MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 6

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Last song - #357 of a 413- song Zhou Shen playlist. I’m working my way through ALL of Zhou Shen’s songs!

One of my favorite recent discoveries (I am truly grateful to all those Youtubers who put these long playlists together) is when some show had some people in costume trying to sing 芒种Mang Zhong and doing a terrible job of it -- like, it sounded like me trying to sing, and my kids won’t even let me sing them lullabies --, and then Zhou Shen struts in with an entourage, singing with confidence, power, perfect pitch, and crazy charisma.  It’s worth it to hear the bad singing in the beginning just to more fully experience and understand just how different and special Zhou Shen’s singing is.   

And then he sang a little bit of 左手指月(Left Hand Pointing at the Moon).  Wow. 

Last movie - The last movie I watched that was new to me was 刻在你心底的名字 Your Name Engraved Herein, on Netflix.  It was crazy good. It was so good that I spent the next week obsessing over it and not feeling the slightest bit tired (my new measure for how strongly something affects me: if it can replace sleep, it’s Good).  Some reviews mention that the movie is sad, but I watched through to the last second and actually found it quite positive.  It ends with happiness and hope.  That’s enough for me to look forward to a(n emotionally wrenching but ultimately sweet) re-watch.  

The last movie that I actually watched was 闪光少女Our Shining Days (no longer on Netflix, but still free on Youtube!).  It’s the perfect antidote to all emotionally wrenching media, while still being beautiful and subtle and, actually, kinda deep and meaningful, especially for those of us who really care about traditional Chinese arts. And it’s hilarious and the music is Awesome.

Currently reading - 镇魂 Guardian by Priest.  I’m only on Chapter 4, but I’m totally enamored.  I am still getting used to the new vocabulary and sentence structures of Priest (new to me) vs 墨香铜臭Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (魔道祖师 x2!), though, so it’s slow going right now.  

Currently watching - ...still on Street Dance of China Season 3.  Someday I’ll finish Episode 9.  I really like it, honestly!  I just really like to give it my full attention, read all the cute little pop-up comments, and, well, I haven’t figured out yet just when I’m (stealing my kids’ ipad and) doing that.

Currently craving - Anything Asian.  Please!

Tagging: @herr-zhou, @coffintownkids, @bimingjue 

18 notes

Canary’s Pinboard

I follow & comment from @canary3d​ because argh sideblog grumble

I aim to make life’s load a little lighter.     

Master Post - Restless Rewatch - The Untamed

Master Post - Restless Writing Prompts

Master Post - Parallels - The Untamed

Master Post - Shen Wei Serving Lewks (Guardian)

Master Post - Lost Tomb Lewks

Master Post - Acceptability Review Meetings

Restless Review (not enough for a masterpost yet

Master Post - Everything Else

About Me 

Non-exhaustive recs

Other places to find me: I’m canary3d on ao3, deviantart, artstation, daz3d and renderosity & I’m marydell on twitter, flickr, livejournal, and dreamwidth. 

I’m reading 病案本 Bing An Ben (Case File Compendium)!

As of ch 30 (of 254), it’s reading as a super slow burn with all the usual romantic tropes, except that the two protagonists hate each other.

They work together and successfully save the day! But they hate each other.

There is only 1 bed! But they still hate each other.

Trapped on a rainy night in a cave on a romantic island with nothing but a book of love confessions and condoms! But … they hate each other.

One gets sick and the other nurses him back to health! Wait… they still hate each other?

The other gets sick and forcibly kisses the one in his delirium! … Why do they Still hate each other?

Anyway, I am enjoying it. They’ll start to like each other eventually, I’m sure.

As I’m preparing my copy of MDZS to lend out, I’m re-reading about how crazy and difficult it is to translate XianXia.

Of course, I can’t share any of these posts with my uninitiated friends, since even the Name meta contains a spoiler. Ugh!

At least I’m enjoying it. And can maybe copy-paste abridged non-spoiler versions of some of these posts :)

松风水月 masterpost

Hi I’m jing (she/they, 海外华人) 🍆 You can find my mdzs/cql meta and translation posts on this blog :) Please note that I do not allow my meta and translations to be translated, reposted, edited, reproduced (including printing, and/or the distributing of electronic and physical copies), or used commercially.

