#outside of tumblr people call them dihua

[qilingxiong]

Do you know how the ship name liansanjiao came to be? The "lian" part I understand but not the rest and I don't know any chinese.

Hi! so Liansanjiao (莲三角) was actually a thing I originally came up with just for my own blog tagging/organizing system 😅 My fandom before Mysterious Lotus Casebook was DMBJ/The Lost Tomb, and the main three protagonists there are referred to as the Tiesanjiao (铁三角), 'tie' meaning 'iron' and 'sanjiao' meaning 'triangle', so Iron Triangle. I took that naming convention and just called the trio from MLC the Lotus Triangle, which is Liansanjiao. It caught on among some of my mutuals though, and then possibly some people outside of that circle adopted it as well? I'm not too sure lmao. But yeah that was just me being silly and wanting a little inside joke for myself in my tags :) hope this helps!

(For what it's worth, I believe Chinese fandom calls the trio Lianhua Sanxia (莲花三侠), or The Three Lotus Heroes. Some people also just say Difanghua although I believe it might depend on whether or not someone is referring to the relationship as romantic or platonic. I use Liansanjiao interchangeably to refer to the three of them in any context)