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bridges-you-cross · 7 years ago

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Shi Yi Lu - 1st Story: Wánkù (纨绔; Rich Spoiled Kid) - Qiao Shiqi

Ever since I heard that Xia Da was going to write Shi Yi Lu, I’d planned on doing the summary translation and discussion for it like I did for CGX. That said, I can’t promise I’ll be doing this for all of them, but I’ll certainly try my best.

On another note, does anyone know of a way to download from kuaikanmanhua? The comic strips that Xia Da uploaded on her blog are not the best quality, and I want to keep these beautiful color pages around.

Alright, I’m done talking for now. Here goes.

Shi Yi Lu - 1st Story: Wánkù (纨绔; Rich Spoiled Kid) - Qiao Shiqi

The story begins with an introduction page.

At the end of the Sui dynasty, Emperor Gaozu of Tang Li Yuan rebelled from Taiyuan, naming the era Wude.

Eighth year of Wude, the country began to settle.

The emperor’s eldest son Li Jiancheng was calm and prudent, had long been established as the Crown Prince; second son Prince of Qin Li Shimin was brave and skilled, his prestige in the army was quite high.

The emperor was very close to the Crown Prince, more than half of the political affairs were given to him to handle; the emperor also relied heavily upon Prince of Qin, there were legends of the emperor privately promising Prince of Qin the title of Crown Prince several times before he set off on his military expeditions.

His Majesty’s thoughts were difficult to predict, the court officials’ and aristocrats’ attitudes were also becoming subtle.

In September of the Eighth year of Wude, beneath the clear and cloudless sky of Chang’an City, the undercurrent began to surge and the storm started arriving.

On the next page, we have an unseen person speaking.

Unseen person: You do not have to come every day to take care of me. The current situation has been like this……you should still try to avoid somewhat.

The unseen person was talking to Little Qiao. We now see that the unseen person was Du Ruhui. In response to what Du Ruhui said, Little Qiao pointed out that, since the day he entered under Du Ruhui’s mentorship, his entire family had been regarded as Prince of Qin’s (Li Shimin’s) faction, and that whether he avoids visiting Du Ruhui or not would make no difference.

Little Qiao: If the Crown Prince ascends to the throne, will the current situation be better? His Majesty is still in the peak of health, yet the Crown Prince’s henchmen dares to assault the Prince of Qin residence’s Grand Scholar on the street.

Du Ruhui: ……Even you can think of this, how can Prince of Qin not think of?

Little Qiao: Teacher, just what is the plan of His Highness Prince of Qin?

Du Ruhui: You should not ask me this. How did you see Prince of Qin? Little Qiao: His Highness was as usual, today he even brought the Crown Prince residence’s Princess Yongning out to go hunting. Teacher was injured like this……normally he would have soon visited to comfort.

Du Ruhui: ……Finally determined? These two fingers were not lost in vain.

Then the scene changes, and we see Little Qiao in this place that looks like ancient China’s version of a bar/club.

While sitting here, Little Qiao was deep in thought.

Little Qiao: That’s right……I really am silly. Even though he is usually so protective of his own people that the whole court knows of it, yet regarding such an incident, Prince of Qin……this uncharacteristically calmness, he is determined then? The Crown Prince kept putting on pressure like this in order to anger Prince of Qin, to make it easy to catch his weakness? That Princess Yongning was so favored and pampered……but her second uncle was only using her as a prop to show his weakness.

Then Blue Eyes broke into his chain of thought.

Blue Eyes: Er-lang, Er-lang? You don’t really have long yang zhi hao, do you? You spent all day here with us, but only drink and chat with Hu ji. (TN: More on these three sentences in the discussion below.)

Little Qiao: ……

Blue Eyes: Could it be that you are interested in me? I can actually think about it.

Little Qiao: Scram!

Then he went down outside, sighing that he should worry about himself first (so does this mean you were worried about Princess Yongning then?), and we have this:

From now on, whenever I think of Qiao Shiqi, I shall think of this scene and his expression here.

Little Qiao then ran back up to Blue Eyes, startling him into choking on his drink.

