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Having a lot of fun playing Honkai Star Rail at the moment. The game is packed full of Sci-Fi references and while some of them are easy and expected, others are not.
WH 40k is a widely known setting, but I really never expected Star Rail to draw so heavily from it. Tyranids? Check! Astral beacon? Kinda check. Psychic powers? You bet!
I’m still on Jarilo-VI, but from what I glimpsed of the Xianzhou, those people are basically Eldari. Pictured above is an Eldari Craftworld, because that’s exactly what 仙舟 “罗浮”, the “Luofu celestial boat” is. The more I think about it, the more entertaining it gets. Is Lan the Hunt just straight up Ynnead?..
UPD: Oh, this is neat! Xianzhou is definitely a reference to 神舟 (Shénzhōu, “Divine Boat”), an actual Chinese spacecraft! I guess that connection is quite obvious for Chinese players, but not so much for everyone else. I’m glad I caught that, it’s a really cool detail.
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I try not to complain too much, but when it comes to simplified Chinese I can’t help it, I have to complain a little. So the process of simplification was started by CCP to promote literacy, and with written language as complex as Chinese it was kinda necessary. Simplified characters also weren’t conjured out of thin air, they are based on Chinese cursive script (草書, cǎoshū) and handwritten forms already in use. It’s not really my place to criticize, but man, do I dislike some of those simplified 汉字. Is it because I studied Japanese first? I mean maybe, but still!
I mean look at the examples. Since I mentioned 草書, take 书〔書〕shū, “book” . Traditional form is 書, which, if you know your radicals, is very easy to understand: a “writing implement” (聿) and “to speak” (曰), with the latter being open to interpretation, maybe it’s a sheet of paper with a written line on it. But the simplified form, 书? What even is that? And examples are many. Take 奶〔-/嬭〕nǎi, “milk”. The original form is very clearly a depiction of woman milking a cow. Simplified form just turns it into a woman with a squiggly line. 车〔車〕chē, “vehicle, cart” was always easy to remember. But what is this simplified form? Ugh.
Final example I want to look at is 音乐〔-樂〕yīnyuè, “music”. Apart from the simplified form being straight ugly, what’s interesting is that, in Japanese, the word for music was simplified as well, but in a different way. “Music” in Japanese is 音楽, おんがく, 樂 was simplified here as well, but only slightly and it still retains its imagery. I must say I much prefer this option (and I hope I won’t end up with a mishmash of languages inside my head).
Well, I guess that was enough complaining. Or maybe not, we’ll see!
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Haven’t posted anything in a while, on account of drowning in stuff to do. However, I’m still studying Chinese! In fact, kinda struggling doing so at the moment.
Having finished with phonetics and radicals we moved on to language practice, and that’s where the true hardcore started. Learning new words is a nightmare, they are too short and seem too similar, hardly anything sticks. Obviously, the only way forward is to keep at it, but still. It’s easy to see why studying Chinese on your own is so difficult, it would take tremendous amounts of self-control.
Well, on a more interesting note. Two words I’ve chosen to feature in this post are 介绍〔-紹〕 jièshào, “to introduce, present, recommend” and 高兴〔-興〕gāoxìng, “be glad, happy”. Both phrases used widely in general introcutory speech. I had real trouble remembering those. But then I decided to decosntruct them a little. If we take half of each: 绍 (紹), shào, “to carry on, continue” and 兴 (興), xīng, “to prosper, prevail”, we’ll get 绍兴〔紹興〕Shàoxīng, a city in Zhejiang province!
Shaoxing, apart from being ancient and picturesque, is also the home of famous Shaoxing wine. This particular rice wine is used extensively in cooking, and, oh, people drink it too I guess. So here’s another picture of Shaoxing, because it’s so beautiful!
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Still going through the radicals and we’re getting to all the color 汉字. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Darker than BLACK -黒の契約者, one of my all time favourite anime shows.
In DtB some of the main characters, the members of the Syndicate, use Chinese words as codenames. I was quite surprised to learn that voice actors in the anime are pretty much spot on when it comes to pronunciation, including the tones. It’s pretty neat!
So we have Hei, which is 黑, hēi, “black” (note a rare instance of a Japanese Kanji being the simplified one, since it’s 黒, kuro). Then we have Yin: 银 (trad. 銀), yín, “silver”. Huang is 黄 (黃), huáng, “yellow” and Mao is 猫 (貓), māo, which is literally a “cat”.
Ah, Darker than Black. I miss it so. It really was unique.
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I finally decided to read Tsutomu Nihei’s Biomega! It was an interesting experience finally reading something new from Nihei (instead of re-reading Blame! for a n-th time, like I normally do). Biomega definitely felt rushed by the end and the overall story is mighty confusing, but still, it was an enjoyable ride (hehe). It was also not a rehash of Blame!, which is definitely a good thing.
The protagonist of the manga is Zoichi Kanoe, an artificial human created by Toa Heavy Industries. He does fill a similar role to that of Killy, - he is the protector of humankind. He is also one very sad boi. But hey, he’s a sad robot, my favourite type!
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This pic from Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (新蜀山劍俠) is basically me coming to a startling realization that a good half of my favourite Chinese movies aren’t actually in Mandarin Chinese, but in Cantonese. I mean it should’ve been obvious, in hindsight, I knew they were Hong Kong cinema, but I guess I never truly paid attention.
Gods, I feel dumb! In some cases movies have 2 dubs, one in Mandarin and one in Cantonese and I have absolutely no idea which one I even watched!
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As I’m struggling with some of the most complex radicals, here’s a little note on red. Radical #155 is 赤, chì, “red”. It’s quite familiar to me, because 赤 is “akai”, red in Japanese. What was entirely unexpected is that, apparently, in modern China the word most often used to say “red” isn’t 赤 at all, but rather 红 (tradit.: 紅), hóng! And then it hit me that I should’ve at least suspected, since “hóng” is part of the name of Da Hong Pao, one of China’s most famous teas!
大红袍, dàhóngpáo, literally means “The big red robe”. The Chinese name is comprised of thee 汉字: 大, dà, “big”, 红 (tradit.: 紅) hóng, “red”, and 袍, páo, “robe”. The last 汉字 is also notable because it has in it the alternative form of radical 衣, yī, “clothing”, which I’m kinda struggling with. So there we have it, Big Red Robe. Furthermore, I knew for quite a while that what Europeans call Black tea is called Red tea in China. And there we have that same 汉字 again: 红茶, hóngchá, literally red tea.
And to go with all my ramblings, here’s a picture of Fukengaku, because his Evolution skin always reminded me of the legend of Da Hong Pao.
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A throwback to that time several years ago when we went to see a Chinese stage play about Sīmǎ Qiān (司馬遷, simpl. 司马迁. c. 145 – c. 86 BC), China’s most famous historiographer. That play was absolutely amazing. Honestly, from what I saw of modern Asian theatre, it’s cool as hell. “Sima Qian” was an absolute pleasure to watch: moving, thought-provoking, with great visuals, music and costumes.
And speaking of Sima Qian, one thing I’m really struggling with in my pinyin studies are the exceptions, the syllables that aren’t pronounced quite the same way as they are written. The most problematic ones are definitely the -ian group. The worst thing is there are plenty of famous names that have -ian syllables in them, and we’re basically mispronouncing them all the time. For example, Sima Qian is actually pronounced more like “Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien” (using Wade-Giles), but I’m so used to the incorrect version of the name that it’s a real struggle to remember what it’s actually supposed to be like. Have to be constantly paying attention to that one.
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