Questions about planes and technology on Haixing

[likealeafonthewind]

Do planes exist? I don't remember seeing any in the background of any of the episodes, and while in the novel, there's a scene where they're traveling to Kunlun's mountain via plane, there's no such scene in the show (the one time they do go to the mountain, they drive there). 

Also, there doesn't seem to be cars or any kind of vehicle in Dixing, right? Does everyone just get around by walking? If they have to go somewhere far, do they find someone with teleportation powers and pay them to take them somewhere? (On a side note, if Zhu Jiu's teleportation can only be done when there's sunlight present, how did his powers ever get activated in Dixing?)

Technology development seems much slower on Haixing in general than in our world, especially given the fact that an alien spaceship landed on their planet 10,000 years ago and introduced aliens into their civilization. With that, I would have expected them to be much further along by now, like exploring space already.

Comments

[naye]

I think given that there are modern cars of identifiable makes and models, it would be safe to assume Haixing has standard Earth levels of technology. The novel is set in China, the show... really isn't trying not to be? (Fun fact: in addition to Lin Jing wearing a Snoop Dogg shirt, Zhu Hong has a souvenir Big Ben on her desk.)

But given the sci-fi framing, it would be easy to make a case for certain modern technology not existing in Haixing!

[firestar]

...I have never noticed the souvenir Big Ben, omg. o_O

[naye]

There it is! :D

[firestar]

!!!!

I remember being amused by the British phone box that shows up later, yet somehow this I never noticed. o_O

[020104isme]

I hadn't seen that on the desk!

[likealeafonthewind]

I didn't catch that either! So they...took an interplanetary vacation to Europe? :D

Guess they really didn't mean for Haixing to be a different planet until after the fact. I wonder if they could have just said that it was an AU version of Earth or if the censors wouldn't have liked that either.

[extrapenguin]

With regards to Zhu Jiu, I got the impression that his powers only awakened in Haixing. This was also the reason he was so loyal to Ye Zun - Ye Zun brought him to Haixing and gave him his powers, basically.

[trobadora]

Heh. I thought his powers activated in Dixing and were so spectacularly useless there that it fed his bitterness. And yeah, sending him to Haixing is part of why he's so loyal to Ye Zun.

[asya_ana]

That was how I read that, too. Because Dixing has no sunlight, his powers were useless there. I felt a little bad for him when I learned that.

[goodgriefcharlie]

if Zhu Jiu's teleportation can only be done when there's sunlight present, how did his powers ever get activated in Dixing?

I think his powers work with any light, not just sunlight? We see him teleport into the beam of a guard's flashlight at night on the mountain that one time and I'm pretty sure that's also part of why the team needed a full city blackout before meeting with him. I also wonder how his powers activated, though -- how anyone's powers activate, really. Surely they're not all as traumatic as Ye Zun's?

[likealeafonthewind]

Oh, that's right! Thanks for pointing that out.

I don't think they gave any explanation for the power activation on the show - it seems very unpredictable.

[trobadora]

I would assume planes exist, because I see no reason why they wouldn't, given the general 21st-century-Earth level tech.

Yeah, Dixing doesn't appear to have any vehicles. Or maybe all we see of it is the pedestrian zone, LOL.

For Zhu Jiu, as far as I can tell, any light will do - so he can use it in Dixing, but only a VERY little bit. That must have been a source of endless frustration to him.

Technology development seems much slower on Haixing in general than in our world, especially given the fact that an alien spaceship landed on their planet 10,000 years ago and introduced aliens into their civilization. With that, I would have expected them to be much further along by now, like exploring space already.

That's a good point, and a very strange fact! I speculated at one point that there's actually very little continuity between the civilisation 10,000 years ago and today - that there was some other disaster in between that set everything back considerably. (The presence of continuity in form of the Ma Gui portrait doesn't have to mean anything, considering Ma Gui's student Zhang Shi is still alive today.)

[asya_ana]

I see you distracting us with BEARS! :D

I think the civilization 10k years ago was very advanced indeed in relation to earth, but yeah, I guess not according to people with spaceships. Still, wouldn't the break have had to been between the spaceship and bb!Shen Wei's time? Because they're basically living in caves.

[trobadora]

I read the living in caves bit as reflecting the devastation the meteor wreaked. Their tech level is difficult to define - I mean, that healing salve they use on Zhao Yunlan's hands is beyond present-day medicine, and certainly no one knows how to even understand the Hallows, much less create them.

Given how casually young Da Qing talks about the spaceship, there does seem to be at least a cultural continuity there, which gets disrupted later - in the present, most people don't know Dixingren exist, and I doubt they know anything about a spaceship having been around back then. *g*

[likealeafonthewind]

That's a very good point!

Haixingren don't seem to know about Yashou in the present day either - Guo Changcheng was completely shocked and terrified to find out that Zhu Hong and Da Qing could turn into animals.

