committing family member, you will 100% be implicated in the event they get caught. Unless you can prove beyond the shadow of doubt that you had no idea this was even happening. As the ancient saying goes: 不知者无罪 ignorance is innocence.
In the case of the Wens, if Wen Ruohan had succeeded at annexing the other clans and established absolute control over their realm, then whether you're closely related Wen, or a distantly relatedly Wen, you will benefit. Your family "owns the world", so to speak. In the logic of ancient chinese society, if you don't try to stop WRH, for a crime as great as this, you are his abbettor.
And I'm not pulling this out of my ass. Real historical laws in ancient china allowed executions of clans to a greater or lesser extent depending on the crime. If the crime was something like...treason, and you were found out, then your family, including distant relations like third cousin twice removed could be killed. In the Christian bible I believe there is a passage that says sons are not persecuted for the crimes of the father. Well, that's Christian morals. Morals of ancient Chinese society is very different. There's literally a term 父债子换 which mean debts of the father are paid by the son.
So yeah, bringing the conversation to modern day, if Wen Qing had somehow contributed publically to overthrowing WRH, her side of the clan would've been saved. Or at least, it would've given people like LXC and NMJ reason to speak out for her. It's kind of like if you worked in a mafia, bu then you cut a deal with the feds and sell out the big boss, you get put into witness protection program. Same deal here.
Hello! Quick question: JC-antis will prove their (insane) arguments about him by citing how the "real" JC is described in MXTX's text. I know a lot of the story revolves around the danger of rumor and hearsay, but in my English translation, the story seems to be written in 3rd person omniscient, which unfortunately seems to give their argument some weight. Could you lend me some insight regarding the original Chinese or any cultural elements that might help me defend my Fave? Thanks! <3
i mean Jiang Cheng is very much a little shit face, but is he a bad person? Hmmm no.
as far as i'm concerned, antis can say whatever they want and i just...block ppl LOL
it's hard to give really concrete evidence without digging up the real text and MDZS is....VERY LONG. And i just can't...be...bothered.
But I will say one thing about Chinese as a language. Sometimes I found that translation often made what is just "casual speech" very abrasive and aggressive and rude sounding in English.
Even just the most basic example from the show: when that dude from episode 2 fainted in the Fairy Temple, Sizhui is translated to say: hey what's wrong with you? Or something to that effect. (the only reason i can pull this up as an example is bc i recently started watching it again with a new friend who i've infected. i'm like patient 0 in this untamed epidemic that's going around in my friend circles).
Which honestly, if a person fell down in front of you and your automatic response is what's wrong with you? People would be like wtf, why are you so rude? But in Chinese, it's....not a rude thing to say. In fact that is exactly what Sizhui says: what's wrong with you/what's going on with you?
And this is Sizhui we're talking about. Like the Angelic Boy of the mdzs universe no matter which iteration.
So naturally you can see how that plus a shitty temper would make Jiang Cheng seem like an irredemable asshole.
Not to mention all the misreading into the cultural dynamic, trope dynamic that people seem to be doing left right and center. Completely heedless of the myriad of people telling them bruv, you're reading the book wrong please calm down.
It's like whenever i read a good fanfic and i see the words "Madam Yu abused Wei Wuxian" - I click (x), right away. I'm too old and too tired to deal with this kind of shit in my life.
Also the absolute projection I see in some people's analysis/fic/headcanon. Bruh....
But who am I to tell people how to live their lives? If they get more out of mdzs/cql than is intended by the author or production team, well that's none of my business. I can have selective blindness.
and do i feel show jc is a bit watered down than book jc? hmmm yeah, to an extent. but also i feel that's the thing with books right? when i read it i imagine one thing, but when i see it as a visual in the show, that's both the director's interpretation of the character as well as the actor's interpretation of the character. and i decided that it's canon enough that it's not ooc, and i actually like the show's interpretation so that's what i'm gonna stick with.
how do you feel about that whole scene where it was revealed jc had wwx's core. Because reading it in the manhua now (I've read in the translated novel and watched cql) I really hate wwx and lwj during that scene. I think they were in the wrong (wwx had himself expelled from the sect and lwj is an outsider that has no business being in there) and I was curious how you see that whole thing.
Hope you have a nice day.
Hi friend!
My personal opinion is that the only person in the wrong in that scene is Wen Ning.
I'm referring to more or less the cql plot line.
