Everything Will Return to Nothing

山河令/Word of Honor Drabble Collection

By Haoppootamus Word Count: 1010 (including chapter titles) Rating: Teen And Up Characters: Zhou Zishu, Qin Jiuxiao,Bi Changfeng Content warning: Death, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Canon Typical Violence, ep 24 backstory spoiler, Blood, Canonical Dead Characters, Scars

Thank you @aowyn for the beta!

~~~

Ten

Time flows perpetually. It flowed over the lives of those from Siji Shanzhuang. It flowed across the dreams and aspirations of Zishu’s childhood. Time finds the path of least resistance and sweeps away love, hope, joy, and all good things. 

Which Acupoints?!?! Or an investigation of Nipples and Nails

So tonight I was working on a Zhou Zishu centric drabble and my progress was halted by a very important issue: which acupoints are his nails in? Which meridians do they block?! Are they actually on acupoints or just arbitrary in Word of Honor? 

I asked some friends if they knew, checked the novel for mentions of specific acupoints, gave up, and spent an hour and a half trying to figure it out. For the last 45 minutes of my efforts, @aowyn​​ joined me on this quest. 

What I know: acupoints are defined by relative position on the body. In chinese they’re called xué 穴 which means cave/cavity. Many acupoints are between bones or in points that can be thought of as dips in the body. My mother liked pinching my 虎口穴  (Hǔkǒu xué) as a kid. It’s the center of the muscle between your thumb and the rest of your hand. And let me tell you, if you hit it just right it HURTS. I’ve seen a diagram where you put your hand over someone’s knee and where your thumb naturally lands is supposedly an acupoint. The temple (太阳穴, tàiyángxué)  is a squishy spot on your head -- another acupoint. 

THERE ARE ACUPOINTS ALL OVER and all of them are on some sort of meridians. There are twelve principal meridians and two centerline ones. Many are mapped to internal organs. 

Embarking on this I assumed that the nails were placed symmetrically and the three different nails on each side of ZZS would be (ideally) on meridians affecting different organs. Looking at snips from ep 32, this is confirmed: 

Gu Meng Translation

孤梦 - 张哲瀚 [1]

Lonely Dream - Zhang Zhehan

昨夜东风把心吹落到空城

Last night the east wind carried my heart to a deserted city

落入凡尘细无声

Falling silently into the mortal world

几轮指纹刻下年轮的虔诚 [2]

Over how many cycles have fingertips carved the sincerity of passing years？

用情太深不可争

Indisputable, feelings too deep

放不下所有的回忆都像 一场孤梦

All the memories I cannot let go are like a lonely dream

江湖几番沉沦枉为余生 [3]

The many deaths in this world leave this life in vain

是否辜负几人才会让梦 起了风 [4]

Will only disappointing people let this dream scatter?

恍然之间都成见证

Suddenly everything becomes evident

昨日细雨把心困住不由衷 [5]

Last night the drizzling rain trapped my heart with insincerity

空有坚韧亦无用

Futilely tenacious and pointless

几世经纶书写时间的宽容 [6]

Across how many lifetimes have silk threads documented the lenience of time?

用情太真不可碰

Untouchable, feelings too true

放不下所有的回忆都像 一场孤梦

All the memories I cannot let go are like a lonely dream

江湖几番沉沦枉为余生

The many deaths in this world leave this life in vain

是否辜负几人才会让梦 起了风

Will only disappointing people let this dream scatter?

恍然之间都成见证

Suddenly everything becomes evident

离不开所有的回忆都像 一场孤梦

All the memories I cannot leave are like a lonely dream

命运几番纠缠风起云涌

The many snags of fate surges in gathering storms

莫非看透红尘才会让梦 起了风

Must one see through humanity before this dream can be scattered?

