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hardwareabstractionlayer · 2 years ago

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The trouble with collecting merch is it’s difficult to stop once you start. This Jingsu enamel pin is by the prolific 长风万里, who is responsible for some of the most iconic NiF pins (check out the weidian store for a partial selection). Like many fan-made pins, it’s a re-rendering of a scene from canon, in this case episode 52 [x], where Jingsu look on as thunder and wind portend the storm brewing on the horizon after Princess Liyang has agreed to present Xie Yu’s confessed crimes at the Emperor’s banquet.

The pin emphasizes the storm in both design (bamboo leaves scattering in the wind) and name: 风雨同守, loosely enduring the tempest together. As for why the image has been transposed onto a tattered scroll, the pin maker said the inspiration came from rubbings/拓印 and elaborated some more:

Personally, I think of this as an excavated artwork (with the surface damaged in its old age) that was created out of Jingyan’s longing. As if Jingsu actually existed in history and will live on for a long, long time. 我自己把这个当做是一件出土的画作（年岁久远画面有所破损），是景琰怀念所做。就好像历史上真有他们的存在，靖苏真的来日方长。

Historically, rubbings not only create an impression of existing artwork but are themselves artworks that take skill and patience. The typical process starts with adhering paper to a stone carving, then ink is dabbed to the paper such that the flat surface takes on the color of the ink while carved areas remain white (here’s a process video). Collecting rubbings was a popular pastime of the literati, and rubbings of good calligraphy were especially in demand for study and appreciation, serving a similar purpose to block printing in allowing many people to see replicas of an original. The originals may have also come from a non-stone medium: some artworks originally on paper or fabric were replicated onto stone so that rubbings could be made and collected [x]. Nowadays, ancient rubbings are valuable artifacts, especially in cases where the carving has been lost.

The rubbing influence is very clear in the second version of the pin, here juxtaposed against one of its inspirations:

Though the text on the right rubbing says it’s from the Tianping Era of Eastern Wei, Year 2/魏天平二年 (535 CE), which is contemporaneous with the Liang dynasty that loosely inspired the fictional NiF Liang, I couldn’t find an actual historical artwork corresponding to this rubbing, and the mass antique market is flooded with fabrications (it’s also thoroughly possible I simply failed to find the original). But here’s a real fragment of a stone Buddhist votive tablet and its rubbing that’s now at the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong [x]:

The text says that this was made in Tianping Era, Year 3, one year after the one above, and describes the building of a Buddhist pagoda in offering, which was a common practice at the time. This monochromatic rubbing style was also quite typical; though both black ink and red ink (cinnabar-based) rubbings existed separately, they were not really seen in combination in a single rubbing until much later. What is believed to be the only surviving book of bicolor rubbings before the modern era was made in the Qing dynasty around the 1800s and was itself a copy of a lost multicolor work from the same dynasty [x].

In this context of transference of art and meaning between mediums, it’s all too easy to imagine a backstory for this Jingsu scroll: first there was a stone carving, close enough to the actual scene that the artist must have worked from Jingyan’s memory of that day. Instead of the more common approach of carving the outline or the background, the artist decided to carve the foreground so the figures were sunken into the stone. And later, a rubbing was made and mounted onto a scroll, buried and excavated, then finally rendered from fiction to reality in the form of an enamel pin. Each creation is an act of remembering and reinventing, of placing yourself in the observer’s shoes, of stoking the flames of the original story—the fire burns on through metaphorical wood replaced over the centuries, its appearance ever-changing, its core not forgotten.

That’s enough of reading too much into things—I also like the pin on its own. One thing that 长风万里 does well is not just sell pins but also communicate the entire behind-the-scenes process with the QQ group, which is several months’ worth of iterations that I find at least as interesting as the final product. For this pin, you can trace through chat logs how the pin evolved all the way from the original concept sketch to the pieces of metal that fit in your hand (thanks to 长风万里 for letting me share the draft versions here):

Once the pin maker comes up with an idea and decides to go for it, the initial sketch is given to the commissioned artist (this pin was drawn by Forwrite, on weibo and lofter) along with reference images. The artist turns these into a line drawing following the design rules of enamel pins (each block of solid color should be fully enclosed by lines, for example). Some artists will color in the line art while other pin creators commission only the line art and fill in the colors themselves. The final colors are limited to the available palette at the factory chosen to make the pins, and once the color vector art is handed to the pin factory along with instructions on detailing and finishes, the physical manufacturing process begins in earnest (this could be the subject of its own long post).

