Hello, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling,
shares her thoughts, knowledge, and occasional weird ideas
on stories and how they're told.
and as you can tell today,
i'm dressed up in the full blown Song Dynasty style,
making a video on the recently aired and still airing drama, Meng Hua Lu
A Dream of Splendour.
This is actually the part one of two videos in which i'm gonna talk about.
Stuff i've picked out of this drama that may be interesting
to my international audiences.
If the later episodes contain even more interesting
things that I think is worth talking about.
I could make further videos
in this video,
we're gonna look at the title of this drama,
the city that it's set it, in history.
And then the cultural and daily life routines and practices people had back then.
Let's begin with the title of the drama,
A Dream of Splendour, in chinese, Meng Hua Lu
Meng Hua Lu comes from Dong Jing Meng Hua Lu 东京梦华录
which is the title of a book written back then
close to a thousand years ago.
But before I go into explaining the title itself,
I have to first explain Dong Jing, the Eastern Capital
during chinese ancient times during different dynasties,
some dynasties had multiple capitals.
Song is one of them.
At the time setting of this drama,
which is at the beginning of the 11th century.
Dong Jing, the eastern capital is the current Kai Feng 开封city
in the province, He Nan 河南
So as my clever audiences would guess,
since there is an eastern capital,
there must be a western capital at the time that will be
Luo Yang 洛阳
if you've watched the tang dynasty setting drama,
wind rises in luoyang.
Or just Luo Yang in english,
you would know that is the Tang dynasty Eastern capital.
Because at that time,
the more western capital of Tang dynasty is Chang'An
once we get to the North Song dynasty.
The western capital becomes Luo Yang
Bian Liang 汴梁 is to the east of Luo Yang
Therefore, it is called eastern capital.
It is also called Bian Jing 汴京, means “bian" capital,
and then often people at the time just call it Dong Jing 东京
Eastern capital,
these two characters, eastern capital,
is the exact chinese characters used today as the name of the japan capital.
Tokyo
not to be confused as the same city, Clearly
that is where our story is set for most of the episodes,
although at the beginning of the drama,
our female lead character is from another place called the Qian Tang 钱塘
This is the current hangzhou, 杭州
the city where Alibaba is based in
Hang Zhou is about 900 kilometers to
the southeast of Kai Feng
Now let's move back to talk about the title,
Dong Jing Meng Hua Lu
a record of dream and glory of the eastern capital.
Since you already hear,
it's a journal and it's a record,
so it's written by somebody who's lived there.
and tgey're actually reminiscing the life there,
because it's written by this person who has run away
from the envasion from the north as most of the
dong jing residents had done during the Jing Kang ZHi Nan
historical event that is a huge scar
on the song dynasty history
where two of the emperors of the Song Dynasty got abducted
and moved to the north
together with all the citizens of the city.
The imperial family also escaped down south.
And starting the second half of Song Dynasty,
what we call today as South Song dynasty.
and this author Meng Yuanlao is one of those people who
used to live in Dong Jing during North Song dynasty
and had to give up everything he had run away like hundreds and
thousands of refugees down south
once he got to south.
He wrote this journal,
reminiscing the life he had back in the days of the eastern capital
and that becomes a very important historical record because in
which he said a lot about city structure,
each part, what is the function of them?
What is the shops like?
What kind of food was popular?
What kind of cultural practices people had?
Holidays?
Celebrations, festivals,
ceremonies of all kinds.
The book was written at beginning of 12th century and got passed down today.
So a lot of things you see in the drama are actually referenced to that journal.
Since we're already talking about the eastern capital,
you will see in this drama,
a lot of characters have mentioned ut multiple times
commenting on how exciting nightlife is in in eastern capital and
how much of a commercial hub it is.
And that is true.
Back in North Song.
It is one of the most vibrant cities in this world.
And during certain period of Song Dynasty,
this capital was actually completely curfew free.
For a long time in chinese ancient capitals.
There's been reinforced curfews throughout different dynasties, for example,
in Tang dynasty.
For a period of time,
it was very strictly reinforced
once the sun is down and the doors of each section is closed.
If you get caught on the street walking around,
you're gonna get thrown into jails
towards the end of the dynasty.
