laleia

Episode 4
(Note re: any observations I make on English subtitles — I’m watching episode 4 on YouTube on the CN DRAMA channel.)

Scene - Auntie Wei makes a scene!

Auntie Wei! <3 She doesn’t show up often but she’s great when she does. I think that Minglan just calls her 姨妈 (aunt), but I will be referring to her as Auntie Wei.
Auntie Wei says that thanks to Concubine Wei’s 庇护 (shelter/protection) (which the subs translate to her “efforts”), they were able to buy a few acres of land. Is that a euphemism for the money they got for selling her off?
Auntie Wei is as good at acting as anyone. She was pissed off when she opened that door and demanded to see Big Madam, but she is appropriately mournfully crying when we see her with Big Madam.
When Big Madam says “I cherished [Concubine Wei]”, the camera zooms in on Auntie Wei’s face as she glances away, and I think it’s because she’s inwardly rolling her eyes.
And then Auntie Wei tearfully says “If we can’t preserve [Minglan] either, how can I meet my sister in the afterlife in the future?” — basically telling Big Madam that she doesn’t think Minglan will survive in their household.
Liu-mama recognizes that it’s time to call in the big guns (Papa Sheng) because she can tell that Auntie Wei wants something, though she doesn’t know what it is (leading to her mis-identifying it as asking for money).
Auntie Wei says that Liu-mama thinks she has come to 打秋风 (daqiufeng), which the subs translate to “as though I came to strike the autumn breeze (seek advantage)”. Pleco translates this as “to sponge on sb.” I primarily know it as the term used in period dramas and period novels to refer to asking for money (but in that particularly annoying way that poor relatives in these kinds of stories come and ask for money repeatedly and act as parasites; it’s not a neutral term). I took a quick look on Baidu and it looks like referencing the autumn breeze in the literal meaning of the term is because in autumn, all of your work you did growing things is done so someone has come to reap the rewards of your labors without contributing. This Baidu article didn’t seem like a super definitive and trustworthy etymological source though.
Right, so I think Auntie Wei is basically trying to imply in a roundabout way with her prior statements that if Minglan stays in the Sheng household, she has doubts that Minglan will survive. Then Papa Sheng shows up, says a bunch about how they have a lot of money and basically says they have the money and the means to raise Minglan in a much better lifestyle than the Weis can. Auntie Wei then goes into the details of Concubine Wei’s death, and once again implies that the Shengs aren’t managing their household well enough to take care of Minglan. She also expresses offense that Liu-mama thinks she’s just here to ask for money. Then Big Madam makes promises about how they’re going to take care of Minglan going forward, hiring doctors, etc., to put her at ease.
"As long as Ming'er is well taken care of, even if I die, I'll be content.” I think that Auntie Wei is threatening that if Minglan dies, she will fuck this family up.
This whole scene is kind of funny because this is the most in-synch we’ve seen Big Madam and Papa Sheng, as they try to figure out what Auntie Wei’s game is.

Scene - Papa Sheng and Grandmother confer!

