WangXian Kisses! 💖

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 3

Part 3 of 6, pages 133 - 190

More under the cut.

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Volume 4

I finally finished Volume 4! It was great. I love Chang Geng and Gu Yun. And poor Shen Yi and awesome Chen QingXu.

I have a a bunch of little Interesting Cultural Tidbits; maybe two alternative translations; and two places where retaining the webnovel's paragraph breaks would have been very helpful. Here we go:

Yah, so -- they were not planning on visiting friends over the next few days while they were busy infiltrating the rebels; rather, they had, over the last few days, made some good friends and built relations strong enough to make "come over for dinner" seem like a reasonable next step.

No, Gu Yun is not about to eat an American Hamburger; rather, he says that he wants "车大的烧饼把拉车的活驴夹成火烧" which is, roughly, a northern Chinese flatbread sandwich (meat layered between two pieces of flatbread). Word-by-word, this "donkey burger the size of a horse cart is

车大的烧饼flatbread as big as a horse cart

把拉车的活驴 take the live donkey pulling the cart

夹成火烧 and put it in between, to make it into a hot sandwich.

Donkey burger!

Here, Fake Prince Yan is calling his companion, the Fake Xu Ling, "少东家 Young Master" because that's a polite way to refer to your boss's son (or any big boss's son?) when you are talking to him. In normal English, this would read like "Even you have gotten embroiled in this mess."

I think the grammatical tense on this might be off. He hasn't had his birthday yet, so I think it might read more smoothly as "...noodles on his birthday, and he would also have to publicly confess his errors in governance that day." ... 过个生日连碗面都没人给下，还要当着天下痛陈自己执政过错。

Three-headed and six-armed god of war! It's a Nezha reference. You all know Nezha, right? Nezha 哪吒 is my favorite god <3

“Fish in muddy waters" is 浑水摸鱼, which means "to take advantage of a crisis for personal gain" (www.mdbg.net)

This is one my favorite idioms: 瓜田李下， which is short for 瓜田不纳履，李下不整冠, which means "don't fix your shoes in a melon field; and don't adjust your hat/hair-crown in a plum orchard," which we can summarize as "Don't act suspicious."

top: 睁眼说瞎话 eyes open, speak blind words. Blatantly lie. It sounds really cool in Chinese.

bottom: “千金之子，坐不垂堂” I had to look this up. It's a saying from the Han Dynasty. The situation is that roof tiles would sometimes fall and hit anyone sitting below, so they discouraged rich kids from sitting under the eaves where the tiles could fall.

"... and behave yourself!" is a very good translation for the meaning of this sentence.

But it's so much cooler in Chinese: 不准作妖！ which means "don't be a 妖," and 妖 means (mbdg.net again) "goblin / witch / devil / bewitching / enchanting / monster / phantom / demon"

Here's another place where the translation is perfectly good, but 下毒手 is so much cooler. By itself,

毒 = poison, 手 = hand,

下毒手 = to attack murderously / to strike treacherously

You all know the idiom 螳螂捕蝉，黄雀在后, yah? Here comes mdbg.net again: "the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind (idiom, from Daoist classic Zhuangzi 莊子｜庄子); to pursue a narrow gain while neglecting a greater danger."

把腰扭到胯上。 "...undulating his hips until they were level with this waist..." which I guess means that he was walking with a prominent sway to his hips?

This is the perfect translation for this idiom. The idiom, in Chinese, is 一朝被蛇咬，十年怕井绳 = (modified mdbg.net)  once bitten by a snake, scared for ten years at the sight of the rope used for drawing water out of the well.

大人有大人的道，小人有小人的路。

大人 here is (mdbg.net) "title of respect toward superiors"

小人， in contrast to 大人, means （mdbg.net) "person of low social status (old) / I, me (used to refer humbly to oneself) / nasty person / vile character"

I think it makes a little more sense if it reads "Lords and ministers have their bright open boulevards; small petty people have their own paths."

Never had Fang Qin 碰过这么硬的钉子 since the day he'd left his mother's womb.

