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In a totally unexpected moment of fandom collision, I have just learned from John Finnemore’s substack post on Pictures of Giraffes in Order of How Sure I Am the Artist Has Ever Seen a Giraffe* that in Chinese mythology the mythical qilin is said to appear at - get this, NiF fans - the start of the reign of a “wise, auspicious and legitimate emperor.”** No wonder Prince Yu and the Crown Prince were falling over each other to get to Langya Hall first. And who topped the Langya List of Marketing Directors that year, I wonder?

*Unfortunately, I am not a subscriber, so I didn't get to see more than the Pictures By an Artist John Finnemore is Fairly Sure Has Seen a Giraffe (Even If a Few Details Are Slightly Off), but the commentary was still so funny I had to take myself off into another room so I could have hysterics in peace.

**Obviously this reference goes even more right over your head if the subs you are watching choose to translate "qilin*** talent" as Divine Talent.

***The qilin, as I learned from John Finnemore, is a "horse-dragon with fish scales" that looks a tiny bit like a giraffe if you squint hard. Which means that, amazingly, a vampire yeti is not the silliest creature in Mei Changsu's portfolio.




“Tell me honestly, do you like it? Or should I go back to spots?

"The giraffe Shen Du definitely saw was the giraffe sent to the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty early in the fifteenth century.

"But, you might ask, if Shen Du definitely saw that giraffe, why did he give it overlapping hexagons instead of patches and spots? Well, who can say. Of course, if a giraffe did have overlapping hexagons, like a fish’s scales, then that would make it even more certain that it was not in fact a giraffe at all, but a qilin, the legendary Chinese horse-dragon with fish scales that appears at the start of the reign of a wise, auspicious and legitimate ruler. Kind of like how the Yongle Emperor, who has just now started ruling, is wise and auspicious and very legitimate indeed, and it’s a real shame about his elder brother being caught in that palace fire, and the Yongle Emperor is very cut up about that, actually, and only wishes he'd known his brother was in the palace when he set light to it. But he didn’t know that, as the prompt appearance at court of this approving qilin makes clear, so let’s all stop talking about it, shall we?" (John Finnemore)

Fei Liu is at the training fields, and of course MCS wants to go there, too. That’s definitely a glimpse of Young Marshal Lin Shu we get when MCS tells Prince Jing how disappointed he is by the lack of discipline in his army. I bet he’s really genuinely shocked. I mean, you vanish for a mere 13 years and your friend forgets everything you ever taught him. He looks really pissed off as he swans out. And I bet Jingyan is thinking how dispappointed Lin Shu would be if he could see him now. The whole sequence is a great bit of storytelling, made even stronger by the fact that Qi Meng isn’t even a baddy, just misguided. He’s SO sorry that he got Prince Jing in trouble.

We meet Tong Lu and it’s evident from this scene that MCS is lying through his teeth when he later tells Jingyan that he’s holding Tong Lu’s mother as a hostage, because the entire Tong family evidently regards themselves as forever in MCS’s debt.

Prince Yu not only wears a robe with golden dragons on it, he also sits on a chair that has woodwork behind it that looks startling similar to his dad’s golden wall in the throne room. It’s no wonder Xiao Xuan doesn’t trust him, even without his backstory. The Crown Prince is much more the sort of person he wants in the position of successor and to hell with what happens to the country once this incompetent is on the throne.

We also get to see more of Li Gang and Gong Yu, both of whom I Love. Li Gang was a favourite from the beginning – he’s SUCH an unlikely Jianghu hero – but Gong Yu grew on me over time. I used to find her passivity irritating, but when you look closely, that perfect face isn’t blank at all, it’s just that, as a woman in ancient China with none of the freedoms enjoyed by General Mu or Officer Xia Dong or even Concubine Jing, she has to keep herself small and graceful and (apparently) passive. I note that running a brothel is pretty much the only way a woman can successfully operate in this world of the three mentioned, Maoyin Court, Red Sleeves House and the other one, two are actually espionage headquarters. And Gong Yu has come to the other one to stand in for the supposedly sick twins, so she clearly does in fact do sex work as well as play instruments. She doesn’t look as if she enjoys that part of the job, either.

