章節 201: Zheyun

創作者的想法

Queeniecat

(1) A thief yelling stop thief: to cover up one’s misdeeds by shifting the blame onto others.

(2) Zitong: the appellation of the empress by the emperor. The character ‘zi’ means the Chinese catalpa tree and the character ‘tong’ means high or lofty clouds. There are various potential sources for how this appellation came about. Initially, the ‘tong’ could have been a homonym for ‘child’, and ‘xiao tong’ or ‘small child’ used to be an ancient way of referring to one’s legitimate wife. During the Han Dynasty, the emperor Han Wu reportedly had a dream about a Chinese catalpa tree and shortly after his favourite concubine Wei Zifu bore him a son. The emperor was so pleased he made her empress. Hence, the association between the tree and the title became linked and the empress became known as ‘zitong’. The final source I found says that the ancients viewed the Chinese catalpa tree as the king of trees and because it was a homonym for child as well, it was deemed auspicious and symbolised a fruitful union with many children. Hence, to bless the empress with fertility, she was called Zitong and her phoenix seal was carved of such wood.

(3) Qingyu Wan translates to Green Jade Bowl. A famous Song Dynasty lyric by the illustrious poet Xin Qiji. The characters for it are pronounced in modern Chinese as Qingyu An and it was the source of much scholarly debate as to what the correct reading of it was. Later, it was confirmed by Qing Dynasty scholars that ‘An’ was actually ‘Wan’ in the Song Dynasty as Xin Qiji was referring to a drinking vessel in his lyric’s title. I’ve only been reading it wrongly for forever lol.

(4) An amateur translation of the final line of Qingyu Wan ^^;;

A/N: Thank you very much for reading and for the lovely reviews, comments, golden tickets, and power stones! <3

With this chapter, we conclude Volume 3! Volume 4 will commence this Friday (26/01/24), please give me a bit of time to finalise the remaining story plans! <3

Thank you my dear readers for getting this far, your support has been priceless and a huge motivation for me to complete this novel despite the setbacks in my personal life.