Oh wow, I didn’t realize that Grandmother only just got back from the mountain. She goes to like pray and heal or something and comes back to realize that her son’s a fucking idiot.
I don’t know what pear soup is, but now I want some too.
The subs confused me, and also the original language confused me as well, but. During the bit at the beginning where Grandmother is angry, the subs translate what she says to: “I don’t dare to scold you. Who knows if you’re cursing me in your belly. I don’t know where you got the news. To have you rush back to face a full load of cases.” This makes no sense to me in English and also confusing when I listened to / read through the Chinese but I think what she actually said should be translated to “I don’t dare to scold you. Who knows if you’re cursing me in your belly, wondering where I [Grandmother] got the news so that I rushed down the mountain, filling your [Papa Sheng’s] mind with lawsuits.” But I’m not positive about this translation either because I still don’t know where the cases/lawsuits come into it.
We get some backstory about Grandmother here, as she expresses way more grief about the death of Papa Sheng’s unborn son than he ever does.
Grandmother has a pretty tragic life. She was from a noble family. Her husband was terrible, and favored one of his concubines over her and his other concubines. That concubine caused the death of Grandmother’s own son as well as bullied Papa Sheng (the son of disfavored Concubine Chun). The show doesn’t go into detail about this until later on but after her husband died, Grandmother chose to stay with the Sheng family (though she could have returned to her maiden home) and do everything in her power to get Papa Sheng (who wasn’t even her biological son!) power, and a good marriage, and help him plan his political career. And in return, she gets an idiot Papa Sheng as a son, an idiot Big Madam as a daughter-in-law, and she keeps on getting called in to fix everyone’s problems. Thank goodness she has Minglan.
Grandmother identifies Papa Sheng’s weakness, that I mentioned previously, that he thinks of Concubine Lin (and her children) as his biological mother, and wants to prevent her from suffering Concubine Chun’s fate. He’s worried about Big Madam’s temper, so he gives Concubine Lin way more than she deserves so she won’t suffer.
Grandmother tries to give Papa Sheng advice on how he could have not fucked this up. He immediately says “Oh, it’s these stupid servants who bullied Concubine Lin for not knowing how to manage the household; I have dealt with them” and thus tries to remove Concubine Lin from all possibility of blame. Grandmother doesn’t give way, and makes a stronger case for removing Concubine Lin from managing the household.
Honestly, I don’t understand Papa Sheng. As Grandmother points out, this is two lives lost. Even if he didn’t have a single shred of affection for Concubine Wei (which given his actions throughout the remainder of the drama is quite likely), that’s his flesh-and-blood son that died! That Concubine Lin very clearly murdered. Even if in the most charitable interpretation of events, she was just completely incompetent (rather than murderous), that’s still enough to take away the household management from her (a role she shouldn’t have served in the first place). And yet, when Grandmother broaches that Concubine Lin is incompetent, Papa Sheng still tries to deflect, tries to avoid taking away that responsibility from Concubine Lin and giving it to Big Madam. Why?!?!?!??!
Then Grandmother says she will take on Minglan (the beginning of a beautiful friendship!), and Papa Sheng immediately tries to make all sorts of excuses for Grandmother to not take Minglan and take Molan instead. I love the way Grandmother characterizes how stupid that would be and rolls her eyes at him.
And Grandmother picks up on and explains to Papa Sheng the secret message that Auntie Wei is trying to convey!
Auntie Wei is so interesting. She knows that this family caused her sister’s death and the murderer isn’t getting punished. She knows that Mnglan’s not safe here. But she also knows Minglan has a better future as the young mistress of a rich household than she would as an extra mouth to feed on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Only if Minglan lives, though, and she knows that the landscape of the Sheng household makes that difficult. So she also knows the best choice for Minglan is to stay here but be taken care of, preferably by Grandmother rather than Big Madam. And so she tries to engineer everything to achieve her desired result.
Liu-mama is the smartest servant that Big Madam has, and she thinks that Auntie Wei just wants money. Papa Sheng has to take the puzzle to Grandmother to get an answer.
And this is really where we see Papa Sheng’s selfishness. All of the other points that Grandmother made didn’t matter to him, he honestly didn’t care that his favorite concubine caused the death of his son. But when Grandmother brings up the risk to his career, that’s when he cares.
There’s probably something very significant about Grandmother giving Papa Sheng a book by Mencius to study, but I’m definitely not reading up on Mencius to find out what hidden message there is.

Scene - Papa Sheng and Big Madam confer!

This scene is just really funny to me. Big Madam’s trying to be all virtuous in a way that seems very clearly like Hualan coached her. And I don’t know why, but I find Papa Sheng soaking his feet, and his posture while he does, very hilarious.
He’s so callous though — straight up attributes Concubine Wei’s death to her lack of luck. No desire to reflect all on yourself?!?!?! He’s like “Oh, if we dig deeper, it’s my fault for getting promoted so that we went to see your maiden home, so we weren’t around, so the tragedy happened, and that’s clearly absurd so she’s just unlucky.” Um, yes it’s absurd to blame it on your promotion. It is much less absurd and totally reasonable to blame it on you and your treatment of Concubine Lin and the way you run your fucking household.
And we follow up that callous take with more humorous exchanges as Papa Sheng accuses Big Madam of having a bad temper and her immediately demonstrating her bad temper.
Papa Sheng has such … not rose-colored glasses, but … opaque glasses??? How can he look at Concubine Lin and say “her temperament is too gentle, she’s not firm enough to handle the servants” and attribute everything to her incompetence rather than malice. I’m just so mad watching this.