You may have noticed that there are some color changes from the vector design to the physical pins, most notably the sky in the top pin. This came about as a serendipitous accident where the factory colored the sky of the sample pin dark blue instead of the requested sunset yellow, but the pin buyers active in the group chat liked the dark blue enough that it was kept as the final color. The light grayish blue variant ended up being chosen for the backing card/背卡 instead:

Though backing cards are nominally named for their purpose in supporting the pin, practically no one sticks their pins through these cards in Chinese fandom; instead, collectors generally buy cases and books to keep each piece in pristine condition. And so unlike utilitarian cards that are meant to serve as a background to the pin, fully designed backing cards that stand on their own are very much a thing. The card also adds back in the iconic Jingsu lines that were in the original concept sketch, I want to choose you, Your Highness Prince Jing/我想选你靖王殿下 from Mei Changsu and Sir and I are as one person/先生与我如同一人 from Jingyan.

And now for the last part of the merch package that comes with the pin: the wooden piece on the left is an inscribed bamboo name slip/名刺 meant to resemble what MCS might have presented Jingyan when he visited his manor in episode 9 [x]. This was a preorder bonus to encourage buyers to get on board early, since the upfront costs to commission the artist and get a sample made at the factory are a significant portion of the overall costs (if not enough people preorder, the pin is canceled and the payment refunded, and the pin maker has to take the loss of at least the artist’s fees).

Name slips were the ancient analogs to modern business cards and an important tool of connection building in the ancient bureaucracy. The tradition of presenting a slip before you visit someone’s residence, especially if you’re lower in status than the person you’re visiting, persisted for many dynasties while the form of the slip evolved over time. Even though the visitation slip in canon appeared to be a bound paper booklet, folded books wouldn’t appear until the Tang dynasty—though paper was invented in the Han dynasty, it took time for the manufacturing process to improve sufficiently for a fundamental shift in writing mediums. Bamboo slips were what they would have used in the real Liang dynasty (plus, the modern-day replica is objectively great merch that can be used as a bookmark/fidget stick/cosplay prop/whatever else you can think of).

Slips from around the NiF time period generally stated some combination of your given name/名, your courtesy name/字, the region you’re from, and some boilerplate deferential language. Here are two real ones from Huang Chao/黄朝 and Zhu Ran/朱然 of the Three Kingdoms period next to MCS’s, with the meaning of some phrases listed in parentheses after the literal translation (using two of MCS’s names is a good solution for the lack of courtesy names in canon):

To balance out all the white background product photography, I’ll close with some texture shots:

#cost for everything was ¥90 or about $13 #overseas shipping not included #先生与我，如同一人 #chinese fandom #nirvana in fire #琅琊榜 #merch review #long post

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shijiujun · 1 year ago

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Higuchi Kouhei and Mashiko Atsuki for socool 搜酷 Magazine (upcoming sale on Oct 2023)

WHY ARE THEY SO CUTE 🥹🥹 But finally a magazine I don’t have to go above and beyond to get because its available on Weidian

#my personal weatherman #taikan yoho #higuchi kouhei #mashiko atsuki

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fourseasonsfigs · 1 year ago

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Building Block Figs - Armory

Following up on the recent sets of building block figs I've been posting, comes one of my absolute favorites!

As I mentioned with the earlier fig sets (Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake (Part One, Two, and Coda); Basking in the Sun, Catching Light, and Two Devils), I missed these sets when they first came out, so I've had to pick them all up on Xianyu. With the exception of this set! This one I couldn't get on Xianyu, despite my best efforts. I have only seen it for sale exactly once, and when I tried to buy it, it turned out the listing was only up to draw traffic, and the seller just had one other (vaguely related) set. I was resigned to just keep watching and searching for it and hoping for the best, which was a real pity, because just from the small sales picture I really, really had to have it.

