Who is the More Tragic Lan Wangji, The Book One or The Drama One?

Check out my video on this topic HERE

The Untamed has finished airing for over a month, though I feel for many lovers of this show, the story is long from being over.

On the internet in China, there’s a sentence that pops up all the time when it comes to Mo Dao Zu Shi or The Untamed,

“问灵十三载，等一人不归人“

meaning “asking the spirit for 13 years, waiting for a person who would not return”. As Lan Wangji can communicate with spirits with his Qin, for the years between Wei Wuxian’s death and his re-birth, it’s not hard to imagine Lan would most likely have played his qin many times in an attempt to talk to Wei’s spirit. Although this “playing qin to talk to your dead lover” plot never took place in the book,  this line becomes a fan favourite “summary line” of the relationship between these two lead characters.

Though The Untamed followed very closely to the novel, one major difference between them lies in the sequences of events , creating the 13 years gap in the novel, and the 16 years gap in the drama.

In the drama, Lan Wangji was present at Wei Wuxian’s demise. He took part in the big battle and watches Wei Wuxian fell to his death. It is afterwards that the 33 whips on his back took place which incapacitated him for 3 years.

In the book, Lan Wanji got his whipping after the battle of Nightless City. He saved Wei Wuxian by injuring 33 elders of the Lan clan, resulting in him getting 33 whips as his punishment. It took him 3 years to recover from the injury, during which time he overheard that Wei Wuxian had died at the Burial Mounds.

So for the book Lan Wangji, techinically, he suffered three years less pain of “losing” his love, whereas the drama Lan Wangji had the full 16 years torture of knowing that his true love is dead and gone.

But then, who would be the sadder Lan Wangji. I try to slip into his shoes and imagine if both versions took place in my life, how I might have felt for each one. 

And my conclusion is, probably, the book Wangji.

Although the drama Wangji had three years more to suffer, at least he was there in Wei Wuxian’s last moments. He held his hand and tried to rescue him, he heard him saying “let me go” and he knew at least Wei Wuxian died knowing Lan Wangji truly cared about him.

When you know someone is dead and gone, no matter how painful it might be, death is merciful in the way that it is final, assured, leaves no room for argument or false hope. When Lan Wangji got whipped to a human pâté, he could at least take his physical wounds together with his mental wounds into his long period of seclusion, which essentially gave him all the privacy he needed to grieve on his own.

But for the book Lan Wangji, it’s not hard to imagine during however much time of not being able to get out of Cloud Recesses, he must be dying to see Wei Wuxian. While lying there in excruciating pain, he must have also been tortured mentally by the sense of longing. Yet eventually the reality that greeted him was such a cruel one. All those accumulated emotions were rendered irrelevant, never to be expressed to their intended receiver. Lan Wangji didn’t even get to say goodbye, didn’t know what exactly took place on the day Wei Wuxian died. He only needed to think about any one of those past days, remembering at that moment Wei Wuxian was still very much alive, if only he could be by his side.

That, must be a total nightmare to go through, and upon hearing the news of Wei Wuxian’s death, the world around Lan Wangji at the were all cheering for the death of YiLing Patriarch, as the second young lord of the Lan Clan, a perfect role model for all the cultivation clans to follow, he literally just got the worst blow in his life and he couldn’t even show it.

Life is very unkind to the book Lan Wangji indeed.

I want to give the book Wangji a big hug just by thinking through all this, although he’d probably kick me through a wall before I could even stick my arms out.

In life, perhaps many things are better left “un-thought-through”, just to avoid the amount of pain a careful analysis could have caused.

Today, is another day to sigh for Lan Wangji.

The Names of Their Weapons

This time let’s take a look at the main characters’s weapons in The Untamed, you might have noticed they all have unique names. Naming your weapon is not a rare practice across many cultures, the most famous weapons recorded in history are known to us today mostly due to the fact that like people, they had names.

In The Untamed, the author didn’t forget to give unique names to the main characters’ weapons. Let’s begin with our two leads Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan.

Wei Wuxian’s sword is named 随便，the word means “whatever”, the “I don’t really care” “this is ok that is good too” type of “whatever”. It could also mean being careless, willful or casual. In Chinese you often hear this word used in sentences such as “what do you want for dinner？“ ”随便“, which means I have no preference, anything would do.

This name is a quite perfect reflection of Wei Wuxian’s personality, who is quite carefree, spontaneous and rebelious.

Later when he can no longer use his sword as the main weapon, he uses a bamboo flute called 陈情, which is also what the title of the drama is based on. 陈, means state or declare, 情 means circumstances, situations, it could also mean emotions. To talk about the situation, to express emotion would be the meaning of this flute’s name. This is also a very carefully designed name as a sort of comment on how he is unable to fully disclose his sufferings and reasons for giving up his sword.

