(no subject)

[flemmings]

Also the 3K ragamuffins keep killing the messenger. This annoyed me when Fu Chai did it in Woxin. The practice is no more agreeable in the Three Kingdoms. And they *all* do it. Never expected my cultural sticking point to be the proper treatment of ambassadors, or rather, hapless underlings, but it is.

My hanzi learner's books tells me that the chai hanzi's base meaning is 'fall short', though mandarintools would have it as 'error, to err.' Fu Chai then means 'the man is wrong.' Gou Jian, par contre, is 'entice and trample on.' I'd ask if no one ever thought when naming people in Spring Autumn, if the names weren't so apropos one suspects them of having been bestowed after the event.

Comments

[incandescens]

It irritated me vastly in the Lord of the Rings movie when Aragorn went and decapitated the Mouth of Sauron. Half the point of that scene in the book was that the good guys didn't do that to heralds and messengers. However bad the news and however rudely presented.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I'm becoming happier by the day that I never saw the second and third movies. The 3K warlords kill anyone who brings news they don't like, or even an offer they don't want to accept. Possibly this means that being a messenger was regarded as the same thing as going into battle- good chance you wouldn't come out. But still. (sniffs)

They also kill generals who lose battles. No wonder this stupid dust-up lasted so long and killed so many people. I know China's big but this is all happening in a middlish area thereof in 200 AD. You can't keep fielding armies of 400,000 or 800,000 and having them annihlated, without some fallout. Where does Yuan Shao *get* another half million men from, one wonders.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Artistic license?