Thankfully! Qilin, the merch wrangler extraordinaire (@88Qilin on Twitter), had bought this set way back in the day, and when she heard I was on the search for more of these sets, was kind enough to check in with me to see if I needed it. AND BOY DID I. She immediately sent it off, and it arrived in record time! She even included some wonderful little extras, that I took a picture of immediately, but for some reason can no longer find. I'll take another pic and add it! In the meantime, I'll add a placeholder:

[Qilin's extra goodies pic goes here]

I was so excited to get this set, I can't even tell you. I feel super, super lucky.

(Fun fact, Qilin is the reason I originally found out about fan made figs in the first place! I saw her post on Twitter (also way back in the day) about the New Year's series of 6 figs, and I absolutely had to have them. I had just reactivated my long-dormant Twitter account to keep up with the fandom, and I was super nervous to message her, thinking she would be like, "who is this total rando messaging me out of nowhere?!" But no, she was super nice, and very helpful, and it was entirely thanks to her I was able to buy the whole set. A minor miracle at the time, trust me, considering how green I was at navigating Weidian back then. If you ever want to buy figs directly, definitely check out her pinned post walkthrough on her Twitter page, it's invaluable information.)

The set came sealed and as usual, in a plain box. Inside there was the same set up as the other sets in this series - a double bagged bag of bricks, the card with the QR code for the online 3-D instructions, and a handy little tool to separate bricks.

The full name of this set is Lao Wen Sacrificed his Life to Save Ah Xu. It measures 8.0 x 5.6 x 12.1 cm, and is rated 10 hours to complete. The "hours to complete" ratings have been extremely accurate to date. But, I was determined to get this set done over this holiday weekend, so hoped that my prior experience on these would serve me well to get it done in record time. So I timed myself!

Here I am getting ready to start. Not a lot of colors, which is typical for these sets. Not too bad looking, huh? You'll notice that unlike the other sets, I didn't carefully pre-sort out all the pieces by size and shape. I simply sorted by color and left them in big piles like this, in a bid to shave off even more time. I was a bit curious if it would be faster to hunt-and-peck through each pile for the right bricks, or if sorting them was about the same. Given that it took about an hour to sort through the larger sets, I decided to roll the dice here.

The directions informed me there were 184 steps in this set. Not too bad! I sat down, put on my headphones, cranked up some music, and got started.

I finished the first little block just as fast as could be. I was flying! I was so proud of myself. It was a holiday weekend, the morning was bright and sunny, and I was having a grand old time.

The next step was to add a second base square in, and then a third and fourth. I added in the second base and kept on flying through it. And then...I ran out of a white brick in the largest size.

Which is kind of impossible. Each of these sets has extras of all the bricks - quite a few, actually. So I searched through the white pile a couple extra times, and sat there and wondered what was going on. As you know, I have lots of spare bricks from the previous sets, so it would be easy enough to pull the right one out, but this shouldn't be happening.

So I was like, wait a minute. I looked back at the phone directions for the step I was on, and said, hold on, I don’t see the character 白 for white anywhere. Uh oh. I Google Translated the characters that were there and sure enough, 透明 meant transparent.

I had just been going off the colors on the phone screen, and I mean, come on! The bricks looked white! If you scroll up and look at it, don't you think so too?

Anyway.

So, I pulled off all the white bricks, and replaced them with transparent bricks, and hey, what do you know, I had plenty of them.

Alright, alright, so this happens when you don't speak the language. Never fear, I'm back on track!

Dear friends, I was not back on track.

Sometime in all this confusion, I had spun around my little base square around, so when I attached it to the other base squares, I started filling in the top bricks the wrong way around. Luckily, I realized what I was doing after a few steps in, and I didn't have to totally reassemble it like I did with the Not White But Transparent Brick Debacle of early 2024. I just gently disconnected the base squares from each other, turned them around, and kept going.

So! I finished the first layer 1 hour, 46 minutes in. This, of course, includes the one major mistake and the one minor mistake. It's pretty big, isn't it? The other fig sets only had max 2 base squares, so I was pretty excited to see how nice and big this was. The transparent bricks look nice, huh?

I took a bit of a break. Made a little bit of lunch, tidied up a bit, and then came back excited to tackle the next round.

I was paying attention to the names of the brick colors at this point, believe me.

I finished the next layer 2 hours and 54 minutes in. Pretty cool looking, isn't it? It looks like some kind of disk in an alien language. I must admit when I got here, I was both quite happy and also a little concerned. Only layer 2? Still 138 layers to go, and it's been about 3 hours?