霎那之间人去楼空 [7]

In an instant everything is deserted

霎那之间人去楼空

In an instant everything is deserted 

TGCF End Theme Translation

不散 (《天官赐福》动画片尾曲)  Bú sàn Not Scattering ("Tian Guan Ci Fu" Dong Hua End Theme)[1] 飞绫绕风 如梦 Fēi líng rào fēng Rú mèng Flying silk coils in the wind, like a dream 本无聚散 Běn wú jù sàn Originally, there was no gathering and scattering 殷红漫天 似真似幻 Yān hóng màn tiān Shì zhēn shì huàn Dark red filled the sky; seemingly real, seemingly an illusion  银蝶 翩然 濯花瓣 Yín dié Piān rán Zhuó huā bàn Silver butterflies, flitting, sprinkling over petals[2] 谁言无缺 日幽月暗 Shéi yán wú quē Rì yōu yuè àn Who speaks of being whole; the sun hidden, the moon dim[3] 偏爱在绝处参无间的恨与贪 Piān ài zài jué chù cān wú jiàn de hèn yǔ tān Biased love during desperation partakes in the hatred and grief of hell[4] 烈火隐去 野草复燃 Liè huǒ yǐn qù Yě cǎo fù rán The raging flames fade, the wild grass burns again 此消 彼长 再循环 Cǐ xiāo Bǐ zhǎng Zài xún huán This vanishes, that grows, cycling over again 大千世界 卷轴璀璨 Dà qiān shì jiè Juàn zhóu cuǐ càn In the great wide world, Upon splendid scrolls 亦邪亦正处 听谁叹 Yì xié yì zhèng chù Tīng shéi tàn In a place of evil, In a place of righteousness; who do we hear lament? 何来聚散 又何来忘返 Hé lái jù sàn yòu hé lái wàng fǎn Whence came gathering and scattering, and whence came lingering 何来魔障 又何来虚幻 Hé lái mó zhàng Yòu hé lái xūhuàn Whence came demonic influence, and whence came illusions 且看拂尘之下 桃源满山 Qiě kàn fú chén zhī xià Táo yuán mǎn shān Yet look below the horsetail whisk, paradise everywhere[5] 飘然而去 羽化成仙 Piāo rán ér qù Yǔ huà chéng xiān Floating away, levitating into immortality 飞绫绕风 如梦 Fēi líng rào fēng rú mèng Flying silk coils in the wind, like a dream 本无聚散 Běn wú jù sàn There was originally no gathering and parting 啊 啊;  啊 啊 Ah ah Ah ah 烈火隐去 野草复燃 Liè huǒ yǐn qù Yě cǎo fù rán The raging flames fade, the wild grass burns again 此消 彼长 再循环 Cǐ xiāo Bǐ zhǎng Zài xún huán This vanishes, that grows, cycling over again 大千世界 卷轴璀璨 Dà qiān shì jiè Juàn zhóu cuǐ càn In the great wide world, Upon splendid scrolls 亦邪亦正处 听谁叹 Yì xié yì zhèng chù Tīng shéi tàn In a place of evil, In a place of righteousness; who do we hear lament? 何来聚散 又何来忘返 Hé lái jù sàn yòu hé lái wàng fǎn Whence came gathering and scattering, and whence came lingering 何来魔障 又何来虚幻 Hé lái mó zhàng Yòu hé lái xūhuàn Whence came demonic influence, and whence came illusions 且看拂尘之下 桃源满山 Qiě kàn fú chén zhī xià Táo yuán mǎn shān Yet look below the horsetail whisk, paradise everywhere 飘然而去 羽化成仙 Piāo rán ér qù Yǔ huà chéng xiān Floating away, levitating into immortality 何来离散 又何来悲欢 Hé lái lí sàn Yòu hé lái bēi huān Whence came separation, and whence came happiness and sorrow 何来痴缠 又何来臆断 Hé lái chī chán Yòu hé lái yì duàn Whence came irrational entanglement, and whence came subjective judgements 纵是天命使然 无欲则善 Zòng shì tiān mìng shǐ rán Wú yù zé shàn Despite being dictated by fate, kindness stems from the lack of desires. 道生万物不散 Dào shēng wàn wù bú sàn All things arose from Dao and they do not scatter[6] 花树飘曳 云端 Huā shù piāo yè Yún duān Flower and trees float in the wind, reaching the clouds 本无消散  Běn wú xiāo sàn Originally there was no dispersion[7]

I had this realization today thanks to @needtherapy

I made Lotus Root and Pork Rib soup last night.

Boil water, blanch pork ribs, rinse off gunk and then get fresh water. Add in ginger (required) and (optionally) goji berries and a cup of chicken broth. Simmer for 80ish minutes. Peel and chop lotus root. Add to soup after 80 min. cook for another 30. Salt, green onions, and pepper to taste. If you find the meat bland (which I do), have a little dipping bowl of soy sauce for the meat.