I don't feel either Jiang Cheng or Lan Wangji or Wei Wuxian are in the wrong based on the stance that they take and the information they know.
If you take Jiang Cheng's stance: you don't know jack shit. Nobody tells you anything. You still don't really know why after your shixiong went missing, he became a sith lord. You tried approaching him about it when he was alive the first time around but he just pushed you away. I mean at that time you were barely more than a kid yourself, trying to keep it together for your new found sect, trying to play at being an adult and incidentally being played by every other adult who was way better at the politcs game than you were. And then your shixiong chose to protect the Wen Remnants, which in and of itself was not a bad thing and you knew it. But you couldn't help. You wanted to, at least for Wen Qing, but you couldn't. You knew you couldn't because you're a Jiang and the Wens killed your family- slaughtered your parents - and maybe not these specific Wens, but that didn't matter and that was just how things were in the world you lived in (if you're not cn and you don't get it, just trust me on this trope, take my word for it). That was why you went to find Wei Wuxian and tried to talk to him about it but instead of explaining shit to you, Wei Wuxian decided to "defect" and then you had to fake fight about it. And then you had to pretend to hate him in front of other people. And you know...you were faking it until you made it and you thought everything would be fine. Things were kinda quiet for a while. You invited Wei Wuxian to your nephew's celebration and then HE KILLED JIN ZIXUAN. WHAT?? And then before you knew it the Wen Remnants were giving themselves up and everyone was storming Nevernight and Wei Wuxian was Sith Lord on Meth and giving Anankin Skywalker a run for his money.
And then your sister died and you just lost it. Yeah you tried stabbing Wei Wuxian, but who didn't those days am I right? Besides, he let go of Lan Wangji's hand himself...
The point is, it's been 16 years and you still don't know anything. You don't know why Wei Wuxian is doing ANY of this bullshit and you just wish you know something for once for fuck sake. The running theory is that Wei Wuxian = Evil, and you know that's not true. Wei Wuxian = Jackass, yeah, that might be true. You just don't understand why Wei Wuxian doesn't give a shit about being a Yunmeng Jiang, why he would stand with literally anyone else - the Wen Remnants, Lan Wangji, Wen Ning - but not with you.
And you're SO angry, you just want to fight him. Like the ways boys do, one fight to settle the score. Maybe you can punch the truth out of him. How did he get resurrected in the first place huh? What the fuck is that all about?
And then you know. Because Wen Ning tells you in the cruellest way possible. You know now why he couldn't stay because Wei Wuxian had given you everything he could give, and that there was nothing else left he could offer.
The truth is worse than you ever imagined, and knowing the truth doesn't fix you. You're still alone, still broken.
If you take Wei Wuxian's stance: sure you might have "defected" but you never really defected, not in your heart. You'll always be a Yunmeng Jiang. Lotus Pier is your home. You swore to Madam Yu you'd protect Jiang Cheng and you did that. Look at him, he's a sect leader now, a goddamn strong one at that. That's a success right? Then why doesn't it feel like one. Why are you still miserable, still cast out, when all you want is to come home.
Oh, yeah you know why. Because shijie is dead. She died more or less because of you, at least it feels that way. That peacock Jin Zixuan too. You still don't understand how it all went so wrong. But you're tangled up in the thick of it, and you can't extract yourself. You are responsible, at least in some sense. Responsible for being stubborn, for thinking you had everything under control. Responsible for your pride and arrogance.
You know why you can't come home. Because you still carry that one giant secret you swore you'd carry to you grave and never let anyone know. And you did technically carry that shit to the grave, but now you're alive again, and honestly who the fuck prepares for this kind of scenario? This is not the kind of truth that should ever see the light of day. You don't ever regret a single goddamn thing you ever did on that hill in Yiling, but jesus christ you miss home and you just want to come home. So now that you're here, in the ancestral hall, how can you not pay your respects?
And of course Jiang Cheng is angry, you know why he's angry. YOu never told him jack shit. But you're too tired to fight him. It's been so many years and you just want to move on. Let Jiang Cheng hate you if he wants to; you've made peace with that.
If you take Lan Wangji's stance: this fucking Jiang family drama is worse than soup drama. You're not really sure what the ever loving fuck went down between Jiang Wanyin and Wei Ying but at this point, it's too late to go through all that history. The love of your life was dead and came back to life!! Who else gets that kind of second chance?! You have your priorities, and that's to keep Wei Ying safe. There is a conspiracy going on and everybody has bigger problems now, problems like Jin Guangyao and what he did to all those people all those years ago, and the things he's still doing. That's what the focus should be.
