mecurtin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sid_guardian2019-05-06 10:43 pm
mecurtin) wrote in sid_guardian2019-05-06 10:43 pm
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Natural history and landscape of Haixing
I'm betaing a story set largely in Ye Old Haixing Era, which means the characters spend a lot of time moving in a natural landscape.
Because I'm an ecologist, natural historian, birdwatcher, and environmentalist, I may be going a ~teensy~ bit overboard in wanting "accurate" natural history details. Just a leetle.
First, does anyone recognize any of the forested locations in Guardian? Where did they shoot the Hanga scenes, the YOHE scenes, the Yashou scenes?
I note that, in contrast with e.g. Detective L (and most wuxia I've seen) we see no bamboo forests in Guardian. This may be just the way things worked out, but we can tie it into the way the drama uses Western (European/American) cultural elements to signal "this is SFF, it isn't China, nope". So we might legitimately make the landscape & nature history European or American, in both species and "look & feel" ... but that doesn't seem right to me, either.
Does anyone besides me care? Should I let my poor author be, and not sweat over what kind of tree Zhao Yunlan is leaning against? Would ZYL, even in YOHE, notice or care whether the tree is an oak or a pine or a ginkgo or something else?
If you were reading a story where the characters traveled out of Dragon City, would you expect to see: small, intensely farmed plots as in the Yangtze basin (mostly rice); ditto as in the Yellow River basin (mostly wheat), a less intense farming picture as Europe, or a much less intense picture as in the US?
For those who've read the novel in Chinese, do you have any impressions about what part of China it is set in? Does it "feel like" Yellow River provinces, lower Yangtze River provinces, Sichuan, Guangdong?
Because I'm an ecologist, natural historian, birdwatcher, and environmentalist, I may be going a ~teensy~ bit overboard in wanting "accurate" natural history details. Just a leetle.
First, does anyone recognize any of the forested locations in Guardian? Where did they shoot the Hanga scenes, the YOHE scenes, the Yashou scenes?
I note that, in contrast with e.g. Detective L (and most wuxia I've seen) we see no bamboo forests in Guardian. This may be just the way things worked out, but we can tie it into the way the drama uses Western (European/American) cultural elements to signal "this is SFF, it isn't China, nope". So we might legitimately make the landscape & nature history European or American, in both species and "look & feel" ... but that doesn't seem right to me, either.
Does anyone besides me care? Should I let my poor author be, and not sweat over what kind of tree Zhao Yunlan is leaning against? Would ZYL, even in YOHE, notice or care whether the tree is an oak or a pine or a ginkgo or something else?
If you were reading a story where the characters traveled out of Dragon City, would you expect to see: small, intensely farmed plots as in the Yangtze basin (mostly rice); ditto as in the Yellow River basin (mostly wheat), a less intense farming picture as Europe, or a much less intense picture as in the US?
For those who've read the novel in Chinese, do you have any impressions about what part of China it is set in? Does it "feel like" Yellow River provinces, lower Yangtze River provinces, Sichuan, Guangdong?
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As for Chinese food, I'm not even sure where to start. Speaking generally, the obvious would be Sichuan, where its just literally numbingly spicy, then you get to places around Xian/Luoyang where its still spicy, but not as crazy as Sichuan and heavy on the noodles, down south you have the Cantonese style stuff which is lightly lighter and the stuff you generally find in Chinese restaurants overseas generally heavier on the rice, Beijing and the north eastern region can be very salty and loads of fatty stuff in around winter as it gets crazy cold there, loads of dumplings, but still generally rice base, Shanghai is a bit of a watered down version of the north eastern with again loads of dumplings and slightly on the sweet side instead of salty, Xinjiang area you get a lot of grilled/bbq meat/mutton/goat... and that's the extend of my knowledge.
Yes, I may just be slightly obsessed with food.
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This is the meal Shen Wei serves in Episode 22:
Another view:
[click to enlarge]
Tell us what you think it's supposed to taste like!
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Top one is fish, I can't quite tell what sort of fish that is used, but the dish itself looks like 清蒸鱼 (aka steamed fish) with light soy sauce, sliced ginger, spring onions, maybe some tomatoes (definitely tomatoes if you're in the south/Cantonese region) and red chilli as garnish. The bottom one that looks like noodles are probably stir fry potato strips (土豆丝), the potatoes are not completely soft, but still has a bit of a bite in it, but still cooked through, generally have a bit of capsicum/pepper/carrots in there. Its usually generally just seasoned with salt or light soy sauce. Often eating with morning rice congee in northern region of China.
I literally cannot make out what the middle two dishes are. The one on the right looks like it might have some dried mushrooms (花菇）in it?? The one on the left actually looks a bit like some sort of shell fish/small clams?! I really can't make anything out...
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Yes, they are small clams. You can tell by the way Zhao Yunlan fiddles with the chopsticks to pick one up. https://youtu.be/EvUpbr0iSDo?t=2177
The other one is mostly hidden by Shen Wei's hand all scene, but I agree there are mushrooms in it, and some kind of red bell pepper. The white and greenish things make up the majority of it, though, and I can't tell at all what those are.
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I may have spent a lot of time obsessing about food in this show. They seem to mostly have rice based meals -- but there are also a fair amount of dumplings, and quite a lot of fish and seafood.
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God, I miss dumplings!
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