"Nirvana in Fire"/"Lang Ya Bang" Group Read: Discussion Post for Chapters 1-4

[x_los]

We're taking a break from poetry to read Lang Ya Bang/Nirvana in Fire. We did try this before, over a year ago, but now we're doing it in concert with a larger Discord of people. If that's your preferred book-club method, contact superborb for an invite.

I'll be on there, but also doing a weekly post with thoughts over here. Feel free to join in/discuss here if Dreamwidth is your preferred method.

If anyone is interested in dankodes running further poetry content during or after NiF, please let me know what you'd be keen to discuss. I'm happy to work with you on that. I'll probably ask this again once NiF draws to a close.

For the first week, we're discussing chapters 1-4 of Lang Ya Bang. This discussion will draw to a close, and the next session will open, on May 9th.

Chinese text: https://sj.uukanshu.com/book.aspx?id=17338
English translation: https://merelhyn.tumblr.com/post/641747965727358976/the-langya-list-epubpdf

SPOILER POLICY: I personally don't give a fuck or even like to give unearned credence to the concept, so since I'm writing the post, anything's fair game.

Comments

[halfcactus]

I'm still thinking about how loving and extended the descriptions were for Xie Yu's attractiveness. The author wanted to be extra extra sure we knew he was pretty in his youth and in his maturity. I'm coming from the POV of someone who watched the drama first. I had no sense of which characters were meant to be attractive in a show where the entire cast was attractive and there's little commentary on appearances, so this felt like a big (and somewhat funny) discovery to me. XD

I also found it interesting that the Chinese text is very straightforward and plain about the kind of bows/etiquette the characters are performing, and how much it felt revealing (or perhaps obscuring?) of their perceptions of each other's stations. (I don't think this is unique to Nirvana in Fire, it's just that it's my first time reading a cnovel that's not set in the modern day and it's been fascinating.)

[x_los]

Oh interesting, I'd have appreciated a tl footnote on that re: the bows bc it feels like a sizeable loss of context.

[halfcactus]

It was really just these two (with a disclaimer that I am neither a native speaker or familiar at all with Chinese etiquette):

1) 晚輩禮: a junior’s bow (to someone senior), which is how MCS greets Xie Yu, I think as a gesture of respect to someone older.

2) 半禮: literally half bow, I guess? When someone of notable rank acknowledges someone lower or younger than them. This how Xie Yu returns MCS’s bow.