Lan Wangji’s sword is called 避尘， 避means avoid, 尘means dust, so the meaning here is pretty straightforward, avoid dust. Obviously this is not to be understood in a literal sense, 避尘 is the good will and hope for the owner of the sword to stay away from the corruptive forces of the world and always keeps his integrity.

Lan Wangji’s Qin is also name Wangji, as I’ve explained in a previous video/blog post, it means forgetting trickery and manipulation.

Jiang cheng’s sword is named 三毒, three posions. I know it sounds pretty scary but this is based in buddhism, where the three poison 贪嗔痴， greed, aversion and ignorance keep you trapped in samsara. His parents gave the name to his sword, hoping he’d be able to cut through the three poisons with his sword, and we all know how well that worked.

He also owns his mothers’s lightening whip, which is named 紫电， meaning purple lightening.

Lan Xichen, the brother of Lan Wangji, owns a sword named 朔月, which is an ancient term for new moon. His 箫, the vertically played flute, is named 裂冰， meaning cracking/cracked ice.

As for Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng’s nephew, his sword is inherited from his father, which is named 岁华. 岁 means age, 华 here would mean time. In literature and poetic writings, the word means the time, often in a sense of lamenting its passage. Somehow this really remains me of a line from Thomas Hardy’s poem During Wind and Rain：

Ah, no; the years, the years;

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

Another pair of male roles in this drama is Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan. Xiao Xingchen’s sword is called 霜华. 霜 means frost, 华, as a character with multiple accents as well as meanings, can mean both flower and glowing light. 霜华 as a word can mean both frost crystals or the cold and brilliant shine coming from a sharp blade. 

Song Lan’s sword is call 拂雪， meaning brushing snow. Clearly these two names are designed as a pair with the relationship of their owners in mind.

Xue Yang, the trouble maker to mess up this relationship, what about his really cool two parted sword? The nameof this weapon is 降灾. Interestingly enough, 降 has multiple pronunciations, making this word reasonable for being jiang zai as well as xiang zai. 灾 means disaster, jiang means descend, xiang means make something yield. So the word can mean either causing disaster, or forcing disasters to yield, the two different meanings happen to be the opposite of each other. We can look at this clever naming as a metaphor for the twisted personality and great inner conflict of Xue Yang.

Jin Guangyao’s sword, is named 恨生， hating to be born, I guess that really can’t be more explicit as a representation of the character’s life story.

Finally, for Nie Mingjue，the elder brother of Nie Huaisang， his sabre is called 霸下. This is one of many names of a mythological creature that is said to be one of the nine sons of dragon. It looks like a giant tortoise, and you can see its sculpture in many ancient historical sites as the creature carrying a stone tablet on its back.

In this contemporary existence, we don’t seem to care that much about naming the things we own anymore, but just like I’ve said in my ming, zi hao video, there’s nothing stopping us from adding a bit imagination and romanticism to our life, starting with naming the things that we love most or use most often. I mean I do have a hard drive called pumpkin… if that counts.

Places of The Untamed - Where They Are in The Real World

Click here for the video

It might come to you as a surprise that where the characters come from in the drama are real places in China. Although the drama is based on a xian xia web novel, which means ghosts, curses, talisman, quantum weapons of sheer potentiality and a total disregard of physics are all well accepted, the sets and locations where the story takes place are based on very real places that you can go and visit today.

The five main families in this drama are:

云梦江氏，The Jiang Clan of Yun Meng

姑苏蓝氏，The Lan Clan of Gu Su

兰陵金氏，The Jin Clan of Lan Ling

岐山温氏，The Wen Clan of Qi Shan

And 清河聂氏，The Nie Clan of Qing He.

Let me take you through the list and show you where these places are.

The Jiang Clan of Yun Meng is the home of Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. In the book it’s described as a place of many lakes that are filled with lotus flower. Wu Wuxian’s favourite food is Jiang Yanli’s pork rib and lotus root soup. The drama also features expansive water surface and the lotus flower at this location.

Yun Meng in today’s China, is located somewhere in Hu Bei Province. This name has a history of over 1400 years, although no longer used today, the fact that the ancient site would be somewhere within this province is not disputed.

Yun Meng Lake is a historical large lake that was said to be over 40,000 square kilometres at its peak, although these days it has disappeared completely. As the book describes Yun Meng is a place with many lakes, it could well be the contemporary provincial capital, Wuhan. If you are familiar with Chinese dramaland, you might already realized that this is the home town of actors such as Zhu Yilong and Wang Kai. 