Various Interlude Scenes

Poor Minglan …
What I can only assume is young Caihuan gets to act all snooty at Concubine Lin, and then she checks in with one of the other servants afterward to see if she did it right.
Concubine Lin immediately starts smashing things, so we know where Molan got this habit from.

Scene - Minglan bids farewell to Yangzhou (and Gu Tingye)!

How coincidental is it that Minglan and Gu Tingye just happened to be leaving Yangzhou at the same time?
bb!Minglan is so cute, particularly when she says such adult things like “Your great kindness and grace, I shall never forget.”
I just rewatched this bit 3 times because this is when the theme song plays (with lyrics on screen) and I had to sing along.
When Minglan breaks down and Grandmother comforts her and promises to care for her, it’s so sad….

Scene - Concubine Lin is a pain!

Concubine Lin plays the zither to try to get Papa Sheng’s attention. I think Big Madam is saying that she has been playing the same song repeatedly?
Big Madam is just … so bad at these kinds of situations where she goes head to head with Concubine Lin. She never knows what to say or what to do. The novel was more explicit about the fact that she was raised in relative comfort and happiness and so she never had to learn to “protect” herself and that’s why she gets screwed over time and time again.
Concubine Lin really knew that as long as she got an audience with Papa Sheng, she was golden. She’s good enough at acting and he’s willing enough to believe anything she says that she can and has gotten away with everything. She just has to appeal to the fact that she gave up being head of her own household to be a concubine for him.
Honestly, I sympathize so much with Big Madam in this scene right now. Concubine Lin is so aggravating I don’t know that I could keep my temper and I see why Big Madam loses her temper all the time.
So in the end, Big Madam was only able to keep Concubine Lin at bay for half a month. (The subs earlier translated it to six months, but the Chinese said half a month.)
BTW, my recollection from the novel was that while Concubine Lin was still at fault, she was a little less at fault (because some of the claims she made here that it was general incompetence and also that part of it was Big Madam’s servants not wanting to payer her any heed, was also true). She’s also just more explicitly at fault in the drama because we see the whole thing and she very clearly is seeking Concubine Wei’s death. The novel doesn’t start until after Concubine Wei’s death, so it very much becomes a she-said, she-said situation. I think transmigrated!Minglan’s takeaway from everything she heard was that Concubine Lin was trying to cause Concubine Wei’s miscarriage but did not intend to her cause her death, and that there was a certain amount of events outside of Concubine Lin’s control that doomed Concubine Wei. I also don’t think that Concubine Lin was managing the household at the time in the novel.
I also note that when I checked the novel just now for this, I saw that the novel references a “Third Young Lady” who died, which I guess does mean the Sheng Household had a bunch of kids die young in order for the numbering of our kids to end up the way they did.

Scene - Arrival in Bianjing!

When you say Hualan (played by the adult actress) walking along with the bb!versions of all the other girls (played by bb!actresses), she looks so tall.
Was Gu Tingye on the same boat as the Shengs? Or on the same boat as Changbai? Because he departed Yangzhou with them and arrived in Bianjing with them.
Awwwww, bb!Tingwei! Largely a non-entity in this drama but quite sweet.
Madam Qin …. I have no words.
Tingwei’s wife was right. Gu Tingye and Tingwei could have such a good relationship if it weren’t for Madam Qin.
We go to court. We see the emperor. We see what’s-his-face! Gu Tingye’s buddy in 50 episodes! We also see the issues raised around the Emperor being childless and needing to pick a Crown Prince, which will cause much upheaval in 30 episodes.

And that’s the end of this episode! Wow, I hadn’t realized we get a whole 4+ episodes of the childhood arc. But I can’t wait until Minglan starts winning! Minglan is my favorite. I like Gu Tingye fine but I expect that when we get episodes focused on his angst rather than hers, I will have much less to say.