[trobadora]

Oh yeah, that's true!

Another datapoint for tech level in the past: they have paper - see that portrait of ZYL they give Da Qing to identify him!

[extrapenguin]

I just rewatched episode 5, and the SID has a robot spider:


And based on this scene-setting CGI image, Dixing doesn't seem to be very large:

There's a pretty densely packed city/village in front, some more sparse inhabitance to the left, and on top of the lava mountain, what I assume is the Dijun's palace. There might be some more houses behind the mountain, but I think that's where Ye Zun's pillar is. All in all it seems to be a pretty small/densely packed place, though I think bicycles could catch on easily.

[asya_ana]

The initial infodump says that there are proportionately far fewer Dixingren, so perhaps it makes sense that Dixing would be small, almost like a small country rather than another "level" that would encompass the whole of a planet.

[extrapenguin]

Yeah, I got the distinct impression that Dixing's population was perhaps more comparable with that of Dragon City than that of Haixing. A few hundred k, up to maybe a million or so?

[likealeafonthewind]

Yeah, I got that impression too. The reason why I was asking about transportation there was because when they're looking for the Dijun booklet and Dingdun, Butler Wu takes ZYL around Dixing via teleportation so it seemed like just walking wouldn't have worked (unless they were under a time crunch? I can't remember).

[extrapenguin]

It's been a while since I watched, but I recall that at least one of the times, Zhao Yunlan had upset a bunch of locals. I also think they were under at least some time pressure?

[powwie]

Also, there doesn't seem to be cars or any kind of vehicle in Dixing, right?

Dixing has only 20 inhabitants that frequent the same bar everyday, so maybe they don't really need any kind of vehice to move aroung. >_<

I guess they didn't have the budget for developing a better set for Dixing, so uhm, I wouldn't really dwell much on that.

[asya_ana]

Technology development seems much slower on Haixing in general than in our world, especially given the fact that an alien spaceship landed on their planet 10,000 years ago and introduced aliens into their civilization. With that, I would have expected them to be much further along by now, like exploring space already.

Which makes one wonder why Shen Wei, et al even in old Haixing weren't beyond modern day tech levels.

It's also possible that they retroactively inserted the alien spaceship explanation? It's such a fast infodump that I could imagine it might have been quickly added later. I remember reading that they had to retroactively rename Dixing after the original name got censored, and maybe this was their way of explaining why Dixing exists separate from the surface of Earth (I mean ... Haixing).

[lynndyre]

Yeah, there's no indication that they retained any of the space-related knowledge you'd think they'd have had. It's a little like Elfquest.

[extrapenguin]

As a purveyor of science fiction, "generation spaceship traverses through vastness of space, inhabitants lose the skills originally used to build the spaceship due to generation turnover in favor of tilling the land" is not by any means a unique plot. So their many generation removed ancestors built the spaceship, and one or two people could read the manual well enough to land the thing, after which everyone gave a sigh of relief and vowed to never do that again.

[naye]

The only discussions about the space ship seem very much pasted on later? CGI intro has it, and... does it get mentioned again? If it does I think you'd find it's in a long shot where they could easily insert some new dialogue.

Dixing and Haixing are both dubbed in after the fact, yes. You can definitely tell when you listen for it - and it was different in the show preview.

[likealeafonthewind]

I believe that Da Qing says it in episode 34, but his explanation is a little different than the CGI intro. He says that two groups of people arrived on the space ship - Dixingren and Yashouren and they all lived in harmony with the native Haixing population until the war. I can't remember if his line was dubbed in after the fact or not.

[likealeafonthewind]

Yeah, and even if they don't go back into space, there's other technology that must have been present on a space ship that they'd have taken with them as being useful, right? Like communications devices, food processors, air conditioning and heating systems, modern day plumbing, maybe advanced weaponry. Though a hand-wavey explanation could also be that something in Haixing's atmosphere disrupted their technology equipment and all of it was rendered useless so that had to start from scratch.

I remember reading that they had to retroactively rename Dixing after the original name got censored

That explains a lot with the voice-overs. Though they still kept the name Dijun booklet, but maybe that's because they actually show the booklet and it's got the name inscribed on it so they couldn't change it.

[qwerty]

I would totally be into a space!au of Guardian. :)

[shirasade]

Don't give me ideas! :)

I find a lot of the world-building only works with copious amounts of handwaving because they so obviously crammed the whole alien-planet thing on top of the Chinese novel setting. So we can pretty much use the bits we like, fill in the gaps however we want and discard the others.

[likealeafonthewind]

That's pretty much what I do with any canon, tbh.

[likealeafonthewind]

I don't necessarily have a space!au in the works, but I do have a future-fixit in the works that's set a couple hundred/thousand years after the events of the show.