Wuhan is a very important city along the Yangtze River, and it has a very famous locate dish - hot and dry noodles. If you ever traveled there, be sure to try it out.

Now let’s look at where our other lead character Lan Zhan comes from.

The Lan Clan of Gu Su. Gu Su is a name that is still familiar to contemporary Chinese ears, which refers to Suzhou.

Suzhou is only half an hour’s high speed train ride from the mega city Shanghai, located in East China. Suzhou has a very rich and colourful history, as one of the most renowned historical cities in China, especially regarding producing highly cultured scholars through many dynasties. 

Since I said a few things about Yun Meng…. Well, Suzhou’s food can be summed up in one word - Sweet. Everything is sweet, literally, every dish you can possibly come across will have some added sugar in it. So if you’re on a carb restricted diet, think twice before you visit.

This does get me thinking though, since Wuhan and Suzhou have such different taste in the culinary art, I wonder who calls the shot when it comes to what should we have for dinner between these two.

The third one on our list is The Jin Clan of Lan Ling. Lan Ling is the historical name for an area in current Shandong Province, close to today’s city of Linyi.

Although not a major metropolis today, this area used to be an extremely affluent historical location, producing some of the highest level Gentry Clans during Wei Jin Period. In the drama, the Jin Clan is described as the richest and proudest clan of all the major players in the story’s landscape, and this historical factor could be the reason why the writer decided to give this clan such a status.

The Wen Clan of Qi Shan, which made everyone’s life a hell in the early part of the drama is based in today’s Shaan Xi Province. Qi Shan, meanig Qi Mountain, is the name of a county in the province today, although the county is not a significant place in contemporary China, the capital of the province is one of the most famous historical cities in China, Xi’an. If you’ve been watching the longest day in Chang’an, you would know just how important this area had been in ancient China. 

As a province that hosted the capital city for many different dynasties, Shaan Xi has a wealth of cultural and historical riches for you to discover, perhaps most famously the terracotta soldiers of Qin. If you ever travel to this area, please go visit the provincial museum, it is in my opinion one of the best museums in China, and it hosts some of the most incredible artifacts dating thousands of years back.

Actor Bai Yu is from Shaan Xi, and I have absolutely NO CLUE why I mentioned him here.

What?

Well…

Finally let’s look at The Nie Clan of QIng He. Qing He meaning clear river, is a county in He Bei Province, and historically, Qinghe has also produced some very affluent Gentry Clans. He Bei in contemporary China often gets overshadowed by the fact that it encircles the capital city Beijing, which means Beijing has kind of taken all of its attention.

Historically, though, it was a very important area for breeding the culture of the Middle Kingdom. Cities such as Handan were once the most cultured city during the Warring State period.

There are many other locations mentioned in the drama and the book, they are mostly ancient names of places in China that still exist today. And by my guess, the ghost town Yi Cheng, judging by how it was described in the book, would be somewhere around my home town Chongqing.

Well, well, well, ghosts or not, the subplot line is in my opinion the best subplot line of the original novel.

Now you know where these places are in the real world, if you ever travel to China, try to hit one or two places on your way.

How Ancient Chinese Names Work - Learn from The Untamed

This is the blog version of Ep 17 of Avenue Xtra on Hotpot.tv, video is available to North American IP addresses.

Watch it Here

The Untamed, Chen Qing ling is without a question the most popular Chinese web drama in summer 2019. If you’ve gone through the episodes and paid a reasonable amount of attention, you might have noticed that everyone seems to have more than one names. Why is Wei Ying also Wei Wuxian, or Lan Zhan also Lan Wangji? What’s Han Guang Jun or Yi Ling Lao Zu, it’s …all so confusing.

Well, no need to panic, I’m here to help, by the end of this blog you’ll know the ins and outs of the art of naming a human being practiced for centuries in ancient china.

First, let’s get surname out of the way as it would remain unchanged throughout a person’s life, unless weird body swapping happens you are stuck with the one you’re born with.

The Chinese character for it is “姓“.

In China, as well as many other East Asian countries, surnames come first, for these people, the first Chinese characters in their names are their surnames.

Now let’s talk about three different types of given names that a person can have throughout their lifetime.

They are ”名“ (ming), ”字“ (zi), and “号” (hao).

Let’s take Lan Wangji for example, Zhan is his 名, Wangji is his 字, and Han Guang Jun is his 号. So he can be called as Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji or Han Guang Jun.

But what is the difference between these names?