General meta related to terms used in mdzs/cql

The real meaning of 走火入魔 / “qi deviation”

The real meaning of 青山不改 绿水长流 后会有期 (cql only)

The differences between gongzi 公子 and shaoye 少爷

The differences between dizi 弟子 and mensheng 门生

The C-fandom’s nicknames for mdzs characters (novel only)

Plot meta

CQL subs critique

On the names of Lan Wangji’s bunnies (novel only)

What Jiang Fengmian might have done differently

The ideal wife, according to Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian (cql only)

The moment Nie Mingjue acted like a true Chinese parent in canon (novel only)

The 36 Stratagems in MDZS

Character meta

Jiang Cheng: Family, responsibility, and love

Lan Sizhui: What Lan Sizhui’s birth and courtesy names mean

Lan Xichen: What Shuoyue and Liebing mean

Lan Xichen: Fairness, justice, and love

3zun: Oath of fraternity

Analysis of speech patterns in mdzs from character to character

Translation notes

What really happened in the love confession scene in the Guanyin temple (novel only)

Wei Wuxian’s heart and temperament 心性

What Nie Huaisang was saying about Lan Wangji in the flower petal scene (cql only)

Lan Wangji never said “you are an awful person” to Wei Wuxian (novel only)

Misc

The meaning of “jianghu” 江湖

Using Chinese names

A short note on translation

Right panel style 右衽 and left panel style 左衽 in hanfu

Other links

🐥 Meta originally posted on Twitter 🎨 Main art tumblr ☕️ Ko-fi

Here is Part 5 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, pages 264 - 341.

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

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

😁

Asking for directions

Still trying to figure out why I like this look so much…

Would you be willing to talk about how standards of masculinity and femininity in Asia differ from those in Europe/North America? I know, it's a ridiculously broad question but I think you mentioned it in passing previously and I would be really interested in your answer especially in the context of the music industry and idols. I (European) sometimes see male Asian idols as quite feminine (in appearance, maybe?) even if they publicly talk about typically masculine hobbies of theirs.

Hi Anon,

Sorry that it took me over a month to get to this question, but the sheer volume of research that is necessary to actually answer this is significant, as there is an enormous body of work in gender studies. There are academics who have staked their entire careers in this field of research, much of which isn’t actually transnational, being that regional gender studies alone is already an incredibly enormous field.

As such, in no way can I say that I’ve been able to delve into even 1% of all the research that is out there to properly address this question. While I can talk about gender issues in the United States, and gender issues that deal with Asian American identity, I am not an expert in transnational gender studies between Asia and Europe. That being said, I’ll do my best to answer what I can. 

When we consider the concept of “masculinity” and “femininity,” we must first begin with the fundamental understanding that gender is both a construct and a performance. The myth of gender essentialism and of gender as a binary is a product of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in each culture where it emerges.

What you must remember when you talk about gendered concepts such as “masculinity” and “femininity” is that there is no universal idea of “masculinity” or “femininity” that speaks across time and nation and culture. Even within specific regions, such as Asia, not only does each country have its own understanding of gender and national signifiers and norms that defines “femininity” or “masculinity,” but even within the borders of the nation-state itself, we can find significantly different discourses on femininity and masculinity that sometimes are in direct opposition with one another. 

If we talk about the United States, for example, can we really say that there is a universal American idea of “masculinity” or “femininity”? How do we define a man, if what we understand to be a man is just a body that performs gender? What kind of signifiers are needed for such a performance? Is it Chris Evan’s Captain America? Or is it Chris Hemsworth’s Thor? What about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark? Do these characters form a single, cohesive idea of masculinity? 

What about Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen? Miller is nonbinary - does their superhero status make them more masculine? Or are they less “masculine” because they are nonbinary? 

Judith Butler tells us in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993) that what we call gender is inherently a discursive performance of specific signifiers and behaviors that were assigned to the gender binary and enforced by compulsory heterosexuality. She writes:

Insofar as heterosexual gender norms produce inapproximate ideals, heterosexuality can be said to operate through the regulated production of hyperbolic versions of “man” and “woman.” These are for the most part compulsory performances, ones which none of us choose, but which each of us is forced to negotiate. (1993: 237)

Because gender norms vary regionally, there are no stable norms that coalesce into the idea of a single, universal American “masculinity.” What I mean by this is that your idea of what reads as “masculine” might not be what I personally consider to be “masculine,” as someone who grew up in a very left-leaning liberal cosmopolitan area of the United States. 

What I am saying is this: Anon, I think you should consider challenging your idea of gender, because it sounds to me like you have a very regionally locked conception of the gender binary that informs your understanding of “masculinity” and femininity” - an understanding that simply does not exist in Asia, where there is not one,  but many different forms of masculinity. 