And besides, you look at Wei Ying and you know that he never stopped loving this place - Lotus Pier. That this place is his Cloud Recesses, and no matter how far he goes, even as far as death, he will never stop seeing this place as home. So of course you follow him into the ancestral hall to pay your respects. This man is the man you want to spend the rest of your life with; his family is your family. It's only right. Of course Jiang Wanyin is angry about it, but that guy clearly has problems and you're above starting a fight with him as long as Wei Ying wants to keep it civil.
Wen Ning - fuck this guy. I don't like him and I don't care to explain it.
I loved your fem lwj take on things. How would thibgs go if WWX was the lady? Other than ppl assuming she stood up for the Wens bcs she jad feelings for WN ( and that Yuan was hers)
Heyyy friend, I think I’ve seen a couple of girl!wwx fics floating around in ao3 so i certainly won’t be the first :P.
Also I completely misread your ask initially, I thought you were asking me what I think would happen if A-Yuan was WWX’s kid, and I was like oh?? But then I realize wait... I can make it worse.
Today, I decided that my mortal soul doesn’t matter, so here we go. Let’s see how accursed I can make this idea:
[1]
It started with Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Wanyin had set out for the Burial Mount with the explicit goal of throttling speaking with Wei Wuxian, but what greeted him at the entrance of the “Demon Subduing Palace” — more of a cave than anything really — was not his martial sister, but Wen Ning. Well, what had once been Wen Ning.
Black veins ran across his pale, ashen face, down his equally ashen neck , and into the major veins beneath his clavicles covered by the collars of his black threadbare robes. Lifeless eyes, white as his skin, stared into a void the living could not see. There were talismans littering his body, and Jiang Cheng knew that when he spoke to this fierce corpse, he was not speaking to the young Wen boy, but to his mistress who controlled him with her demonic cultivation.
Wei Wuxian refused to face him. Refused him explanation. Refused him closure.
“Er-jie!” Jiang Cheng screamed into the stony expressionless face of Wen Qionglin. “If you continue to protect them, then I can’t protect you!!”
There was no response.
Suddenly, just as Jiang Cheng was about to kick and fight his way into the cave, Wen Ning thrusted out his right fist, and in his grasp was a piece of purple silk. Jiang Cheng unfolded the silk, vaguely recognizing that it had been cut from someone’s robe, and saw what was wrapped within was a slip of parchment.
割袍断义*, the paper read. Tell the world that I, Wei Wuxian, first disciple of Yunmeng Jiang has forever defected (Note: 割袍断义- to rip one's robe as a sign of repudiating a sworn brotherhood (idiom)).
With this, there was nothing left to say. Hurt and furious, Jiang Wanyin threw the piece of parchment onto the dirt ground, grinded his heel down on it, and left the Burial Mount without ever having drawn Sandu.
Inside the cave, Wen Qing held Wei Wuxian’s hand. “Why won’t you just tell him? He’s your brother; he can help you, you can —”
Wei Wuxian’s mile long stare seemed to be gazing at something — someone — very far away. Slowly, she placed her other palm over her belly, which horrifically was already starting to round out. “Nobody can help me now, Qing-jie.”
“I can,” said Wen Qing, blunt as ever. “I can make it go away, if you want.”
“No.” A droplet of tear escaped pass long lashes. “No.”
[2]
It continued with Jiang Cheng.
On a snowy night, the first winter after Wei Wuxian escaped with the Wen remnants to the Burial Mount, Jiang Cheng was rudely awakened from his slumber by a less-than-stealthy intruder breaking and entering into his bed chamber.
Zidian whipped through the air, lighting the room with her eerie violet glow, before the intruder could think to take one more step. It was a man, judging from his silhouette colliding against the wall and the pained groan he made in response. The very next second, the tail of Zidian coiled tightly around his neck and dragged him across the floor towards beneath Jiang Cheng’s waiting foot.
The Sect Master of Yunmeng Jiang summoned Sandu, ready to deliver the final strike, but just as his blade sailed towards the intruder’s chest, a pale arm jutted upwards, blocking Sandu’s descent and revealing a pale hand holding a … a...
Even in the dark, Jiang Cheng immediately recognized the mahogany comb.