You 名 is your first name given to you by your parents when you’re born. Your senior blood relatives, such as your parents or grandparents can always call you by that name throughout your life. The King/Emperor of your time and your teacher can also always call you by your 名, although they may not choose to do so. 名 is for people who are closest to you in life or people who have absolute seniority over you, once you become an adult, your ming is seldom used by people other than the ones  mentioned above, if a general acquaintance call you by your ming, it will be considered as rude and impolite.

This leads us to talk about the usage and purpose of 字. 字 is a name given to you when you become an adult. This applies to both male and female (male around age 20, female 15), although not everyone gets a 字, for well educated people with high social status, it is expected that you will get one. 字 is most commonly made up with two characters, and it often works as a further articulation of the meaning of your 名. Once you become an adult, most people will call you by your surname + your 字 to show you respect. Even your parents may often address you in this way, and when they suddenly switch to calling you by your 名, it could mean that you’re in trouble.

Now here comes the tricky part, as we all know, love and hate can walk on a very fine line. Calling an adult by his 名 can mean disrespect indeed,  but it could also be an expression of intimacy, since only the “insider” of this person’s circle can call him by 名.

Very early on in the drama, before Wei Wuxian got to know Lan Wangji well, he already started calling him Lan Zhan, which definitely won’t sit well with Lan Wangji, but since he hardly shows any facial expressions, we’ll just have to imagine how offended Mr. Lan actually was.

Once they got to know each well, most of the time they call each other by 名, especially when  they are alone, and during some pivotal moments of the show, the usage of  名 reveals their close relationship and heightened emotions.

On the contrary, Lan Wangji never calls Jiang Cheng by his 名, he only refers to him as Jiang Wanyin, Wanyin is Jiang Cheng’s 字. Now you might ask since calling a person by 名 can be disrespectful, therefore 字 is invented, then why when Lan Wangji is totally pissed by Jiang Cheng’s action, he would still use his 字? Well, I would say because the cold and proud Lan Wangji never considered Jiang Cheng as an insider or a close friend in any way, so he doesn't even want to utter his 名.

Now let’s talk about 号. 号 is also called 别字, meaning the other 字, as the name suggests, it’s like a second 字 that is used to show respect, but for a different purpose. 号 has no limit of characters used, it can often refer to where you’re from, what you do or what you aspire to. You can decide what your 号 is, and you can even have multiple ones. When people call you by your 号, it adds another layer of respect but also some distance.

In the drama you often hear the lower generation Lan clan boys calling Lan Wangji as Han Guang Jun, because they are a generation below, calling him by either his 名 or 字 would  be inappropriate. When you use someone’s 号, you don’t add their surname before it.

Some well known historical figures, for example, the most famous poet in Chinese literary history, Li Bai, Bai is his 名, Taibai is his 字, Qing Lian Ju Shi is his 号.

Let’s qucikly run through the meaning of our two leads’ names in this drama. 

Wei Ying,  Ying is his 名, meaning, baby; Wuxian is his 字, it comes from an ancient prose “喜乐无羡赏,忿怒无羡刑”, which means when you’re delighted don’t reward without restraint,  when you’re angry don’t punish without restraint. Wuxian here means exercise your power reasonably.

Wei Wuxian after his “fall of grace” is known as Ying Ling Lao Zu, he certainly didn’t make this one up for himself, and it’s a kind of infamous title that are not well meant. So technically it’s not his 号, but it functions similarly, used by people who dare not really call him by his 名 or 字. Yi Ling is where he gained his power and learned to control ghosts, Lao Zu means old ancestor (literal meaning).

As for Lan Wangji, his 名 is Zhan, meaning clear, used to describe the clarity of water or blue sky. Wangji also has its root in an ancient prose, which means forgetting trickeries or manipulation, so you could say the two leads’ 字 are kind of paired up.

Han Guang Jun is his 号. Han means containing or holding, Guang means light, Jun is a respectful term for a person, similar to calling someone gentleman.

Here are some of the other characters’ 名 and 字 in this drama, not all of them used the full set of their names in the drama, and some of those names only ever appeared the the web novel upon which he drama is based on.

Now you know the intricacy of traditional Chinese names, unfortunately, or fortunately, it really depends on how you look at the situation, this traditional is no longer used today. Although if you’re a poet, a writer, an artist or just love these cultural practices, there’s nothing stopping you take on he full set of 名,字,号. You can even have multiple 字 and 号 to your liking.

Wu Ji 无羁 The Untamed Title Song on Qin

Here is the music for Wu Ji on Qin adapted by me. It’s written in Qin’s particular system, and … well … you can’t get around it if you’re playing on Qin.