@needtherapy asked what it tastes like... So I've copied my message to her:

The lotus makes it sweet and the pork is fairly umami especially if you add the right amount of salt. The pork fat adds a bit of stickiness to it. The ginger cuts away the bad pork smells so you need it but it's not as noticable. The goji adds a hint of sweet and the green onions add color and allium flavors.

Overall it's a light soup. I'd eat it year round but summer makes good lotus root hard to find... T.T I'm so glad it's no longer summer.

Pseudo Period Accurate Time Terms for Ancient China

One of my pet peeves for the CQL Netflix translations is their poor consistency with how they translate Shichen. I’ve seen it where half a shichen is one hour and half a shichen is half an hour. It gets CONFUSING for people! 

So I’m writing this as for my sanity. And just share some basic stuff I got either off Baidu or from reading too much Wuxia as a kid.

时辰 (shíchén) is two hours!! Each shichen has the same name as the single character chinese zodiac animals (This is known as dì|zhī,  地支or earthly branches): 

According to Baidu, pre-Tang, 子 is from 0000 to 0200 and so forth. 

And then starting sometime during Tang, 子 was from 2300 to 0100.  丑 from 0100 to 0300 and so on and so forth. 

I usually go with the 2300-0100 version.  But it doesn’t really matter, imo. 

Another term you’ll potentially come across is 更 (gēng). It is a way to record time specifically used at night.  The most common one you hear is san geng or third geng which is associated with midnight. 

Another thing I kept on wondering is how long is one stick of incense worth of time? It can’t be that long because i’ve burnt incense before! And it’s not that long! But it turns out, after much googling, it’s not a specific period of time. Some authors use it to describe 5 minutes and some for 30 minutes and everything in between. Alas. So you can choose what you want when writing fic but stay consistent! :) 

When people talk about birthdays in Wuxia, they will ask for the 8 characters of your birth (生辰八字). Year, Month, Day, Time are each represented by two characters. In addition to the dìzhī cycle, there is the heavenly roots (tiān|gān, 天干) cycle. In terms of zodiac years, tiāngān determines your element.These two cycles rotate to make 60 years which is called a 甲子 (Jiǎzǐ, jia is the first tiāngān and zi is the first  dìzhī). Months, days, and time are also defined by these characters -- all associated with elements, but I don’t actually know the calculations. 

There are 12 months in a lunar calendar year. Each month is either 29 or 30 days. The full moon falls on the 15th day +/- 1 day. Due to trying to keep the seasons from shifting, there are leap months. This is why the Lunar New Year is sometimes in Feb, moves slowly back into mid Jan, and then jumps to mid Feb again. They occur about 7 times every 19 years. 

One neat thing is farmers still need to know where on a solar calendar seasons land for crops. There are 24 节气 for that! Some holidays (e.g winter solstice and QingMingJie) are assigned by these. 

There are actually wikipedia articles about these topics that I know very little about! 

Since tumblr hates links, you can find wiki articles on: Chinese calendar, Four Pillars of Destiny (生辰八字), Solar term (节气 )

So read up and have fun! :) I am by no means knowledgeable but I figured directing people in the right direction will be helpful. 

Lord Light Bearer? Shouldn’t it be Lord Vinegar Bearer?

“含光君?” 该是”含醋君”吧!

LWJ is always jealous and it is a fact. 

[Note: to eat vinegar (吃醋) means to be jealous in Chinese. and LWJ is probably drinking a vinegar reduction made of aged vinegar... :/]

Does anyone wonder how Mianmian found out about Jin Zixuan's death? And Wei Wuxian's death? (Going on cql storyline here)

Like can you imagine leaving the sect and missing your best friend? And hearing about his wedding and baby and being so happy for him? And then planning on going and saying hi because you can't wait to be that obnoxiois doting aunt? I bet, like WWX, Mianmian got Jin Ling a gift too.

And then getting to Carp Tower to hear JZXuan and Jiang Yanli both died? JZXuan at the hands of the Yiling Patriarch who you KNOW isn't a bad person!! So what the absolute h*ll happened?! Because you know WWX and he wouldn't. You've seen him punch JZXuan over soup and Jiang Yanli's happiness. He would never kill her husband and the father of her child. And you hear jyl died because of wwx. And jc killed wwx.

Can you imagine how thunderstruck that news would be for someone who went away from the cultivation world for a couple of years?!

Can you imagine how lost Mianmian must have felt? How heartbroken and confused?