Prince Yu chases after Prince Jing and sucks up to him. The subtitles this time say that Prince Jing has consorts, not merely a consort, when Prince Yu says the silk is for his wives. Chinese doesn’t have plurals so it’s up to the translator to decide, but I also wonder if there’s a three-way difference between wives, consorts and concubines? I’d always assumed consorts were like wives, with one of them being the main wife, and concubines were kept (in every sense of the word) women the man wasn’t actually married to.
And finally we meet Prince Ji. He’s so revolting in this scene that I can never feel sympathy for him later on when his intelligence and kindness are revealed. The way he drools over the musician’s “little hands” is just vile.

I was away this weekend so I didn't have time to write down any thoughts but these two episodes, but to things struck me: (1) we get our first mention of Nie Feng, when the harried magistrate receives a report of a beast terrifying villagers, and (2) Mei Changsu rubs his fingers together when he's trying to convince Prince Yu not tp block Prince Jing's investigation of the Duke of Qing. It's amazing how carefully plotlines are seeded in NiF. I particularly like the second one because it shows that MCS hasn't turned up with al his arguments down pat, he's having to think his way through the conversation with Prince Yu as it happens.

I'll watch episode 10 tonight.

I was listening to Cabin Pressure this morning and got to the bit where Douglas is so jealous of Herc that he starts shouting “I am the supreme commander of this vessel!” and suddenly realises he’s turning into Martin. And it struck me, like a bolt of transcendental lightning, that the person who should be charged with writing the Nirvana in Fire sequels is … John Finnemore! Infinitely complex plotting? Check! (see Souvenir Programme 9 if Cabin Pressure doesn't convince you). Profound psychological insight? Check! Expert trolling? Check!

It's lucky there’s only Zurich left to go as I'm now stuck with the mental image of Douglas as Mei Changsu.

I enjoyed this episode but I don’t have anything new to say about it, except that when Mr Shisan was being sad because Mei Changsu looks nothing like Lin Shu, I suddenly remembered that part of the whole Confucian filial piety thing is that you’re not allowed to do any body modifications, because your body was given to you by your parents. You aren’t even allowed to cut your hair, which is why all the men have those amazing top knots. So Lin Shu’s changed appearance is not just weird and unsettling, it breaks a major cultural and religious taboo. When Consort Jing finally meets him and cries because “you used to look so like your parents”, she isn’t being massively tactless, as I used to think, she’s acknowledging the enormity of his sacrifice. And I think this is why MCS tells Mr Shisan, right after his outburst of sorrow, that his mother would be grateful for all Shisan has done for him. He’s trying to establish that the filial connection hasn’t been broken by his changed appearance.

MCS is certainly trying very hard to let EVERYONE know that he and Gong YU are NOT an item, no matter how many sachets of perfume she sends (is it just me or is Mr Shisan being a bit suggestive when he tells MCS the perfume will give him "sweet dreams?"). Earlier we had Consort Jing stitching pouches as a way of getting touch with Liyang, and now we have Gong Yu trying to communicate with MCS via embroidery - everything is just so much harder for the women.

The episode also contains one of my favourite lines, the one where Meng Zhi tells MCS to build a tunnel so he can have a secret rendezvous with Prince Jing and MCS says "Isn't there another way you could put that?" I have nothing new to say about it, but it deserves an honourable mention for being so funny.

Oh, one more thing. Li Gang says, after the assassins have attacked, that a snowy night is good for murder. Apparently in Chinese culture snow is a symbol of corruption because it covers everything up, so when Jingrui walks off through the falling snowflakes, it isn't just because that makes the scene look pretty. I find it really hard to overcome my Western association of snow with purity and beauty, which just goes to show how deeply ingrained these things are. I assume the snow imagery makes the scene hit a lot harder for Chinese viewers.