Little Qiao: The……little lang jun who come to see Sese, what did he come here to do? (TN: Lang jun is a semi-formal term used to refer to men back then, and I guess Sese is the name of the lady that was leading Chang-ge to her room.)

Blue Eyes: Who? Ah, that one…… Hair is not even fully grown (TN: He’s saying that Chang’ge was still just a brat), what else can he do? Isn’t he just like you, relying on that pretty face, getting the sisters’ favors. But I heard them secretly talk……this little lang jun has special hobbies, not only learning their words, but also stealing Hu ji’s clothes and learning to dance with them.

Chang-ge, your behaviors made it really easy to misunderstand, you know. “Special hobbies,” he said……

Little Qiao wondered why she came here to learn to dance from Hu ji, especially since isn’t her mother Hu ji also? Blue Eyes said that Little Qiao was asking so detailedly, could it be……

Then Little Qiao freaked out and told Blue Eyes to shut up and to make sure that everyone in this place pretend that they know nothing about “little lang jun.” I guess the Crown Prince’s daughter sneaking out to a bar/club to learn dancing and stuff from Hu ji wasn’t exactly acceptable behaviors.

Blue Eyes finally realized the seriousness of the situation and asked which family’s wánkù (rich spoiled kid, ahh, the title of our story) is this.

Little Qiao: That is the ancestor of the wánkù!

Lol. Here, you can probably guess this, but Little Qiao meant that she was the head honcho. Then the pretty lady we saw in one of the previews showed up looking for Little Qiao. She told him to go home quickly and dragged him out. On the way, Blue Eyes asked her where she is taking them (we now learn that her name is Xiang-po, which means incense, probably not her real name), and she said that she’s taking Little Qiao to the back door. Blue Eyes then asked if Little Qiao had done something to offend her. He said this because back doors were usually not used for guests.

Xiang-po: Does Young Master still remember Captain Wang?

Blue Eyes: Captain Wang?

Xiang-po: It’s the one who relied on the fact that his father is the Crown Prince residence’s Supervisor of the Household that he even dared to assault an assistant minister, that Captain of the Guard. I do not understand these matters of the Han, but I just heard him mentioned Qiao Er-lang, he said…… “The old one cannot be touched, but the young one we still can, right?” “Catch him and give him a good beating, so that these aristocrats can see what siding with the wrong master will result in!

Okay, here, we have the Crown Prince residence, and at the beginning of the story, Little Qiao mentioned Prince of Qin residence. I’m translating this literally, but “residence” actually refers to “administration.” Basically, each of these princes had their own administration, or their own mini-court, with advisors and strategists and scholars and military generals, so on and so on.

The Supervisor of the Household (詹事; Zhān Shì) was a government post unique to the Crown Prince’s administration. I’m not sure what this position did exactly since I didn’t do any research on it. Honestly, it just sounds like a butler to me.

Back to the story, Blue Eyes told Little Qiao to walk quickly and to take his horse, which is tied at the back door, instead. He also told Little Qiao that he did not need to return the horse, since Little Qiao’s horse was still in their stable. Little Qiao thanked him, a sound was heard, and then we saw four hoodlum-looking men blocking the back door. Apparently, the leader of the group just hit Xiang-po, hard enough to bleed, and called her a cheap servant. What an a**hole.

Little Qiao stepped in front of Xiang-po and told ugly-face that they should come directly at him and not cause trouble here. Wang the ugly-face said that, of course, they were going after him. He then told his underlings to go out on the street and create a commotion, the louder the better. He told them to say that Little Qiao and him were fighting over a dancer and that, in the heat of the moment, they were not being careful, and this might even resulted in a fatal incident.

They began to beat up poor Little Qiao. Blue Eyes wanted to come forward to help, but Xiang-po pulled him back to keep him away from the fight. And just when Wang ugly-face was about to deliver the final blow (cuz I don’t think Little Qiao was gonna survive being hit by a thick wooden stick like that), “someone” stopped him.

Wang ugly-face: To not respect Captain Wang is to not respect the Crown Prince.

Chang-ge: Such big words. Since when did the Crown Prince’s face stick onto your face?

