Chinese Drama: Real History & Songs

“Smoke Opium and Stay Quiet”: The Jiang Family of Gold Leaf, and Filial Piety Without Blood Introduction The Taiwanese drama Gold Leaf (茶金) takes its inspiration from a real tea merchant: Jiang Axin (1901–1982) of Beipu, Hsinchu. But you cannot tell this family’s story with Jiang Axin alone. Put his father and his daughter’s husband beside him, and a shape appears. None of the three was born a Jiang. All three were brought into the house from outside, by adoption,…

The Lesser Jade: Huanbi, the Sister Who Was a Servant This is the companion piece promised in “[The Real Prince Guo (Yunli)]” — a look at the historical model behind Huanbi. Her model is Prince Guo’s dijin, his primary consort. And the historical primary consort is said to have come from a family connected to the clan of Zhen Huan’s own model, Empress Xiaoshengxian — or to the line of the Ulanara empress. (Accounts of her clan differ; see “[The…

The Chinese historical drama *Empresses in the Palace* (甄嬛伝) won a huge following — and the name of its heroine, “Zhen Huan” (甄嬛), in fact carries a deep literary background and an aesthetic all its own. This time, let’s trace where this beautiful name comes from, back through classical poetry.  The image of beauty folded into the surname “Zhen” The surname “Zhen” (甄) calls to mind Zhen Mi (甄宓, zhēn mì), the peerless beauty of the late Han. Zhen Mi…

Was Ruyi a Real Person? Short answer Yes. Ruyi is based on a real woman: Lady Nara (1718–1766), the second empress of the Qianlong Emperor, known to history as the Step Empress (继皇后). Her real name was not Ruyi. In 1765 she cut her hair during the emperor’s southern tour, lost his favor, and died the next year — the only Qing empress never given a posthumous title. The same woman also appears as Consort Xian in Story of Yanxi…

Four Words That Break What English Does to a Chinese Court — notes from translating a Warring States life I spent several weeks writing about a woman who rose from the entertainer households of Handan to become Queen Dowager of Zhao, and then helped destroy the state by having its finest general killed. She died around 228 BCE. History calls her the Chang Consort. Writing her in Japanese was difficult. Writing her in English turned out to be a different…

Wei Yingluo in Real Life: Who Was Wei Jiashi?” Was Wei Yingluo a real person? Yes. The heroine of Story of Yanxi Palace (sometimes spelled Wei Ying Luo) is based on a real woman: Qianlong’s Consort Ling, Wei Jiashi (1727–1775). So is Wei Yanwan, the villainess of Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace: two dramas, one historical person. She rose from a bondservant family to Imperial Noble Consort, gave birth to the future Jiaqing Emperor, and was made empress only…

*The “golden lotus steps” scene in the hit drama Story of Yanxi Palace looks like pure invention. But pull on that single thread of fiction and something remarkable happens: almost the entire historical skeleton turns out to be real. What starts as a piece of palace mischief opens straight onto the deepest question in my whole series — what it actually meant to be a conquest dynasty, caught between Han and Manchu, and how that boundary came to be drawn,…

> *This continues from [The Real Yunli, Prince Guo]. The romance and the revenge in the drama are fiction — but underneath them stands a woman who truly lived.*  The Real Woman Behind Zhen Huan  Introduction *Empresses in the Palace* (甄嬛伝), which aired in China in 2011, set off a wave that swept across Asia. Its heroine, Zhen Huan, still holds a firm place in viewers’ hearts as a kind of ideal — a woman people return to and admire.…

Two of the most beloved Chinese historical dramas — Empresses in the Palace (The Legend of Zhen Huan) and The Legend of Mi Yue — open and close each episode with songs that are far more than background music. In Chinese drama, the theme is a distilled statement of the whole story, and these are some of the finest ever written. Below is a short guide to each: what the song means, and the centuries-old poetry hidden inside it. (Each…

> Part of the C-drama song cluster.  it explains the song’s meaning rather than reproducing the lyrics. The older poems quoted (the Sixth Dalai Lama’s couplets and a Japanese court poem) are centuries old and freely quotable. — The 2011 Chinese time-travel romance Scarlet Heart (步步惊心, Bù Bù Jīng Xīn; based on Tong Hua’s novel, and known in Japan as Kyūtei Jokan Jakukei) is carried by a duet that aches from its first note: “Yi Nian Zhi Zhuo” (一念执着, “one…

  A note before we begin. The tragic love between Zhen Huan and Prince Guo shown here is the drama’s fiction. The real Yunli, Prince Guo, was a literary prince loyal to the Yongzheng Emperor, and his romance with Zhen Huan never happened in history (→ [The Real Yunli, Prince Guo]). This piece is about savoring the beauty of that story.  “Hongyan Jie” — The Curse of a Beautiful Face A monument of Chinese palace drama: Empresses in the Palace…

If you’ve watched Empresses in the Palace (the 2011 Chinese palace drama also known as The Legend of Zhen Huan), you’ve heard “Feng Huang Yu Fei” (凤凰于飞) — the haunting closing theme sung by Liu Huan. To me, it isn’t a song about the throne at all. It’s the secret love song of Prince Guo and Zhen Huan. A note for first-time viewers Empresses in the Palace follows Zhen Huan, a young woman who enters the harem of the Yongzheng…