Chapter 2 荒狂 Rampage

Corresponding ExR chapter: Aggression part 2 FW pages 33-41

So the first thing that stood out to me in this segment is that there’s an inline note within an inline note on page 34. For context, Mo Ziyuan’s body has just been discovered, and everyone in Mo Manor is rushing into the main hall. WWX is being manhandled into the scene by other house servants.

中には、まだ中衣〔下着と外衣〔外出時に着る衣〕の間に着用する衣服〕姿の人や、寝起きなのか乱れ髪の人もいて、皆一様に顔に恐怖の色が浮かべている。(FW pg. 34) Inside were people still wearing their zhong1yi1 and hair in disarray as though they’d just gotten up; every face was uniformly colored with horror.

I was ready to throw in the towel and translate 中衣姿の人 as “people in varying states of undress” because trying to parse this whole thing out requires an understanding of hanfu that it took me a day of research to get a satisfactory answer for, which required going all the way to a Chinese source for, since Japanese sources really weren't cutting it.

A summary of my Japanese sources left me more confused than less, with this mess: 中衣 chuui is defined as the layer of clothing between your undergarments and your outerwear, i.e. clothes worn for when you're leaving the house. Alternatively chuue when referring to a Buddhist monk's attire. 外衣 gaii: see 上着 uwagi or 外套 gaitou. Somehow all of these are synonyms yet also completely separate categories of garments.

From the Chinese encyclopedia linked above...

1.内衣+中衣+外衣=汉服的正式着装。 2.中衣不可以外穿，可作为居家服和睡衣。 3.中衣为白色，也可用其它较浅的颜色。

Which my pathetic Mandarin comprehension understood as:

  1. Nei4yi1 + zhong1yi1 + wai4yi1 = proper way to wear hanfu
  2. Zhong1yi1 may NOT be worn outside, but can be used as around-the-house wear or pajamas.
  3. Zhong1yi1 are usually white (men’s especially), but can also come in other pale colors. (Colored garments are more often women’s wear.)

The grand take away here is that when you look at men's hanfu, the white base layer is the zhong1yi1.

Upon further research... 外衣 wai4yi1/gaii・中衣 zhong1yi1/chuui・内衣 nei4yi1/naii is hanfu vocabulary, while 上着 uwagi・間着 aigi・下着 shitagi is Japanese, but not at all restricted to the kimono sphere. They really just shoved a Chinese word in there.

Moving onward... I don’t think 37 is old enough to be “ugly”? The corpse of Mo Ziyuan is described as looking as though it aged 20 years from the loss of liquid mass. Assuming he’s 17 like they argue later in the chapter, 17+20=37. MXTX sensei… I would like a word with you.

I don’t think Mo Xuanyu is “crazy”. He’s definitely mentally ill in some capacity. The ExR translation gives the impression that he’s a raving lunatic. I’m not entirely convinced that Frontier Works is doing the same. The word used to describe him by the Mo family, and especially by Madam Mo, is 痴れ者 shiremono, which Jisho.org defines as “fool; dunce; idiot​”. The Digital Denjisen and Weblio aren’t too different. Additional definitions provided include “an incorrigible person”; “someone who is violently unmanageable”; “a strong-willed person dead set in their ways.” The same 痴 is used in words like “dementia”, “imbecility”, “foolish”, “gibberish”, “molester”, and “dumb bitch”. I truly hate to say it, as I am well aware the word is no longer in favor, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to conclude that Madam Mo is calling Mo Xuanyu “retarded” in front of everyone in her household and the two Lan juniors. (More on this in my next post.)

This ExR line didn’t sit right with me. It’s probably just clunk.

As Wei Wuxian was scrutinizing the corpse, Madam Mo suddenly rushed toward him, with a gleaming dagger in her hand. Being light on his feet, Lan Sizhui quickly knocked the dagger off. (ExR)

魏無羨がじっくりと死体を眺めていると、横から莫夫人が突然駆け寄ってきた。彼女の手元が一瞬光り、刃物を握りしめていることに気づくと魏無羨が避ける前に、藍思追が素早くそれを叩き落した。(FW pg 35) While Wei Wuxian carefully scrutinized the corpse, Madam Mo suddenly rushed over toward him from the side. As soon as he noticed her tightly grasping a blade in her hand that glimmered for just a moment, but before Wei Wuxian could dodge, Lan Sizhui quickly knocked it down [out of her hands].

刃物 can be any tool with a sharp edge. It’s not necessarily a dagger. “Cutlery” is plausible, but it seems silly when the first image in my head is a steak knife, which would be even less likely for a decently wealthy proper lady like Madam Mo to have on her person than a dagger. If she was a pauper and didn’t have house servants, that’d be much more likely. I wouldn’t even question it if she decided to use a hairpin as a weapon! Besides, according to Confucius, weapons shall not be present at the dinner table. I don’t have a proper citation on that paraphrased quote at this time. It might be in the Analects somewhere, and I’m not digging through a dense philosophical text like that for what’s essentially a cultural footnote.

Have a source https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-history-of-chopsticks-64935342/

This passage didn’t sit right with me either. It gives a completely different impression of what’s going on.

“My poor A-Yuan… Although he didn’t do anything to him at all, he was not only framed, but also killed as well… The lunatic is out of his mind…” Out of his mind! It had been a few years since he had last heard the phrase being used to describe him, so it was quite cordial. Wei Wuxian pointed at himself, but no words came to him. He didn’t know if he was the ill one or if it was Madam Mo. (ExR)

「かわいそうな阿淵。こいつの物なんて何一つ触ったりしなかったのに、濡れ衣を着せられるどころか、残虐非道に命まで奪われ……」 （残虐非道だって！） 魏無羨は自分を指さしたまま、言葉が出なくなった。かつては自分の代名詞のようによく言われていたこの言葉を、こうして面と向かって言われるのはもう何年ぶりだろう。そう思うと、強烈な懐かしささえ覚える。自分がおかしいのか、それとも莫夫人がおかしいのかわからない。 (FW pg. 36) “Poor A-Yuan! He didn’t even touch a single one of his [MXY, derogatory] things, yet he was framed by such false accusations? Even his life has been stolen from him so atrociously…” (Atrocious you say?) While Wei Wuxian pointed at himself, the words would not come out. Long ago, this word had often been used like a pronoun for him; how many years had it been since someone said it to his face like this? Thinking thus even brought him an intense wave of nostalgia. He did not know if he was the odd one, or if it was Madam Mo.

And later down the page

Instantly, he realized what was going on, and uttered under his breath, he had it coming! (ExR)

その瞬間、彼がすべてを理解し、「自業自得じゃないか！」と心の中で叫ぶ。(FW pg. 36) In that moment, he understood everything, and screamed in his mind, “ain’t that your just deserts!”

In the ExR version, he mumbles out loud. In the Japanese version, he is outwardly silent.

There’s another note on the next page about how Madam Mo laments that Mo Ziyuan was only 十代 when he died. ExR says he’s “just a child”, and then footnotes it. I’m pretty sure this scene in the donghua, even with Tencent’s trashy subs, they call him a “teenager”. As much as I hate the Tencent subs, I’m inclined to agree with them more than with ExR in this one instance. 十代 means the same thing in both Japanese and Chinese so there’s no reason to make any further commentary. There are no hairs to even split.

Finally, at the end of the chapter:

After pondering for a moment, Wei Wuxian told himself, finish it quickly.

少し考えて、魏無羨が決めた。 （さっさと片付けるか） Wei Wuxian thought a little, and decided. (How about I clean this up quickly?)