“Jiang — ! Zongzhu —!” The man croaked out urgently, throat still stomped on by Jiang Cheng’s foot. It was - it was Wen Ning?!
Jiang Cheng looked him over. He was pale, yes, but his eyes appeared human. His hair was brushed and haphazardly done up in a farmer’s top knot. He was wearing farmer’s clothing too, probably more inconspicuous for travel than his Ghost General getup.
“Jiang-zongzhu! P—please!!”
No, impossible.
“Wei — Wei-guniang—”
Jiang Cheng lifted his foot and dragged Wen Ning up in a split second. “What’s wrong with Wei Wuxian?!”
Wen Ning coughed and shook his head desperately. “No time to explain. My sister asked me to fetch you. Please, you have to come! Wei-guniang’s life is in danger! If you won’t come, I’ll...I’ll have to go to Gusu, and I don’t know if - if -”
Jiang Cheng followed Wen Ning.
For speed, they travelled by sword, but even so, dawn was breaking by the time they arrived. The crowd of Burial Mount’s villagers huddling anxiously outside of the Demon Subduing Palace parted for them upon their arrival. Jiang Cheng took a moment to gather himself and square his shoulders. Whatever it was; he was ready.
He was wrong. None of the dozens of scenario he had agonized over on the flight here could have prepared him for what awaited him inside.
Wen Qing, pale and drenched in sweat, was near complete spiritual collapse, and without Wen Qing’s spiritual energy sustaining her, the single tenuous thread by which Wei Wuxian’s life hung on would have undoubtedly snapped under the toil and devastation her body had been put through.
There was so much blood, so, so much blood everywhere, and amidst the blood, there was a baby.
Fuck.
Jiang Cheng transfused his sister half of his total spiritual reserve over the course of a day, while an exhausted but unrelenting Wen Qing worked diligently under blood-soaked sheets.
Then at dusk, when the storm finally passed, Jiang Cheng sat at the mouth of the cave with a tiny, perfect little human — a girl, a niece! — in his arms and cursed Lan Wangji’s name.
Wen Qing was extremely clear with them: 孩子要是留在这里，养不活。
If the newborn was left to be raised at the Burial Mount, she would not live. And so, because parting was inevitable from the start, Wei Wuxian adamantly refused to hold or nurse the child. Her child.
I can’t. If I do, I won’t be able to let her go. Those dark eyes burned with more than just the delirium of her childbed fever. For once, Jiang Cheng could not find it in himself to argue.
Thus, he took his niece home and named her Jiang Yan 江曕. The name was not his doing. His foolish, misguided, stubborn sister had stroked her daughter’s soft, baby cheek and whispered it to her as a farewell gift.
Yan - to be bathed in daylight. In the end, when given a choice, Wei Wuxian still opted for her child to walk on broad sunny road.
It made Jiang Cheng wonder why, then, she would choose the dark twisted path for herself instead.
[3]
It ended with Jiang Cheng.
The truth was simple: Jiang Wanyin killed his shijie Wei Wuxian. He did. He meant to.
He killed her. But that did not mean he wanted her dead.
In one day, he had lost both of his sisters, leaving two orphans in their wake. Jiang Cheng could not ignore the cruel irony of their fate: one’s father murdered by his aunt, and other’s mother murdered by her uncle.
This was the kind of tragedy fairytales were made of, and if there were anything left in him to shed tears over it, he would. Standing amongst Nevernight’s carnage, he could not dredge up even a single drop of tear.
Jiang Cheng didn’t know how he could return home to Lotus Pier to face that cherub face, always so happy, so sweet, so utterly untainted by the world. She had her mother’s smile. Yan'er was starting to learn how to speak. Her first words were da-da.
Da-da. Die-die. Father.
He was standing beside her father now.
Lan Wangji. Devastated. Destroyed. …Deceived.
Jiang Cheng hated him so much, so fucking much that for one insane second, he thought about telling Lan Wangji the truth just to see what would happen. Maybe he would run Jiang Cheng through with his Bichen - that would be a relief now, wouldn’t it? - or maybe he would jump after Wei Wuxian.
Truly, if he knew, he would. Jump, that is. Jiang Cheng was almost entirely sure. Oh the utter melodrama that would inspire indeed!
But then...
Wei Ying birthed you a daughter, a lovely, perfect, blessed little girl, and she carried that secret to her grave. I may be damned by my actions, but you, who have done nothing for her and taken everything, why should you deserve something as sacred as the truth?