China, Japan, and South Korea all have significant cultural differences and understandings of gender, which has a direct relationship with one’s national and cultural identity. 

Japan, for example, might consider an idol who has long, layered hair and a thin body to be the ideal for idol masculinity, but would not consider an idol to be representative of “real” Japanese masculinity, which is epitomized by the Japanese salaryman. 

South Korea, however, has a very specific idea of what idol masculinity must look like -  simultaneously hypermasculine (i.e. extremely muscular, chiseled body) and “feminine” (i.e. makeup and dyed hair, extravagant clothing with a soft, beautiful face.) But South Korea also presents us with a more “standardized” idea of masculinity that offers an alternative to the “flowerboy” masculinity performed by idols, when we consider actors such as Hyun Bin and Lee Min-ho. 

China is a little more complex. In order to understand Chinese masculinity, we must first understand that prior to the Hallyu wave, the idea of the perfect Chinese man was defined by three qualities: 高富帅 (gaofushuai) tall, moneyed, and handsome - largely due to the emergence of the Chinese metrosexual. 

According to Kam Louie:

[The] Chinese metrosexual, though urbanized, is quite different from his Western counterpart. There are several translations of the term in Chinese, two of the most common and standard being “bailing li'nan” 白领丽男 and “dushili'nan” 都市丽男，literally “white-collar beautiful man” and “city beautiful man.” The notion of “beautiful man” (li-nan) refers to one who looks after his appearance and has healthy habits and all of the qualities usually attributed to the metrosexual; these are also the attributes of the reconstituted “cool” salaryman in Japan, men who have abandoned the “salaryman warrior” image and imbibed recent transnational corporate ideologies and practices. 

[...]

In fact, the concept of the metrosexual by its very nature defines a masculinity ideal that can only be attained by the moneyed classes. While it can be said to be a “softer” image than the macho male, it nevertheless encompasses a very “hard” and competitive core, one that is more aligned with the traditional “wen” part of the wen-wu dyad that I put forward as a conventional Chinese ideal and the “salaryman warrior” icon in Japan. Unsurprisingly, both metrosexuality and wen-wu masculinity are created and embraced by men who are “winners” in the patriarchal framework. 

The wen-wu 文武 (cultural attainment – martial valor) dyad that Louie refers to is the idea that Chinese masculinity was traditionally shaped by “a dichotomy between cultural and martial accomplishments” and is not only an ideal that has defined Chinese masculinity throughout history, but is also a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

When the Hallyu wave swept through China, in an effort to capture and maximize success in the Chinese market, South Korean idol companies recruited Chinese idols and mixed them into their groups. Idols such as Kris Wu, Han Geng, Jackson Wang, and Wang Yibo are just a few such idols whose masculinities were redefined by the Kpop idol ideal. 

Once that crossover occurred, China’s idol image shifted towards the example South Korea set, with one caveat: such an example can only exist on stage, in music videos, and other “idol” products. Indeed, if we look at any brand campaigns featuring Wang Yibo, his image is decisively more metrosexual than idol; he is usually shot bare-faced and clean-cut, without the “idol” aesthetics that dominate his identity as Idol Wang Yibo. But, this meterosexual image, despite being the epitome of Chinese idealized masculinity, would still be viewed as more “feminine” when viewed by a North American gaze. (It is important to note that this gaze is uniquely North American, because meterosexual masculinity is actually also a European ideal!)

The North American gaze has been trained to view alternate forms of masculinity as non-masculine. We are inundated by countless images of hypermasculinity and hypersexual femininity in the media, which shapes our cultural consciousness and understanding of gender and sexuality and unattainable ideals. 

It is important to be aware that these ideals are culturally and regionally codified and are not universal. It is also important to challenge these ideals, as you must ask yourself: why is it an ideal? Why must masculinity be defined in such a way in North America? Why does the North American gaze view an Asian male idol and immediately read femininity in his bodily performance? What does that say about your North American cultural consciousness and understanding of gender? 

I encourage you to challenge these ideas, Anon.  

“Always already a cultural sign, the body sets limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions, but is never free of imaginary construction.” - Judith Butler 

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York, NY, Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York, NY, Routledge, 1993. Flowerboys and the appeal of 'soft masculinity' in South Korea. BBC, 2018,  Louie, Kam. “Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 71, Issue 4, November 2012 , pp. 929 - 943 Louie, Kam. Chinese, Japanese, and Global Masculine Identities. New York, NY, Routledge, 2003. 

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.”

he sounds like hes making shit up on the spot……..absolute himbo