The last time I posted about Yue Xia Die Ying, I had just read one of her xianxia novels and really enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve read two more of her historical romances. TL,DR: two thumbs up.

The first one, Like Pearl and Jade, is a more serious, if low-key, drama with romance. Technically the female MC is a transmigrator, but this identity has zero impact on the story and is used only as a framing device. The story and romance are both quite good, and I like how the frequent small digs at the patriarchy build to (small) actions that improve the status of (some) women. This is about the same size as I Am Average and Unremarkable, or about half of Journey to the West.

The second one, though, this one is a delight. The half-again longer* The Times Spent in Pretense I can only describe as a Chinese analog of Georgette Heyer. Its tone is relatively light, despite a redonkulous number of assassination attempts,** with a sheen of satire. More to the point, the male MC is outright Heyeresque, one of her Mark II models by Heyer’s classification, and his several brothers are as eccentric as any Heyer cast.*** The female MC, meanwhile, spends most of the first half playing several roles that are funny enough in themselves, but that eventually start colliding with each other, resulting in comedy gold.

Unlike Like Pearl and Jade, its feminism is baked in from the start. The female MC’s parents are both generals and military heroes. Her mother in particular is a badass beauty, with adoring female fans who proposition her in public — behavior viewed as more déclassé than scandalous. Way less hetereonormative than usual for a straight romance from mainland China. Meanwhile the female MC’s initial life goal is to acquire an estate near the capital where she can “raise male pets,” i.e. collect a harem of consorts — and her family quietly supports this, as it’s not an unknown hobby for noblewomen, though not one that gets publicly flaunted. The differences from our history are highlighted by contrast with a neighboring kingdom with traditional NeoConfucian values, where they look down on this degenerate place (while being baffled at how happy and prosperous it is despite its grave moral lapses).

I am also greatly amused by a minor character, part of a rival’s girl posse, who makes repeated metatextual commentary based on genre tropes.

Possibly best of all, though, the female MC never fades into the background, as happens all too frequently in Chinese historical romances, but is an active plot participant all the way through the climax.

Both recommended, the second highly so.


* So about three-quarters of a Journey West.

** Spoiler: not a single assassin succeeds.

*** My favorite is the would-be artist. The female MC’s first reaction to one of his landscapes is “What on earth was this painting? A bunch of heavily inked blobs and lightly inked blobs mixing together as friends?” Which is funny enough, but eventually it comes out that everything about this scene are even more examples of pretenses.

---L.

Subject quote from …Ready For It?, Taylor Swift.

For Poetry Monday, more Japonisme from another early Modernist:

Muramadzu, Arthur Davison Ficke

A mouldering Buddha sits as warden
    Beside the ruined mossy gate.
    He must be rash, or strong with fate,
Who mounts unbidden to this garden.

The pine and cypress intertwining
    Cover the lotus-pool with shade.
    But where the ancient graves are laid,
A dreamy veil of sun is shining.

I do not know what shapes are here,
    Nor why the sun so strangely shines ....
    It is a place of ruined shrines ....
The distant wind is all I hear ....

What secret makes this place beguiling
    I know not; nor what visions lost
    Stir like a frail forgotten ghost
While Buddha’s lips are faintly smiling.


Fiske is better remembered as a Western authority on ukiyo-e prints than as a poet. This first appeared in a 1907 collection, in a section of poems written while on an around the world tour that included his first visit to Japan. No one has been able to explain the title.

—L.

Subject quote from Superstition, Stevie Wonder.