碰钉子 literally means "hit nail"; figuratively, it means (mdbg.net) "to meet with a rebuff."

这么硬的钉子 = such a hard nail.

So 碰过这么硬的钉子 gives the image of Fang Qin running into a fence or something with a long, hard nail sticking out of it. :)

Pg 241. 侧耳过去听 just means "turned/leaned his ear (head) closer to listen (better)". No one was putting their ear on Gu Yun's lips here.

发作 means "to lose one's temper". I feel like "bite his head off" is a bit extreme for anyone to except of Prince Yan -- Prince Yan is too refined to bite anyone's head off.

In English, I feel like "what's the matter with you" is very confrontational and accusatory.

The Chinese here is 你到底怎么回事？, which I feel translates better as "What is actually going on with you?" or, more awkwardly, "What is the full situation of what is going on with you?"

This is so cute: "little bastard" is 兔崽子 which literally "bunny-rabbit child" and figuratively (mdbg.net) "brat / bastard". So...

Gu Yun: Which baby bunny was standing guard and ratted me out!?

Chang Geng: I am that baby bunny.

The "pawn" here is a not pejorative. 马前卒 is "lackey / errand boy / lit. runner before a carriage" (mdbg.net).

In the online version I read, there is a paragraph break and a time frame here that really helps with understanding what's going on.

"....civil official who could barely ride a horse.

One year ago, survivors of the navy...."

"In less than a month..." (just showing that they have been there for a few weeks.)

"Silver tongue" in Chinese is 见人说人话、见鬼说鬼话的三寸不烂之舌。

见人说人话、See people, speak people language.

见鬼说鬼话 的 See monsters, speak monster language.

三寸不烂之舌。 three inches not <soft / rotten /worn out> tongue.

Cool way to say "silver tongue," yah?

I think the grammatical tense should be brought forward. The ship is falling apart right now, in book-time.

Another paragraph break that I feel should have been retained to show that we are moving from outside the temple, where we can see the flames, to inside the temple, where Chen QingXu is suffering from the smoke.

__________________________

And that's it! Volume 4. I love you, Chang Geng. You have my heart, Gu Yun!

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 4

Here is Part 4 of my annotations of MDZS Volume 2, pages 199 - 279.

(Silly as it may seem to you, I drink alcohol so rarely that "drinks" to me means "water / tea / soda". Conveniently, Chinese has a word for "alcohol" specifically.)

杀破狼 Stars of Chaos:

This book has more plot than I have Chinese reading comprehension, but I think I see it now.

Chapter 52 is where Chang Geng asserts his superior intellect and problem-solving skills (because his vision isn’t clouded by pesky things like emotions for people who aren’t Gu Yun); and Chapter 53 is where he/Priest lays out Chang Geng’s evil master plan to bring peace and prosperity to the nation so that maybe he can convince Gu Yun to take a vacation.

No details or anything; just “this is the problem and that is what must be done.”

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 :

My new favorite passage describing a character is from ch 337 of 2Ha, describing Jiang Xi:

他的打扮永远让人觉得他在说：“我很有钱，欢迎来抢”，但是没有人抢得了他。

His style of dressing always led people to feel he was saying, “I am very rich. You are welcome to rob me,” but no was ever able to rob him.

他那张俊脸上好像也写着：“想睡我吗，我知道你想”，但没有人能睡得了他。

That handsome face of his also seemed to announce “You want to sleep with me. I know you want to,” but no one was ever able to sleep with him.

(Translations are mine. You can tell because they are very bad and don’t convey just how clever this passage is. Translating is hard!)

I'm linking some of MoonIvy's reddit posts, in case you'd like to read about their language learning journey. They are awesome! They're one of the authors of the Heavenly Path Reading Guide! That guide is super helpful, and I followed a lot of it's advice (and Heavenly Path's recommendations) once I was starting to read more. Heavenly Path also has a ton of recommendations of things you can read that are different difficulty levels, so I suggest browsing their suggestions if you have no idea what to read.