Wang ugly-face: Yong…Yong……

Chang-ge: Well?

Wang ugly-face immediately fell to his knees begging for his life.

Wang ugly-face: Lang Jun please forgive! Lang Jun please forgive!! I did not know that you were…… No, no! I did not see Lang Jun……

His underlings were still clueless. One of them asked who this “brat” was, and Wang ugly-face told him to shut up and to go out and tell the guy who was still shouting to shut up. Chang-ge was fed up with all this.

Chang-ge: Scram, all of you.

Wang ugly-face and his underlings quickly disappeared, and Chang-ge turned around to go back inside. Little Qiao called her back.

Little Qiao: I am Qiao Shiqi, I give thanks to Your Honor for saving my life.

Chang-ge: I said all of you, scram, did you not hear me?

Little Qiao paused for a moment before continuing on.

Little Qiao: Your Honor! The heaven’s wind and cloud cannot be fathom (TN: meaning, each day could have unexpected circumstances), human have good and bad fortunes. Your Honor right now is free of any worry, but if one day……if one day Qiao can help Your Honor with something……I will give my all, never back down.

And then we have this beautiful shot of Chang-ge:

Chang-ge: Pfft. Just by you?

Little Qiao was stunned into silence. Then Blue Eyes told Little Qiao that they should go, and we have a third-person voiceover explaining Little Qiao’s thought.

Looking at that insufferably arrogant back, thinking of the elders’ unspoken yet was about to happen matter, the second son of the Qiao family was momentarily annoyed, yet was also momentarily sad.

Under Chang’an City’s bright September sun, the youth’s heart was just like his bloodied sleeves, full of wrinkles and crumpled into a knot, not knowing what to do.

Finally, at the end, we have an epilogue of sort.

A year later, Xuanwu Gate Incident.

Prince of Qin led soldiers into the Xuanwu Gate, killing Crown Prince Jiancheng and Prince of Qi Yuanji. The Emperor was shocked, thus making Prince of Qin the Crown Prince.

Crown Prince Li Jiancheng was given the posthumous title “Yin”, his children were all put to dead. Eldest daughter Princess Yongning fled from the residence, riding her horse and falling down a mountain stream, her body was not recovered.

Qiao Shiqi covered up the report, silent for a long while.

His promise, really was useless after all.

Alright, discussion time.

Let me begin this part by answering a question that many of you probably have upon reading this story, and that is: Did Qiao Shiqi has a crush on Chang-ge? Personally, I believe the answer is no. I’m making this claim based on the fact that Xia Da did say that she does not like love triangles and also on canon facts from this story.

I think we are so used to all the love triangles/rectangles abound in Japanese manga that whenever we see a character noticing/paying attention/helping another character of the opposite sex (or same sex if the genre is shōnen-ai or shōujo-ai), we automatically think that he or she must romantically interested in that character. But that’s not realistic, and Xia Da’s works are usually known follow reality, at least in terms of the characters’ behaviors.

That’s why I don’t think that Qiao Shiqi was interested in Chang-ge romantically. I think he was just being a good person. He knew that she was arrogant and proud and didn’t care about anyone unrelated to her. But she was also a 13-year-old girl who (he thought) was being used by her uncle to deflect suspicions off of him, who was about to be caught in something that she had no part of, and who had just freaking saved his life, unintentionally as it seemed.

What Qiao Shiqi felt for her was most likely a mix of guilt and pity. It was never explicitly mentioned, but that’s the feeling I got from his thoughts. Sure, it wasn’t his fault any of this happened to her, there was nothing he could have done, and her father the Crown Prince was kind of a jerk anyway.

But the fact remained that she lost her family, her life, even her existence. Princess Yongning escaped on a horse and fell down a mountain stream with no body recovered. She lost everything that day, and he knew that she was gonna lose everything, and he did nothing about it. Again, there was nothing he could have done, but I think it’s perfectly understandable for him have mixed feelings about it. It’s like seeing a drowning person, but you don’t know how to swim, and there was no one else around to help, and you just stand there and watch that person drown. It’s a bad example and full of holes, I know, but that’s how it is in general. You know it’s not your fault, but it still affects you.