Well, no big deal if it took me longer, really. I was having a good time, and there was no actual rush. I will say that at this point, my finger tips were certainly feeling the constant pressing and snapping of the bricks. They had actually toughened up back when I was doing set after set after set, but it had been some time, and my fingertips were back to their usual soft selves.

Luckily for my fingers, I had errands to run and other things to do, so my sore little fingertips got a needed break.

The next morning, I was up and back at it!

The third layer was starting to look like the actual base of the platform from the show. I was pretty excited to finish this layer, I have to say. I took little breaks here and there, but I was pretty determined to make some real progress.

By that evening, I had gotten pretty far. I stopped here at 6 hours and 3 minutes.

I was inordinately pleased by getting to this step. I could see the robes carefully spread out here, just like the show, and their hands out there. There was also a little bit of white where I was starting Lao Wen's new hair color.

You can tell the passage of time by how the light keeps changing in each of these pictures! I always end with the bricks for the step I'm on laid out in front of me, so I always know where I am when I pick the set back up. My memory is just too bad otherwise, I'll forget what I'm doing.

Well, 3-day holiday weekends don't last forever, so I woke up this morning determined to finish this. There was a little bit of race against the clock today, since I had appointments I had to take care of, and I needed to have enough light left to take final pictures. So, I sat down, and started going as fast as I could.

At 7 hours and 6 minutes, I had built up the bodies, and was on to the heads. I hurried through my afternoon errands and got back around 3:10 pm. The sun sets here around 4:20, so I didn't have much time. Tomorrow I get on a plane, so it really was up against the clock! I didn't even put my headphones on this time, I just sat down and focused.

But, it turns out that I didn't need that much time. 45 minutes later, I was done!

Total hours clocked in at 7 hours and 51 minutes. I will tell you, I was indeed flying through this set - all those other fig sets that I made mistakes on definitely helped me. I knew what I was doing, and I went fast. If this had been my first set, or even my second (ok, let's be real, even my third), it would 100% have taken me at least the full 10 hours. It also helped that other than Big Error 1 and Small Error 1, I didn't make any other mistakes.

You can see how many bricks are left (which is why I knew something was up when I ran out of that white brick earlier). I will say that not pre-sorting the bricks is definitely the way to go - it's pretty easy to pick out the right ones, and certainly saves a lot of time just organizing them into piles.

Alright! Let's do some beauty shots, shall we? As you know, the light wasn't super great, but it was good enough!

Oops, I see I need to press down a little on Lao Wen's head to get the bricks firmly squeezed together. I'll admit my aching fingertips were not pressing down super hard at this point!

I really love the 3-D effect of the icicles ringing the platform. This set is just fantastic!

It's a little hard to see A-Xu's luxurious mane of hair here with the black on black, but it's quite nice.

Lao Wen's closed eyes! Please also note the little white underlayer on his robes here at his neck. So cute.

This is a nice angle to see A-Xu's married hair bun (minus one hairpin, of course) and Lao Wen's loop of hair.

This angle is the coup de grâce of this whole set for me. For the longest time, I thought the single bricks was his eyes and the marks down his cheeks were tears, but in reality I think the larger bricks are his eyes, and the smaller bricks are his eyebrows going up in shock and horror. But all I can see are (non canonically accurate) tears free flowing down his cheeks!

I did waste several minutes at the point I was building this just contemplating his face, and I was THIS close to subbing in the light blue for to make tears after all, because (sorry A-Xu) I find it delightfully hilarious. Little Lego tears! I can't even. But, I decided to go with the actual design for this so you could see it (and go back and replace them afterwards).

Ahem. Anyway. This is also a beautiful shot to see Lao Wen's long white hair draping over his shoulders.

More of the snow and icicles all the way around. It looks great.

Seriously, don't you think they look like tears? Right, anyway. This actually isn't a bad angle to admire the modeling on the clothing.

And we're back around. The modeling really is beautiful on this, with their robes carefully spread out behind them and to the sides of them.

Time for some closeups:

Aww, Lao Wen.

Aww, A-Xu, honey.

The bottoms-up angle was really hard to get on this set, since the base was so large.

The top down angle looks great I think. This is actually the first time that I'm noticing they have the scroll underneath them.