Also, if you use Readibu app, the app can give you a rough estimate of the HSK level of the chapter you're reading (you'll just open the chapter you're reading, click the book icon in lower middle of screen, then click Stats. You'll see a Comprehension % by reader's HSK level). For beginners, I suggest you try to find novels that say 90% or more over the HSK 4 level, or at least 80% and up if you can't find anything easy at first. Once you've moved from graded readers to simpler kids novels like 秃秃大王, novels with a 90%+ comprehension at HSK 4 level above will be the next easiest for you to read. (Later on: if you're looking to extensively read and barely look words up, look for 95-98% comprehension at the HSK level you think you're roughly at). For example, I'm reading 盗墓笔记 and it's 93% comprehensible for HSK 5 level, 98% comprehensible at HSK 6 level, and my vocabulary range is between HSK 5-6 roughly so it makes sense I can read dmbj extensively if I want (without word lookups and still understand it), but still have several unknown words I could look up if desired.

From intermediate to native webnovels in 18 months (Some wonderful mentions of what MoonIvy read. I also read 秃秃大王, 大林和小林, and 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 and felt they were really good novels to read after graded readers but before novels like 盗墓笔记 and 撒野).

21 months of reading native books, and breaking into native platforms

Learn Mandarin Chinese to read danmei — it will be challenging but worth it

I can read novels without a dictionary after 3 years of reading danmei (Chinese boy love)

I reached 3,000 unique character knowledge by reading children's books and danmei (Chinese boy love) 

Some little notes of my own experience, I guess in relating to the journey others took. So: for me, I read stuff WAY harder than graded readers, when I initially tried to read webnovels. It was hard, and it probably made me feel more exhausted than I needed to feel. But it was motivating. So if you really enjoy X difficult novel, you can try to read it whenever, and keep reading it as long as you feel the desire to.

There was one person who shared their reading experience on the chineselanguage subreddit (I'm trying to find the post again) who read 撒野 after like 3 months of initial study. That's way faster than I would've tried! That's a huge spike in difficulty from knowing nothing to reading a novel with thousands of unique words in a few months! But some people just will find that they enjoy doing that, and it works for them, so don't be afraid to just TRY doing what you want to do and see how it goes. It might go awesome. And if it's so hard it's demotivating, you can always go look for something easier for a while.

I tried to read 镇魂 from pretty much my first month, and never got farther than a couple paragraphs until over a year of study. I'd take a glance at it once in a while, and see if it was easier to read, until one day it was 'doable' to actually try reading (while looking unknown words up). I tried reading 默读 from like month 5 onward, usually using a parallel mtl text and only picking up a few words, it was not doable to read until maybe 1.5-2 years into learning. I was already reading the mtl of 默读 because the english translation only had like 20 chapters back then, so I just would try to read the chinese original in small sentence pieces at times. Around 8-10 months I started trying to read 天涯客, and it kind of was doable in Pleco app's Reader as long as I looked up a lot of words. It used to take me 1.5-2 hours to get through a chapter, then over the next 6 months things got better and it'd take 1 hour then 40 minutes then finally 20-30 minutes per chapter. At the same time as reading 天涯客, I also read 小王子 around month 12 extensively (looking no words up) because I had the print book and wanted to practice reading extensively, I read 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 read in Pleco while looking up words (which was easier for me to read than 天涯客 and helped me build up reading stamina and basic vocabulary a bit), and I read a pingxie fanfic called 寒舍 by 夏灬安兰. I read around 60 chapters of that fanfic, and 30 chapters of 天涯客, over those 6 months. 寒舍 was harder to read than 笑猫日记, but easier than 天涯客, so I would switch between all 3 stories depending on how hard/easy I wanted my reading to be. Eventually 笑猫日记 felt readable without word lookups, so I used 寒舍 as my 'easier' read and 天涯客 (and added 镇魂) as my harder reads. Then 寒舍 became readable without word lookups if I wanted (still had unknown words but they no longer affected my ability to follow the plot and most important details), so 镇魂 became my harder novel to read.

