marycrawford: 13 hour clock icon (Default)
marycrawford ([personal profile] marycrawford) wrote in [community profile] sid_guardian2019-11-13 10:12 pm
Entry tags:

Zhao Yunlan's quotations

(I've searched back through the type:questions tag and couldn't find it, so if anyone has already discussed this, please link me?)

I love how Zhao Yunlan pretends to be a plebe and a know-nothing, which is clearly as much of an act as his good-time guileless bro is, because he also seems to quote highbrow things all the damn time.

It's both endearing and frustrating, because I don't speak a word of Chinese, and I would really really like to know more about the things Zhao Yunlan quotes - sometimes the subs helpfully tell me it's poetry, like the line he quotes to Shen Wei when they're in the mountains in the Wear My Jacket I Insist scene. And sometimes it's clearly a proverb/saying, like "trust those you hire/hire those you trust" and IIRC he also quotes from the Art of War somewhere?

Has anyone more organized and knowledgeable than me made a list of ZYL quotations, or sources, or anything?

And is it me, or does Shen Wei, the polished 10,000 year old Professor, not do this at all?
enviropony: captain flint's flag - a skeleton with a sword and hourglass (Default)

[personal profile] enviropony 2019-11-14 07:57 am (UTC)(link)
That's a good point. I always forget how much of this stuff we absorb as we grow up. I mean, it's either classic lit or movie & TV quotes, but everybody's got a pocket full of sayings from their formative days. And that's an experience Shen Wei just never had.
extrapenguin: Starry-eyed man looking upwards on a field of stars with the text 地星人 behind him (shen wei stars)

[personal profile] extrapenguin 2019-11-14 11:03 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, and a lot of Shen Wei's efforts were no doubt concentrating on acquiring skills like "how not to get hit by cars", with cultural stuff coming after the essential survival skills. He's learned so much, but he can't have learned everything.