Looking at that insufferably arrogant back, thinking of the elders’ unspoken yet was about to happen matter, the second son of the Qiao family was momentarily annoyed, yet was also momentarily sad.

Under Chang’an City’s bright September sun, the youth’s heart was just like his bloodied sleeves, full of wrinkles and crumpled into a knot, not knowing what to do.

This part here pretty much said everything.

Which is why I believe that, in future chapters of CGX, Qiao Shiqi will help Chang-ge, if given the chance.

Alright, let’s move on.

There was a part earlier that I said I would discuss further.

Blue Eyes: Er-lang, Er-lang? You don’t really have long yang zhi hao, do you? You spent all day here with us, but only drink and chat with Hu ji.

Here, Blue Eyes is calling Little Qiao Er-lang, which means second lad. Recall how in CGX ch 36 Chang-ge and Sun were pretending to be cousins of the Qin family. She was the lu-niangzi or the sixth miss, and Sun was si-lang or the fourth lad. It’s the same situation here. It basically means that Little Qiao was the second son or second child of the Qiao family. I don’t know if they kept the numbering separate for male and female or if they counted them together. I’ve seen it done both ways in literary works, but I haven’t really done any research on it.

This practice was done because, in ancient China, your given name was considered to be something important and could not be used carelessly. In fact, that’s still how it is today. So people usually refer to each other by their family name and, traditionally, their birth order in the family. So Little Qiao was Qiao Er-lang, Chang-ge was Qin Lu-niang, and Sun was Qin Si-lang. As a matter of fact, if you’re familiar with manga, you might have noticed how the characters mostly address each other by their last names. Only close friends and families use the given name. It’s the same thing here, and it was particularly important for women in ancient China to not give out their given names so easily.

And if you think about it, up until this point, Sun has never once called Chang-ge by her given name. He called her Li Chang-ge, but not Chang-ge. While calling someone by their full name isn’t the most formal or respectful way to address them, it certainly add a bit of distance to the relationship. You usually address classmates who you’re not close to this way. Chang-ge did the same thing, calling Sun Ashina Sun up until the most recent chapter, when she changed to Ah-Sun. Sun told her to call him this way because he could no longer go by Ashina Sun, but note how awkward he looked while telling her that.

Next, long yang zhi hao. Here, Blue Eyes is asking Little Qiao if he’s gay lol. I gotta say, this sentence says something about this time period. If you’re at a bar/club and you don’t do anything beside drinking and chatting with the women who works there, then you’re probably gay. Okayyyy, then.

As for Hu ji, it just means Hu women. Nothing special here.

Overall, I really like this story. We get to see another side of Chang-ge that we did not see before. Sure, we’ve seen how she can be proud, but this level of arrogance? That, we have not seen. Plus, we also get a glimpse of her privileged life in the past. Nobody messed with her. Nobody dared to mess with her. Chang-ge was such a boss back then, and it’s honestly amazing to see how much she had grown from the person she was here to who she was in CGX. Qiao Shiqi said so himself in CGX ch 61.2, and seemed genuinely relieved to see that Chang-ge was alive and well. Ah, it’s nice to be able to make these connections between SYL and CGX.

Well, you might have known this by now, but the 2nd story will be about Situ Langlang. Actually, it will be about Situ Langlang’s master and grandmaster (his master’s master) and is aptly titled “Master”. I guess this means that Situ Langlang is considered an important character by Xia Da. Hmm, I’ll have to reconsider who meet the qualification for having a story written and appearing in SYL. That said, I wonder if we’ll see anyone else from CGX here aside from Situ Langlang. At least we know for sure that Chang-ge and Sun won’t be showing up as they’re not even born yet. Heck, Li Shimin’s probably not even born yet, since he ascended the throne in his twenties and Situ Langlang was said to be well into his thirties……

Well, no matter what, I’m looking forward to it.

#shi yi lu #qiao shiqi #raw #dubious translation #random discussion #manhua #xia da #li chang-ge #li chang ge #li changge #chang ge xing #song of the long march #choukakou

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