Honestly, I'm so impressed with this set. With only 9 colors, and some very basic building block shapes, they did a gorgeous job rendering this scene.

With my last picture, in the last of my fading light, here's my two sets of armory figs re-enacting this scene. The closest set is actually from the New Year's set of of 6 that Qilin helped me buy back in the day, so this really is full circle!

I couldn't quite get my camera to focus on both sets, but you can see the relative size difference at least. It's a big set!

Alright, these are the last of these sets for a while - there's two more sets of two single figures each, but I have not been able to locate them on Xianyu either. I'm ok with it though - this is the last of the big scene sets, and one I really, really wanted. The others are nice but not quite as special as the sets.

Thanks for the figthusiasts friends that have accompanied me on these building block fig posts! They're all quite long, so I appreciate you reading all my thoughts and experiences with these. I absolutely love them - they were a ton of fun, and I only wish I had more! I'd love to enact out the entire series with building block scenes - can you imagine?

Material: Plastic building blocks

Fig Count: 520

Scene Count: 37

Rating: Pure love

[link to the Master Post Index]

#word of honor #wenzhou #wen kexing #zhou zishu #episode 36 #word of honor merch #figthusiast

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my-me1ody · 2 years ago

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Allen and Hajun 20cm Dolls

1⃣ 【Allen has reached MOQ, he was sent to the factory for mass production.

Hajun is at 20/30, he still needs 10 more to reach minimum order quantity. Thank you so much for your support !!】

2⃣ 【If you want to purchase, you can use WeiDian or WeChat, or you can pay through me/a proxy. Please feel free to choose the payment method you think is most suitable. You will need a chinese address, and there will be another small payment later for shipping to CNaddress. If you don’t have the time to look for a proxy, I will use superbuy and send it to you then.

Purchase Links:

https://k.youshop10.com/7w5KcKHS

Wechat：DM me】

3⃣ The doll is 80rmb each and 3rmb extra for elastic ears. You can join the QQ (782337341) to await news.

4⃣These dolls are non-profit. neither of us are making any money from it, this is just us making dolls to share with other fans.

We will check all the goods to ensure their quality.

If you have questions or wish to purchase from me, please DM me or chibunsj (twt). we will be updating progress through twitter, discord, line, and kakaotalk and you can message me there as well.

#paradox live #paralive #BAE #allen sugasano #yeon hajun #doll #cotton doll

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lovesrimi · 1 year ago

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Pandabuy,Sugargoo,Hagobuy,CSSBuy,Superbuy and Wegobuy in One Spreadsheet

The first site with weidian items that combine links to several agents that includes pandabuy,hagobuy,sugargoo,cssbuy,superbuy and wegobuy.And all agents' links in one spreadsheet.

→→pandabuypicks→→

#pandabuy #sugargoo #hagobuy #cssbuy #repssneakers #repsshoes

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gaiaxygang · 1 year ago

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BURYING MY HEAD IN MY HANDS AS I TEXT SOMEONE "CAN YOU HELP ME BUY AN ITEM OFF WEIDIAN" THEN I SEND A LINK TO THE GAYEST MAGAZINE COVER TO EVER HIT CHINESE STORES THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING IM GOING TO DIE

#gaiaxyposting

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discluded · 1 year ago

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Mini Samomile & Cattawin plushies: Kyuu's North America & UK Group Order

Have you seen these mini Samomile and Cattawin plushies around fandom and wondered how to adopt your very own? If so, great news: I am hosting a group order for folks in North America and the UK!

Basic info:

Made by Zerozeroling1 - I received her approval to run this GO

13x10cm plushies

Two plushies per set, with two sets (one old and one new)

cannot mix and match plushies from the sets

deadline to join this GO: 12:01 Midnight ET, New York Time - Friday, October 27, 2023

EXCEPTIONS CANNOT BE GRANTED

Two payments required to join group order:

Payment 1: $15/set USD down payment for one set ($30 for both sets)

Payment 2: Shipping to you. See document for shipping estimates by country and payment timing

(1) Please read this entire document for info & FAQs before filling out the form

(2) Put in your order plushie order via this Google form

Set A (old set):

Set B (new set):

Approximate sizing scale:

Want to handle it yourself? Don't want to share your personal info? Not in North America or UK? Check out:

✨Kyuu’s Superbuy Weidian Buying Guide✨

[currently info is set to large plush, but I will update it later today]

reblogs/boosts appreciated! 😘

Given this is the third run of Set A, it's very likely this will be the last time Zerolingling makes these. Please help spread the news so we don't have any regret!

#mileapo #mile phakphum #apo nattawin #kinnporsche #man suang #apo cattawin #samomile #kinnporsche fanart

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findqc · 15 days ago

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blkkizzat · 1 year ago

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Oop I forgot to share this find with y’all!

This true-form Sukuna plush! I have a Sukuna one already but not true form he’s so cute!! With his four little arms 😍

(This is creator photo not mine!)

Weidian link (i made an earlier post on how to buy from Chinese websites). He’s currently on preorder until 2.25 @ 8pm China time.

Although I did accidentally buy 4 when I only meant to buy 2 so when I finally get them I’ll probably sell the extras on my IG doll/nendo sales account. 😆

#chinese shopping #kizzatcollects

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thruoutin · 1 month ago

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thruoutin - RAD [CD] 全新未拆封#小程序://微店买买/点击购买➡️/VXmZS4GEib44I3H

Here is the CD release of RAD put out on Shanghai based experimental label zaaang. Now for sale on Isle Records’ WeiDian. Recorded in Singapore, this album has elements of field recordings, dark ambient, noise, and experimental tape manipulation.

#noise #harsh noise #ambient #dark ambient #electronic

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souravsikder · 2 months ago

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https://www.findqc.com/ - QC Photos Finder, Comprehensive QC Photo finder. Finder for Products on Taobao, Weidian, 1688, Tmall, Pandabuy, Superbuy, AllChinaBuy, and CNfans, Search QC,QC Finder photos

#qc finder #qc photos #pandabuy #cnfans #taobao agent

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fourseasonsfigs · 1 year ago

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Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake (Part One)

Figthusiast friends, it's time for a little something different! Today we have the first of a series of building block Word of Honor fig sets.

I first saw these sets earlier this year when I was browsing for figs on Xianyu, my favorite secondary market app. I stopped my scrolling in total surprise when I first saw a picture, and was like wait...are these actually Lego-type Word of Honor figs??? I zoomed in, and lo and behold, they sure were.

I absolutely loved Legos when I was a kid. My family didn't have enough money to be able to buy much in the way of expensive toys, but I did save up my babysitting money so I could buy a few of them myself. It took a long time at $1.50 an hour!

So, of course when I saw these, the nostalgia factor combined with my fandom fig obsession made these a must buy.

Today's fig is that the first set I found. It's called (via MTL) "Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake", which I must congratulate for being extremely descriptive and 100% accurate.

As soon as I saw this, I did an immediate search on Taobao and Weidian to see if I could just buy the set vs. pick it up off Xianyu. For two reasons. One, I can buy directly off Taobao (vs using a third party purchase agent for Xianyu), and two, I was hoping there was more in the series than this one figure. However, they were no longer being sold on either platform, so Xianyu it was.

I browsed around and was lucky enough to find a seller on Xianyu that did, in fact, have other sets in the series, and who was clearing them all out, brand new and unopened. She noted that she was still a fan, she just had never had the time to put these together and realized now with her workload she probably never would. I bought all three of her sets, including this one, for about $37 total, which is about half off the retail of 179 yuan per set they originally went for (about $25 each). I thought this was a great deal considering the actual costs of specialized Lego sets these days, even non-branded building block sets.

As far as I can tell, there are four big sets that are famous scenes from the show, and three small sets that are just our two favorite leads only. I was able to buy the three big scenes off that one person, and one of the set of figs-only, but I'm still missing some (too many!). I keep checking Xianyu. I was actually surprised to see the other day there was another set I didn't know existed - but sadly it ended up being sold out. I'll keep looking.

Anyway!

The Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake is a 1,236 piece set, measures 8.4 x 16.8 x 12.4 cm, and it's rated about 8 hours to complete. It's the fastest of the big sets (the remainder of which are rated 10, 10, and 11 hours respectively). In retrospect, should I have started with the smaller figs-only set (rated 2 hours)? Probably. But I was just so charmed by this set, and I only have one lake fig set to date, so this seemed like something very fun. Plus, as you will hear about later, I did not fully understand the specs until well after I was almost done assembling the very last set.

I had a surgical procedure that was scheduled this month (and is why I've been out of commission for a while), and I had specially saved up these sets as fun projects to make while I was recovering. I figured it would be nice to have something to look forward to.

So, post surgery, once I felt up to sitting up, I made myself a comfy little nest and settled in with my little boxes of treasures.

This is the pic from the seller - you would never know these were Word of Honor sets. They're just generic boxes from the manufacturer, with a small sticker on the top to indicate what set it is, along with a QR code.

I excitedly opened up the box, to find a bag o'bricks, a small black plastic piece and another sticker with QR code.

It turns out the little black plastic piece is a super handy little tool to quickly and easily break assembled bricks apart. Which is great if you accidentally assemble any steps incorrectly, as I would soon find out.

The QR code was for the directions, which were, in a quantum technological leap forward from my admittedly decades ago Lego experiences, online and fully 3-dimensional.

Pretty cute! I decided to go in order, and indeed start with the simple looking raft.

As a side note, I will tell you that I started this completely sure I was going to be able to assemble this set in an afternoon. I had somehow completely missed the MTL for the estimated assembly time until literally just now, as I was translating pics for this blog post. The set seemed fairly small in the picture, and while it has indeed been decades since I put together a Lego set, I'm (literally) an old hand at it. I felt extremely confident. Overconfident, you might say, given that my exact mental words to myself as I clicked on the raft image was, I'm gonna knock this thing out in no time.

Doesn't look like much, does it?

I figured that before I did anything else, I would sort by colors and shapes, so when I was ready to get started, I could move really fast. So I sorted. And sorted. And sorted some more. The bag doesn't look like a lot of bricks, but let me tell you, there were a LOT (1,236, which once again, I only realized until I was researching for this very blog post). Unlike Legos, these were all thin single-brick height, so there were no 4x4x4 type bricks, for example. It made it easier to sort, but as I was sorting (and sorting some more), I realized that it might take a lot of building to get significant height going.

Eventually, after about an hour, I got them all sorted, and felt very accomplished, if a bit tired. I took a little nap, and then settled back into my crafting nest, and then got ready to, and I quote myself once again, bang this sucker out.

The directions started with an image of the final product, which was helpful.

I will say the online direction interface was pretty amazing. I could zoom in, spin around, go upside down, view it any which way I wanted to by pinching and pulling at my phone's screen. It was fantastic, and certainly made it much easier. That little circle on the right side is the "next direction" button, and helpfully the number in the circle tells you how many steps you have left. There were 34 steps in this raft, and you can tell by the number here I'm not too far along.

Here's a little further as I gamely plug along. I got momentarily confused early on by the colors - there's a dark blue, a medium blue, and a light blue, and I had started assembling the raft with medium blue instead of dark blue. I got to figure out how useful that brick de-assembler was real fast, let me tell you. I also started screenshotting and translating the colors until I felt I had a good handle on what exact colors I should be picking.

You can see here how I can zoom in to figure out exactly where to place the bricks. You can't tell by the screenshot, but the bricks you are laying in each particular step blink, and are outlined in dark black like you see in the shot above. It's very handy.

I got into a groove pretty quick. For each step, I'd count and select the bricks shown in the little legend at the bottom, and put them in a little pile next to me. I did this to make sure I used up all the bricks each layer, as early on I was just following the directions and not realizing that some steps you had to put the brick underneath other ones, which would not be visible on the blinking screen unless I pinched and pulled the model to flip it around on the screen. If I got to the end of the step and still had bricks left, I knew one (or more) were hiding, and I could rotate the image around until I found where they should go. Yes, I did learn this the hard way, naturally.

After a good long time, I finally finished the raft! I will say, I was a bit puzzled that the raft is green and blue, as we well know the raft in the show is just bamboo.

Did I re-watch the scene just to make triple sure? I sure did!

So there's actually two rafts, this simple one here in the foreground, and then the bigger, sturdier raft there behind the boat. It's this first raft that this set is capturing, and more or less this moment, if not at such an acute angle.

I may actually rearrange the figures to be in this particular configuration later. Stay tuned!

It turns out that the raft is these colors because (now that I've put a lot of them together) the company doesn't appear to make many brick colors. The blues are unusual in the sense there are actually three different shades. The red bricks I have have only ever been one fire engine red color, and the brown bricks only one medium brown. So, rather than make the raft uniformly all brown, they made it colorful with the blue and green, perhaps to simulate the water. I admire the colorful nature of it, but I have to say, I'm contemplating re-doing the raft when I finish all the kits. Each kit has leftover bricks, and I seem to have a lot of brown bricks left over. I think I'm going to try remaking this with a brown raft base and black for the lines instead, with some blue and more of the transparent bricks to simulate water. Stay tuned for that, too!

So, by the time I finished the raft, I was beat. Super tired, and surprised it took as long as it did. BUT, I reasoned it only made sense since it was the very first piece I did, so naturally it would take longer than most. It was time to sleep.

The next day, I woke up bright and early, on a mission. On to Wen Kexing!

I started confident (confidence is never my problem, unfortunately, but it is sometimes A problem) that now that I had experience, I could in fact, bust this bad boy out.

I was merrily assembling away, and I happened to take a closer look at the directions - specifically, the little number in the bottom circle.

I don't know if you can see this number, but it is two of Gong Jun's favorite number 88. That's right, EIGHTY-EIGHT. I was like, what?!? How many was there in this figure? I've been going for a while (answer, as I scrolled back through the directions, is 111).

Remember how I said that these are all single-ply building bricks? Yep. Takes a bunch to turn them into a tall, yet humble philanthropist. Well, the only way out is through, right?

The directions kept having me assembling parts, and then having me set them aside for later. It looked nothing like a mild and gentle scholar, but I've found that, similar to life and perhaps also Ikea assembly instructions, sometimes you just have forge ahead and take it on faith that things are gonna work out.

Ah ha! Suddenly it IS starting to make a little sense. I recognize that costume!

(Sidebar to say, we all recognize this costume! And we know this gorgeous pale green outer robe is not, in fact, blue. I was slightly taken aback by this until I realized later the thing about the factory's lack of colors. The bright, intense grass green of the only green option (other than neon green, ahahaha) would have been even less suitable for our peacock's fine feathers, so actually this is a very good choice).

MAY I also note that number in the bottom right hand circle is 55. FIFTY-FIVE.

I'm gonna fast forward through the naps and the breaks, and just take one quick other picture break:

I just about cheered when I got to this point! I was like, oh there he is! You can also tell by the quality of light and the shadows that it was late at night at this point. On a different day.

Anyway, we arrive at the glorious conclusion:

Hooray! I was so happy and tickled at this point. I was just so charmed by him. His little rosy cheeks, his side wispies on his hair, the motion of him standing on one foot. The back of his hair is fantastic too, although you can't see it here yet.

On to our beloved A-Xu...

May I just say how DELIGHTED I am that this is indeed hobo-Xu? His little beard and goatee combo in brick form just made me giggle.

First thing, I checked to see how many steps our reclusive hobo had. 115, which I appreciated for Zhang Zhehan's birthday kadian, if nothing else.

You can tell by the colors and shadows that once again this is a different evening, here on step 77 and about to graduate to step 76:

Once again it looked pretty unrecognizable, except that now I had done one fig, I was starting to understand kind of where they were going.

Plus, Lao Wen got to watch this time. In the daytime, as you can tell by the nice bright light.

Annnd it's night time again. Ahahahaha, I love this fig! I really like how they did his bangs. You can see here too some of his glorious black hair streaming out behind him.

By the way, at this point the tips of my fingers were quite sore in a stingy kind of oversensitive way. Sadly, typing away at a keyboard all the time (also for decades!) at my desk job has in no way toughened up my fingers. I did not think snapping bricks into place and pushing down on them to squeeze them tightly together would tax them so much. Sitting here typing this, actually, my fingers are still sore (I am admittedly working my way though the last set, the 11 hour one).

It's yet another (different) evening, and at last, A-Xu is here! I was so happy to get to this point!

Annnnd I'm out of picture slots to do the full beauty 360 degree spin of these two. Sorry to make you wait (although you may be tired of such a massive post already!), but come back tomorrow for Part Two!

Material: Plastic building bricks

Fig Count: 500 (I'm gonna wait to count these until tomorrow)

Scene Count: 32 (same)

Rating: Lots of fun, actually. I'll give the in-depth low-down tomorrow!

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