Jiang Cheng turned away.
He was acutely aware that one day Jiang Yan may very well be the literal death of him. After all — 杀母之仇不共戴天 — one cannot tolerate living under the same sky as the murderer of one’s mother.
Be that as it may, he would raise Jiang Yan well, just as he promised. Unlike his sister, he would not break his word. Jiang Yan was of Lotus Pier, of Yunmeng, like her mother and grandfather before her. That for him, was enough.
Jiang Cheng clutched Sandu and gripped Zidian. Whatever his fate, he already made peace with it, and the rest was inconsequential.
One day, he may die, but today he lives, and so as long as he lives, Jiang Yan and all of Yunmeng Jiang will be protected . So as long as he lives, they will flourish.
[...and in between]
On the streets of Yiling, Lan Wangji tilted his head inquisitively at Wei Wuxian and the little boy at her side and asked, “This child, he...”
In response, Wei Wuxian patted her chest in a self-declarative kind of way and announced, “Oh this child, I birthed him!”
He stared at her in shell-shocked silence, his mind racing with panicked thoughts of but that’s impossible — that was just once — even if — the boy is too old to be —
“怎么，蓝湛，不要我们娘儿俩了？” What, Lan Zhan, you don’t want the child and I?
“Wei— Wei Ying—”
Then of course, she had laughed, and Lan Wangji thought no more of it.
Hello, I hope you day it's going great! So, I'm currently in a writing proyect and I've been scrolling through your Tumblr for language adivces wich I'm very thankful and really appreciate for taking the time to explain. So, to the point; How does poetic names works in Chinese? I don't think someone actually explain it and I'm pretty curious. There are some steps? Or you just,, use the part that better sounds and goes with the character meaning? Or it's just too complicated for Non-Chinese people (And somekind disrespectful? I think??) Thank you again for your arduous work and I give you the best wishes for your life ^^✨
Hi friend!
Poetic names certainly aren't "too complicated for non-chinese people" lol. Nothing is too complicated to be explained; I think when/if people say that it's because it is a rather arduous process to explain it and maybe they just don't want to get into it.
But because I apparently hate sleep, I'm just gonna do it. LOL.
First, a little thing about Chinese poetry and how Chinese actually functions as a language. I can't really get into how to make poetic names without first explaining the basics. Of course there are many forms of poetry, but I think you're thinking along the lines of naming character based on historical and ancient poetry. Modern ones are a little bit more comprehensible and colloquial.
So first I'm gonna compare a Chinese poem "Begonia in the Fall" by Ji Xiaolan (b 1724, politician, philosopher, writer) to a section of one of my favourite poems by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (b. 1772, writer, theologian, philosopher), "Midnight Frost".
《秋海棠诗》
憔悴幽花剧可怜
斜阳院落晚秋天
词人老大风情减
犹对残花一怅然
"Midnight Frost"
[...]Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
You'll notice that a lot of Chinese poetry has exact number of characters in a verse with no punctuation. This is bc a) that's just the rule of that particular style of poem (there are other styles which doesn't demand it); b) ancient poetry was pretty much written in contracted language, as in, instead of saying "look how pretty the flower is", you say, "perceive flower beauty". This way you can express an entire paragraph in like... 8 words.
In comparison, for poems in English, even though the message of the poem might be muddled by metaphors and not very understandable to the people reading it, the grammar and - to a lesser extent - the syntax stay relatively the same as spoken language. Just because you're writing a poem doesn't mean you suddenly stop conjugating your verbs or dropping off "the"s and "an"s. That has to do with how English functions as a language. Each individual word has its set meaning and the language is bound by a more clear cut grammar.
Each individual character has its meaning, BUT when placed together with other characters, not only do new words form, but the meaning of the character itself can be distorted. A single character when used differently can be a noun or a verb or an adjective. Example: the character 生 sheng, by itself, means life (noun), to create/birth (verb) or raw (adjective).
Chinese grammar looks easy but is actually really fluid and suckie for learners. Chinese characters are words but also not-words. Each character can, in some cases, be a word by itself, but in everyday use actual "words" are more-often-than-not made up of more than one character. Example: dian 电 = electricity, nao 脑 = brain. But together, it means computer - electric brain. When a Chinese person says dian'nao, they're thinking about a computer, they're not thinking about electric brain.
