Wonderful post about a wonderful scene! I’m so glad you picked this one out to discuss. I love this conversation. It’s visually so nice to look at—they’re both wearing the same colors, dark-ish blue over white, but in denim versus a three-piece suit, and with the added contrast of Zhao Yunlan’s slouch (only Zhao Yunlan could lounge while standing up and not leaning against anything) and Shen Wei’s plumb-straight back. Also, Shen Wei’s expression during most of their private conversation is a joy to observe—the situation is serious and the matter under discussion is serious and Zhao Yunlan is being a brat, he is not going to smile at him, but oh does he ever want to. I have a lot of feelings about Shen Wei and education and Dixing (6K-odd worth of them previously expressed in fic); I imagine that, having seen how schools and universities work in modern-day Haixing, he applied to the Regent to start some in Dixing and got a bureaucratic runaround (education being the enemy of the Regent’s easy-going dictatorship? also, maybe the Regent has legitimate budget concerns?). I think it probably breaks his heart that education is his vocation in Haixing and yet he can’t bring any of it to his own people (and the rigidity of the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s role is working against him in himself as well?). (It’s tangential to this scene but I also love the bits of non-SW/ZYL comic relief not discussed here: Da Qing and Lin Jing being peeved rather than frightened to be taken hostage, Guo Changcheng and Chu Shuzhi doing their newlywed thing and getting sassed for it by Da Qing...playing nicely off the stronger emotional resonance of the main conversation as you’ve shown it here.)
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I have a lot of feelings about Shen Wei and education and Dixing (6K-odd worth of them previously expressed in fic); I imagine that, having seen how schools and universities work in modern-day Haixing, he applied to the Regent to start some in Dixing and got a bureaucratic runaround (education being the enemy of the Regent’s easy-going dictatorship? also, maybe the Regent has legitimate budget concerns?). I think it probably breaks his heart that education is his vocation in Haixing and yet he can’t bring any of it to his own people (and the rigidity of the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s role is working against him in himself as well?).
(It’s tangential to this scene but I also love the bits of non-SW/ZYL comic relief not discussed here: Da Qing and Lin Jing being peeved rather than frightened to be taken hostage, Guo Changcheng and Chu Shuzhi doing their newlywed thing and getting sassed for it by Da Qing...playing nicely off the stronger emotional resonance of the main conversation as you’ve shown it here.)