It started to loosen
once we get to North Song,
there were a couple of emperors who real
on the reinforce that at the beginning,
but then they couldn't quite do it
as time went by,
it start to loosen up more and more
by the time that the record was written,
which is 100 years later as supposed the time setting of our drama.
It has completely given up the night curfew.
Everybody can go on the street at night.
People actually have all kinds of parties
and nightlife throughout the whole night.
Even though there's a kind of curfew
it only last a couple of hours and it reopens
if we're strict about historical record,
at least with the time that this drama is set in
at the beginning of 11th century,
there should still be some form of night curfew going on in the eastern capital,
but 100 years later it's almost not there anymore.
yet the drama definitely took the record that happened
100 years later and used it for this drama.
Now we've talked about extensively about the
title and the city that the story is set in
Let's look at a couple things through this drama that got
Represented on screen.
Number one, you cannot ignore that.
This is a huge part of the drama,
particularly around episode 16 with tea powder and
pouring hot water into the rather big tea cup,
and then beat it with this bamboo whisk
that you've seen also in the drama
(The Story of Minglan)
a long time ago I made a video talking about that
If you're curious about the details,
you can go back to check.
That video,
this type of beating the tea until it gets so foamy is
the very popular way of drinking tea back in Song Dynasty.
As time went on,
it becomes less and less popular because
it's super expensive to do
by Ming dynasty.
It finally got banned because the emperor thinks it
just takes too much effort and money to produce.
And it is way too extravagant to be a moral thing to be encouraged.
And from that time onwards now in china,
the most common way of drinking tea is just brewing it with hot water,
but in this dramas representation,
they were correct about beating the tea until it gets a lot of foam
But when it comes to Dou Cha斗茶 tea battle,
what they will compete against each other is first,
how fine and how thick your foam can be
and how white it can be,
the paler the color, the finer the foam
the better.
Then once you have the foam ready,
you would put two tea cups and let them rest there.
See which one's foam disappears slower,
the slower it is, the better it is.
And that would also decide who wins the tea battle.
so in the dramas version,
it should just be both Zhao Paner and the old gentleman got that tea.
They compare oh all the colors are the same,
it's same white and it tastes good and the foam is nice.
Now let's just see which one's foam disappears first
that will be the loser.
That is Dou Cha
and it wouldn't include the second part where she starts to do drawings,
because that's a different practice called Cha Bai Xi 茶百戏
The literal meaning of the word cha bai xi is tea hundred play
And when you do Cha Bai Xi
you would also need to beat the tea
but you will use different amount of tea powder.
You want the foam not to be white,
because you're gonna draw with water which will create white.
You want a dark background where your painting can show up.
Therefore you actually use a lot of tea powder and you beat it beat it,
until it becomes brown.
You wanna thick brown foam
Once you have that,
you pour it into a big dish like shown in the drama
and then you use clear water either to
dab and draw like Zhap Paner did
or like the old gentleman pouring water over it.
Usually once you finish the drawing,
it can last about 10 to 15 minutes before the foam disappears.
So Cha Bai Xi is a different way of playing with the tea.
And it's not necessarily Dou Cha
and this drama in this episode,
mix these two things together, whereas in practice, it would be different.
But anyway, i'm still really appreciative of this drama to
be able to show that extensively on screen.
We've talked about tea.
Now let's talk about another thing that I noticed
showing up in this drama that I find very interesting,
which is pepper
during episode 19 and 20,
when Gu Qianfan comes into, Zhao Paner's home
and she cooked something for him and
she was like this is hard to come by and expensive.
and if it's not you,
I wouldn't put that much pepper in it
which is totally true because for a long time in china,
pepper is super expensive
and also in history if you research into that
a lot of spices were super expensive
back in North Song Dynasty,
China does grow pepper but very limited.
And along the very south of china,
there are records saying they can only produce about
less than 100 kilos for the entire country.
A year.
And as you can imagine, that's not enough.
So most pepper back then were imported.
That's why it's super expensive.
Now we've talked about food,
let's talk about entertainment,
clothing and other things.
First clothing in episode 17,
you will hear Zhang Haohao looking at a piece of cloth
that Ya Nei's people have managed to
tear off the other group of people
that they were having a fight on the street.