生命 sheng ming: sheng = life (in the philosophical sense) ming = life (in the literal sense). Together they mean "living creature" or "life".
生孩子: sheng = to birth, haizi = child. Together it means to give birth to a baby.
BUT! 生气: sheng = to create; qi = air. Together it means to be angry. (yeah i know... lol)
生肉: sheng = raw; rou = meat.
Now that I got that out of the way, lemme go back to poetry. You can see now that what each character means has A LOT to do with the context that the rest of the sentence provides. When the language becomes contracted and shortened in a poem, it becomes VERY vague and hard to decipher, even for average Chinese people. Adding the fact that many of these poems are written by historical figures reflecting on events of the past and that the literal meaning of the poem maybe is a metaphor for another thing all together ....shit gets REAL complicated.
So how do Chinese people know/understand these poems? Simple answer: the very very very strict education system. Every child enrolled in school is MADE to read poems. I think there's a textbook for elementary children called 唐诗三百首 Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty. The book provides in the footnotes an explanation of the poem by literally dissecting the poem apart character by character. Not only does the education system make children learn the poem's meaning, they make you MEMORIZE them. As in when the bell rings and it's language class, Miss Teacher will call on any random poor third grader and says stand up and recite [insert poem name].
Memorizing poems has been a part of a robust language education in Chinese history since... the fucking dawn of time. It ain't going anywhere.
....
Yeah.
This is probably what people mean when they say, non-Chinese people will have a REALLY hard time choosing a poetic name. Because if you don't know how to read Chinese at all and you're just pulling random poems off the internet to try and guess at it's meaning....it's not gonna work.
Even I had a lot of trouble trying to find a poetic name for an OC. Most of my OC names are NOT poetic names. I didn't have an education in Chinese (I'm literally spewing Coleridge lol), so even for me it's like very very tasking to do this.
For me there's 2 options, the retrograde option or the anterograde option.
Anterograde option is: I have a sort of topic in mind. Let's say I want my character's name to mean Snow. Well okay I'll type in "poems in chinese about snow" and then see what I get. But that means I do have to sift through a BUNCH of poems, read them, understand what they're about, essentially decipher them, and then choose characters that sound nice together...which might not always work out.
But let's say you want to name your character after a more vague and nebulous idea like ambition or spirituality. How are you gonna find those poems?
The retrograde option is you think of a name FIRST and then you throw your name into google to look for poems containing the characters of the name. That's what I did for Jiang Yan (Jiang Yueqian 月千) in my au Midnight Sun.
Yue means moon and qian means thousand. I really liked the sound/flow of this name. I wanted to give it some meaning, but I searched and searched and I just couldn't find a poem that worked because like I said...I don't have a reservoir of poems in my head like kids who were educated in Chinese literature.
So finally I cracked and I just asked a friend. She's MUCH better at literature than I am and I said hey look, here's what I'm trying to do And she said oh Yueqian 月千, that's a nice name, reminds me of this particular poem.
Poet 范仲淹, 《岳阳楼记》
[...]
长烟一空 - when the smoke clears;
皓月千里 - the moon casts a thousand miles of light
浮光跃金 - which dances upon the water, golden
静影沉壁 - the shadow of the moon itself like jade underwater*
[...]
Idk if you're from the CQL fandom, but essentially the OC is a girl whose parents had her out of wedlock (her father doesn't know), and her maternal uncle hid her away for protection after her mother (who in canon is a male character that I had genderbent for The Tropes) died. TLDR: her mom is like this sorceress who summons smoke with her spells, her uncle lives in an area with a lot of water (river, lakes), and her father is known as the Second Jade.
The poem was SO PERFECT. It had everything I wanted. But never in my LIFE could I have gotten to this poetic explanation of my OC's name if I didn't have my friend's help, and I speak Chinese FLUENTLY. I couldn't even get to this if I had asked my parents for help because they studied literature in school like eons ago and they're both in STEM. My friend however enjoys Chinese literature and could pull it up on command. Even then, she had to think about it.
It's just soo much labour. That's why only good Chinese writers have really poetic names. That's why parents before naming their kids literally browse poetry books and dictionaries. It's a really hard process and it's really not feasible to ask other people unless you're really good friends with them and it's a one time thing.
So at the end of the day, having a poetic name in Chinese doesn't just require literacy and comprehension, it requires a certain level of dedicated training in historical literature.