How far is everybody else with the episodes? I don't want to go charging ahead leaving everyone panting after, but I also don't want to drop behind if people are starting to binge-watch.

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I think my favourite part of this episode is Mu of the Yard going around making enquiries into how all her rescuers happened to show up at Zhaoren Palace at the right time. I bet that even when she was thanking Prince Yu, she took the opportunity to slip in a couple of leading questions. She has a suspect in mind already – no doubt it wasn’t just the fact that MCS cared enough to have her rescued but that the person he asked for help from was Jingyan that got that bloodhound nose sniffing again. Her surprise when Prince Jing says it was Meng Zhi who sent him is hilarious. Then the two of them go off together to make enquiries of the Commander, who soon cracks under their combined probing. It’s such a shame we don’t get more scenes of Nihuang and Jingyan working together.

I don’t have any new observations about either Prince Yu’s confidence that he’s now got MCS on his side, nor the crucial meeting between MCS and Prince Jing to “set the rules.” I will say, though, that I can see why on first viewing I had such a hard time trusting MCS. He has inscrutability down to a fine art. Of course, with hindsight you can see all the little cracks and twitches that indicate Deep Emotions going on underneath the surface, but when you don’t, he seems entirely reserved, and this, as Frank Churchill says in Emma, “is a most repulsive quality, indeed […] There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”

Xia Dong comes back with all the evidence needed to damn the Duke of Qing, but she’s also found out about Tianquan Manor’s involvement in the escape of the slaves, so Xie Yu decides the world would be better off without her. Once again, I am consumed with resentment that Xia Dong wasn’t cast age-appropriately. It looks just ridiculous when Jingrui says that she taught Yujin when he was a child.

I’m bad at noticing what’s going on in fight scenes, so it took me until this rewatch to realise that Xia Dong is only pretending to be badly hurt the whole time in order to draw out one particular attacker. It also occurred to me, as we see the black-clad assassins come ninjing out of the river in slow motion, to wonder what on earth they were doing in the river in the first place. They haven’t swum across it, because their clothes are dry. Perhaps they spent most of their cultivation time learning how to dry wet clothes with their qi, because they can’t be very good at fighting if even Yujin can beat them.

Xia Dong is very impressive as she savagely beats a tooth out of the fallen assassin to find his cyanide capsule. Credit where it’s due, the actress does a good job here. Covered in blood, the man coughs out a confession that it was Prince Yu who sent them. The audience knows this a bare-faced lie, but will Xia Dong believe him? Tune in for the next episode to find out…

This is such an edge-of-your-seat episode.
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Episode three and now things get really exciting. Nihuang’s intervention when the eunuch beating Tingsheng insults Prince Jing is brilliant (and of course it would be Consort Yue who sends arseholes to oversee the children of the servants’ prison). The three-way scene between her, MCS and Prince Jing over Tingsheng is even better. Prince Jing is so cold and hostile to MCS and Nihuang is already inserting herself between them, turning Jingyan’s questions back on him whenever he probes MCS too hard. She’s already decided that she and MCS are on the same side, whatever that may turn out to be. And asking the Emperor to appoint Su Zhe to oversee the written examination was a genius move on her part. She’s tag-teaming MCS, whether he wants it or not.

Commander Meng is very Mengish and commandery when he sees off Mu Qing's boyfriend-tester, and we also learn that he and MCS have had an ongoing correspondence for many years. But Meng, like the audience, still doesn't know what really went down with Chiyan army and MCS says we'll all have to wait until the time is right. Meng also lets us know that MCS's appearance has changed completely because of an illness. Really, this time around I suspect Meng's function is primarily expository, either through telling us what he knows or asking questions about what he (and we) don't know, so it's lucky they picked the perfect actor for the role (I have a mental list of NiF characters sub-divided according to whether the actor is utterly perfect for the part (MCS, Nihuang etc.), very good but not perfect (Emperor, Consort Jing etc.), or terrible (Xia Jiang). Obviously there are also actors who are just good or just adequate but they're not as interesting as the extremes. NiF has an astonishingly high proportion of perfect actors, and not just in the main roles).