Do you think she just sat down in the middle of Carp Tower and cried for an entire shichen? Because I do.

And then she left. She was 100% done. And never looked back.

Urgh. Mianmian is giving me all the feels tonight apparently.

Lyrics from Zombie (English Version) by Day6

It’s such a fun song! give it a listen if you have a chance. 

@cqlwuji posted awhile ago that Afraid by Day6 is a YLLZ WWX song. So ended up listening to that and a few other Day6 songs. Zombie was the one that spoke to me. So thanks @cqlwuji for the source of inspiration!

Edit: it was too much scrolling so i made most of them smaller. This is less painful to look at. hahaha. 

Ep 44: Lan Jingyi somewhere between minute 18:00 and 21:30

Lately, I keep on thinking about how WWX and LWJ are soulmates and how similar they are in their sense of morality. I realized that Lan and Jiang sects have the same motto executed with vastly different aesthetics. WWX and LWJ embody their sects mottos in spirit and in style and the core similarities is what makes them work so well together.  

明知不可为而为之. Hunxi-guilai and drwcn explain it really well here. It's a long motto, kinda convoluted in both diction and meaning. From a family rooted in the messy love, hatred, and entanglement of cultivator jianghu (wuxia term for the wuxia world where everyone is fighting), this motto distills all those complicated jianghu feelings into a moral compass. You have to GET it or you'll be lost. It feels like something wwx would say as he saunters around waving Suibian or Chenqing. It actually is wwx as a person - deeply moral but seemingly unrestrained. 

雅正, on the other hand, is super succinct. You can probably translate the gusu lan motto as elegant and righteous. 雅, simply means elegant. 正 means straight, correct, upright. It is a character that has all right angles and looks as rigid as lwj sitting in a lecture all. 正 is also used in modern Chinese as part of the word for square (正方形) vs rectangle (长方形) [square is the proper square shape while a rectangle is an elongated square shape]. So in two characters the gusu lan motto gives us a great sense of who they are as people: elegant squares. That's about how many characters lwj likes to say in one go when we first meet him anyway! 

Yet both mottos point towards goodness and righteousness. Yunmeng expects their people to stand out and do what must be done. Gusu expect their people to maintain elegance while upholding values. As the cultivation world yields to jgs and jgy, both lwj and wwx are guided by their sect motto to hold to righteousness, kindness, and morality. Lwj does it elegantly and unwavering. Wwx does it via violent upheavals that he knows might get him killed. No wonder they see their shared spirit and end up falling deeply for each other. 

shuang hua: translation, etymoloygy, and thoughts

I had a revelation today while forcing my husband to watch the untamed with me. In the netflix translation, they describe Shuanghua (霜华), XXC’s sword as having frost flowers. wtf are frost flowers? (霜花)

So.. frost flowers are how the chinese describe the fractal patterns in frost. snowflakes are snow flowers. an egg beaten and slowly drizzled into boiling water forming egg drop soup is egg flowers. the use of the word flower is pretty lax. Given the context, I would translate the description as fractals. Granted, it’s anachronistic, but i’d like to argue for accuracy of diction over historic context. 

Anyway, what’s so fun about the name of the XXC’s sword? Last november, I went on an impromptu trip to China. We ended up visiting Hua Shan（华山). Per the tour guide, the Hua in Hua Shan was a reference to the way it looks like a flower. At some point in time, the two characters 华 and 花 diverged. One ended up being flower, and the other indicating splendor. Interestingly enough,  华 is also the character the Chinese associate with China in some sense, likely named after the mountain (the Chinese diaspora is known as  华侨; people’s republic of china is 中华民族共和国). (For those who watch Eternal Love/Three lives, three worlds, ten miles peach blossom, in one of the BTS videos on youtube, i think Mark Chao (who went to hs and college in canada i think) translates 夜华as night flower while off screen.  

Based on that translation, 霜华 can either be translated as the fractal/flowerly patterns of frost or the splendor of frost. 

Either way, it’s rather poetic, don’t you think?

Side note: for anyone who is interested Wuxia,  华山 is THE place to have a kungfu showdown. It’s the place where people die every year from falling off the sides of the mountain.  华山论剑　(duel on huashan) is as common a trope as 比武招亲 (finding a spouse vial martial competition) in wuxia... but i can go into that another time.  that’s actually one of the reasons i dragged my poor husband to  华山. i was a day trip away from, what was for me, wuxia mecca. i had to go!!!