And she said wow this is cotton.
They must be really rich to be able to wear that.
I don't see that many people have cotton clothes.
I'm just so happy to see that happening in this drama.
Cotton wasn't mass produced and widely used and
becoming a cheapest fabric until Ming dynasty in china.
Before that cotton was cultivated in china,
but in very limited regions, therefore,
very low production, pretty much like pepper.
And if you have cotton that means you're super rich,
we would have to wait till the end of Song and beginning of Yuan Dynasty
to have important people showing up in chinese history
to further develop first growing cotton and
also how to weave cotton fabric out of its original form.
And that's another story and including another significant,
magnificent woman.
In chinese history,
it is true that back in the days of North Song
for the fabric of choice of commoners,
it would just be fabric that comes from flax, linen,
rough, but very durable,
hard to shape and very easy to crease.
If you've used linen you know what it's like,
then for the rich people,
they'll use silk
and that's pretty much what people had back then.
So one of the notes that you can remember from this is
if you're gonna time travel back to North Song and you want
to be able to sell off everything you wear on your body.
Once you get there to be able to survive,
wear everything in cotton,
pure cotton will make you the richest person walking on the street.
Then in terms of entertainment,
if you've heard the sound of Pi Pa playing,
you know it's a very dominating instrument.
And that's why it's one of the most important.
In the band back then,
in the drama version,
she (Song Yinzhang) plays a type of pipa that we would call today as Nan Yin Pi Pa
It's very different from the typical Pi Pa that people play today.
The Nan Yin Pi Pa is played horizontally,
and it has a curved neck,
whereas the more common one that most Pi Pa learner
would go and learn first today is a pipa that's played this way
vertically,
straight neck,
and having a lot more levels of the
fingerboard that you can see along its neck.
So it's a later version of Pi Pa
The particular instrument Pi Pa had over 2,000 years history in china,
and it developed slowly over time
during Tang Dynasty.
It became one of the most dominant instrument played then,
but then it was played this way,
the earliest way that you can find that's actually made
into a clay doll out of a tomb that people discovered.
The lady was holding it this way,
which is tilting the neck down towards the ground.
I don't know how you can do it,
but that's how it's played.
Gradually.
It became horizontal.
People were playing it like that,
and then it start to get up until now.
Modern Pi Pa is completely played vertical.
Very interesting, isn't it?
When it was played that way,
the most common way was playing it with a pick
a little bit like guitar,
but much bigger.
It looks like a spatula that you used for cooking today
to pick the strings.
And it will give it a sharper,
more clear sound because it was wood on string.
Later, the skills start to develop where people start to play it with fingers,
and it gives it more possibility in terms of how fast
you can go and how many different variations you can do.
But the sound will become more muffled
in this drama, you will see Song Yinzhang playing it
actually with both ways fingers and the pick
That is also very accurate because towards the end of Tang Dynasty
people start to play with fingers.
And it gradually developed into more fingers than pick
and eventually almost completely with fingers.
If you wanna know more about Pi Pa
just look at two set violin's videos.
I Believe they did do a video specifically,
on this instrument.
And in that video,
you can see in detail about how this instrument gets played.
Now we're at the end of the first part of my two parts video.
And I'm gonna conclude that with a symbolism thing in this drama,
after Our Lady won the tea battle,
she started dancing at night.
and our main male leads comes in
blown away by how beautiful she is and he promised her to marry her.
At that point of the drama,
he picked a branch of flower and gave that to her.
And basically saying this is my promise to you.
and she's very happy to take the flower
that flower is a pomegranate flower
often for a woman's skirt.
In Chinese culture, it's called Shi liu Qun (pomergranate skirt)
So there is a saying of (see notes on screen)
which means you bow down under someone's
Pomegranate skirt.
That's one common expression.
Also.
Pomegranate.
The fruit is what?
multiple seeded.
It has hundreds and thousands of seeds in a big fruit.
So it represents fertility,
the burning red color that declares passion and its following fruit
that declares children
important for ancient people for sure.
And that should conclude the first part of
my two videos on A Dream of Splendour's
cultural/ literature,
all kinds of references that shows up in that drama that I find
interesting and probably will make you find it interesting too.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching
and happy dreaming.