I notice that when Mu Qing complains about Baili Qi’s looks, Nihuang asks him when he learned to judge a person by their looks. Has she been pondering whether MCS's appearance might be deceptive, I wonder? At all events, it’s a very fair point and I’m glad at least someone at this court is willing to argue that looks aren’t everything. For all her philosophical attitude, though, the poor girl looks sooo onervous when Baili Qi starts demolishing Jingrui at the dinner.

I love all of Mu Qing’s scenes but especially the one where he barges into Snow Cottage and displays a shocking lack of etiquette in interrupting all of MCS's polite bows. Judging by MCS’s face, he hasn’t been this surprised by anyone since the Grand Dowager Empress called him Xiao Shu.

It's so clever the way the plot appears to thicken around the marriage tournament when really it’s thickening around “How will MCS get Tingsheng out of the servant’s prison?” Nihuang’s tag-teaming is working, judging by the glances she and MCS exchange. And MCS, who I note in the previous episode gave his tray of tournament food to Fei Liu, demonstrates his mastery of trolling-by-orange.

And finally I find myself thinking that the pregnant Liyang must have thought the gods were smiling on her when the plague broke out in Jinling and enabled her to escape Xie Yu’s house for the birth of her bastard child. Did she, I wonder, also see the hand of the gods in the arrival of Madame Zhuo and befriend her with the deliberate intention of somehow swapping babies?

On to episode two! I love these early, Nihuang-heavy episodes, when the action is still all quiet and domestic and we begin to discover the pre-existing relationships between the characters. Xia Dong, Nihuang and Prince Jing all tangled up in a complex web of friendship and hostility; Prince Yu and the Crown Prince, endlessly squabbling in ways that show just how alike they are, while their different reactions to the discovery of MCS’s identity creates the firm impression that Prince Yu, for all his faults, is the better of the two.

I love the first appearance of Mu Qing, overcome with outrage at the low standard of his sister’s suitors. Oh all right, I love everything about Mu Qing all through the show, but it’s a particularly satisfying entrance. I also love watching Jingrui’s face as Prince Yu and the Crown Prince fall over each other to suck up to MCS. Of course, he doesn’t know about the messages from Langya Hall that make MCS’s favour such a desirable prize, so it’s a complete mystery to him why they keep trying to shove expensive gifts in his face.

The Emperor gives us the first glimpses of his true self in amongst all the avuncularity when he explains to Gao Zhan why he wants to marry Nihuang off – it’s Prince Qi all over again; he knows Nihuang and he knows she’s loyal, but just the fact that she could rebel if she wanted to makes her intolerable to him. And he shows us his nasty side again in his Catch 22 treatment of poor Prince Jing. For Gao Zhan watchers, there’s a flicker of dissent in both his observation to the Emperor that Nihuang could only marry someone extraordinary, and, of course, in his tactful reminder that Prince Jing is still waiting outside.

This time around I watched the scene with the Grand Dowager Empress from Nihuang’s point of view. In spite of what she tells Liyang, she’s always been curious about MCS, ever since she recognised Wei Zheng and figured out that he’d been sent by the Jiangzuo Alliance, but I don’t think she ever suspected for a moment that Lin Shu was its leader, or even that he’d survived the massacre. When MCS shows up in the hall, she’s very, very interested, but not in a hopeful way. And then the Grand Dowager calls him “Xiao Shu” and her whole brain lights up. Watching that scene play out, I think she’s onto him from the moment he grabs her hand, but her confidence in her theory is knocked when MCS very plausibly says that he did it because he didn’t want to offend the Dowager.

I note that when Nihuang and MCS comes across the eunuch beating Tingsheng, Nihuang has no idea who the boy is, she intervenes because she’s that kind of person, not because of any loyalty to his father.

Most significant of all, right here, in the very second episode, we get the first mention of the all-important hazelnut pastries.