And that's pretty much the strategy I continued to use: I would bounce between a 'easier' novel I could read extensively, a medium difficulty novel I could just look keywords up with (if I didn't feel like looking up a ton of words) to understand, and a 'harder' novel I had to look up words in order to read. Maybe 2 years in (I don't quite remember now), I picked some 'easier' novels from Heavenly Path's recommendations with only 1000-2000 unique words, and read some of them to fill in gaps in my basic vocabulary (so looking up unknown words) and practice extensive reading with some of them. I think that was a really helpful decision, and improved my reading comprehension and stamina a LOT. If I could go back, I would've read a lot more 'easier' 1000-2000 unique word novels before trying to push right into the novels I did. But then, on the other hand? I think pushing right into 'difficult' novels helped me learn vocabulary to read priest's writing in particular, much faster, which was rough going at the start but now pays off because I find that author's stories have more words/phrases/sentence structures I'm comfortable with, and also a decent murder mystery/investigative vocabulary base which is helpful since it's a genre I like reading. Without all the 镇魂 reading I did in the past, I think 破云 would be almost incomprehensible to me. But instead, since I did read those investigative words a lot early on, novels like 默读 and SCI are now 'medium' feeling novels to me, and 破云 is harder but readable if I look words up.

Help I can’t get over this show and this DAZZLING SMILE ™ 😢✨💗

杀破狼： I’m up to chapter 98 on my Stars of Chaos Reread! And I must proclaim,

Poor Chang Geng! He’s a full-blooded healthy young man (except for the curse) (and the stab wounds) (but he’s fine, really!) and all he wants is a little sugar from his sweetie! But mean mean Gu Yun keeps (nervously) poking him full of acupuncture needles (doctor’s orders, sadly) or sending him away unkissed (ok, so Chang Geng almost got them killed a couple times there) or making him put his hands away and Sleep! (Because he’s bleeding from multiple wounds. Whoops.)

The cruelty!!

On the flip side, Poor Gu Yun! Everyone thinks Gu Yun is a lecher and a libertine, but he’s the one who has to keep a straight face when Chang Geng sneaks in a dirty suggestion or licks him in public (ok, it was at night and it was raining and chaotic, but, still). And every time he’s left alone with little (not so little) Chang Geng, he gets attacked (romantically) and Chang Geng tries to (amorously) eat him!

Sigh 🥰

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼 Vol 1, Notes 3

By Priest. Notes on the 7 Seas English translation.

Pages 148 - 202

As they mention in the Appendix, Priest doesn’t use naming conventions in conventional ways. She also never introduces characters’ courtesy names - she just uses them and assumes that you’ll figure out who it belongs to eventually and will totally remember it three / thirteen chapters later.

More under the cut

Chinese uses （在我）身上 a lot to mean “at me” “to me” “on me.”

On being a laughingstock of a godfather, here are those 12 words, 2 commas: “头回给人当义父，当不好，见笑。”

As for the note at the top of this page: 他本想要照顾一辈子的小义父化成泡影. While the text reads “the godfather (that he had wanted to take care of for his entire life) became the shadow of foam,” the meaning is closer to “his idea of his godfather (the man he loved deeply and wanted to take care of the rest of his life), that idea dissolved away as surely as the shadow of foam dissolves into nothingness.”

The fun part of this (translation) is that in Chinese, this entire paragraph is all just one sentence. 5 commas, one em dash. You’d think it would be more difficult to understand with so little punctuation, but it actually works very well and very clearly - descriptions that require a whole separate sentence in English are just modifiers in Chinese; and parts of speech that have to be specified in English are very clearly implied in Chinese, with no ambiguity at all.

Gu Yun never treated any of the princes badly. He was just a difficult child himself.

It’s clear in the Chinese that Chang Geng lost his temper because the Celestial Wolf Prince was speaking irreverently of / to Gu Yun, and no one is allowed to be rude to Gu Yun! (Except maybe Shen Yi, but that’s a different, more familial, type of irreverence.)

Yes. Hanlin Academy. Remember this phrase - you’ll see it, like, twice more. Book-smart kids who tested into imperial government.

They like to use the word “puppet,” whereas anime-fans might be more used to “robots” or “mecha.” Same same.

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist