untamedconnotations:The titles HanGuang Jun 含光君 and YiLing LaoZu / YiLing Patriarch 夷陵老祖 are given t
untamedconnotations:The titles HanGuang Jun 含光君 and YiLing LaoZu / YiLing Patriarch 夷陵老祖 are given to Lan Zhan and Wei Ying by their fellow cultivators and plebs as a sign of respect (and fear, in the latter’s case). I want to talk about the connotations, considering the translations I’ve seen so far.The YiLing Patriarch is quite straight forward. The word “Patriarch” here doesn’t have anything to do with patriarchy, since the original Chinese words LaoZu 老祖 is a unisex term. The characters separately mean “old” and “ancestor” but the combined term is typically used in reference to the founder of a religious sect.YiLing is simply a place name, literally the Yi Hill. However, it sounds a lot more sinister and ghastly in the original language because of the connotations. The character Yi is historically used to refer to barbarous and uncivilized regions to the east of ancient China, while the character Ling refers to hills and mounds of dirt that are often associated with mausoleums. Yeah, it sounds worse than it looks in the show. This title is about Wei Ying’s place of origin where a grandmaster established himself (people are starting to forget he was from YunMeng originally because they’re so fearful of him) and his unorthodox powers (he’s the first one to successfully harness the darks arts). The reverence is inseparable from abhorrence.On the other hand, HanGuang Jun is a title that praises Lan Zhan’s integrity. Jun 君 is a character (literally “lord”) with multiple meanings, but here it is attached to the end of a name to show respect. The characters HanGuang 含光 separately and literally means “holds/envelops light”, and in the novel it is taken from a widely circulated legend about several of the main characters, which specifically goes like this about Lan Zhan:景行含光藍忘機 JingXing HanGuang Lan WangJiThe first two characters are taken from an ancient collection of poems, and describe a person of upright and faultless disposition. The next two characters, Han Guang, refer to a harboring of light. To me, it’s not the light part that’s interesting, but the state of harboring that defines the most significant cultural nuances.If you ask older Chinese women the kind of jewelry they prefer, some might tell you pearls or jade. If you ask these ladies why they don’t like diamonds, they’ll tell you diamonds are too shiny, and traditional Chinese culture values subtlety. It is (or at least was) considered a form of virtue if you don’t flaunt your brightness in other people’s eyes; so the polite thing to do, if you’re brilliant as flames, is to shield that light so you aren’t so in-your-face about it.Here I must give props to Lan WangJi’s actor Wang Yibo. Early reaction from the Chinese audience had some unfavorable reviews that criticized his lack of facial expressions, but these folks later retracted their opinions, because they realized that he’s actually doing a superb job with his eyes and his body, considering the limitations. The script gives him less than a handful of lines in most episodes.You can see how he seldom looks directly at anyone in the eye, unless he’s about to kill you, or (later on) if you’re Wei Ying. If you don’t know him well, he seems unconfrontational with those downcast and shielded eyes, almost to the point of hesitance; but as soon as you step over the line (sometimes a line named Wei Ying), you’ll feel the sharpness of that fierce light in his eyes like a blade to your throat. Just ask Fairy the spiritual dog.Related meta postsCourtesy names | Courtesy names 2 | Honorific titles | Name meanings | Genealogy register -- source link