PeachBlossomGoddess

I think definitely it was Zhao trying to grind him into dust. He told his grandpa he expects it though.

Chinese names have 3 characters - surname, generation name and given name*. So Xiu is the female generation name and Jin in the male generation name and in loose informal setting they just refer to each other as brothers and sisters. But when specificity is needed they would be differentiated as tóngbāo xiōngmèi/同胞兄妹(full siblings; Xiushu); shù xiōngmèi/庶兄妹 (siblings from concubines; Jinlan, Xiulai, Xiuru), táng mèi/ 堂妹 (paternal younger cousin sister; Xiuwan) etc
*Post 1980s most Chinese names only have 2 characters bc of the one child policy. Just surname and given name, no more generation names.

Yeah I wonder whether the Zhaos did this bc they needed him. Despite Grandpa Zhao's power and influence, they seem short of male talent - Xingtang's dad and bro seem to be useless sacks of flesh. So they recruited Jinqi who was a talented scholar to help build up their influence in the court. But he refused to be their puppet and went the army route instead.

Yeah I initially was thinking along those lines also but then I realized he saw the flower pin on Jinqi's hat from the get go. He of all people must know his sister's name means larkspur and understand what it means. The fact that he said nothing and went along with it all suggests to me he may have been in on it. Otherwise, he would have quietly asked Jinqi to remove it before it became a thing.

Ms Du discovered her court ambitions were misguided. This was Ming dynasty, a terrible time for female officials. The founding emperor codified the Six Bureaus giving a career path for female officials in palace administration. But from the reign of the Yongle emperor, which is Zhu Di, the sitting emperor in this drama, the eunuchs took over. Almost all of the administrative, document handling and secretarial duties were shifted to the eunuchs. Female officials were reduced to ceremonial roles - they just became seal bearers or more or less palace vases. So Ms Du's ambitions went nowhere, that was what Madame Qin was alluding to. So her best option was to marry as well as she could but first of all at 19 she is aging out and she is of military lineage - so not good enough to be legitimate wife of the first young master of a noble family like Lin Jinqi.

I think everyone over estimates the ability of the Lins to bail out the Shens. The Lins barely got out by the skin of their own teeth and had to retreat from the capital back to Jinling. Grandpa Lin is retired with no official post and Jinqi is the highest rank Lin after clawing his way up to 4th rank in the army. His father is only 7th ranked. The Shen men knew it was coming so the young Jinqi's naive intention of warning them wasn't really needed, it just shows his heart was in the right place.

Who are you talking about? The 2nd Young Lady Lin is Xiuwan, the one who is supposed to be engaged with Xie Zhao.
I think you mean Xiuru, the timid 3rd Young Lady Lin. She is the daughter of a deceased concubine so she has no power or standing in the household. Maybe that makes her susceptible to influence by Ms Du.

Yeah word play is very common and popular throughout Chinese history. It is a combination of a long scholarly culture and a long history of censorship. Scholars like to "modestly" show off the depth of their knowledge and sophistication by engaging in poetry and word play competitions. Also openly criticizing the emperor can get you killed so they use a lot of metaphor and homonyms to seem to say one thing when they are really saying something else. It is still very prevalent and relevant in today age.

In that particular scene, they are playing a drinking game where they have to match medical herb names with lines from the Four Books and Five Classics, which are the foundational canonical texts of Confucianism. Obviously you have to be a highly educated person to be able to play this game. It would be very laborious and time consuming to translate this word game properly so that non-native speakers can understand it so I suspect WeTV just did a literal translation and left it at that. I am not well versed enough in those classical texts (boring) with so many archaic words to do it well. Even though I have come across and had to memorize some of the more famous lines, I have never come close to reading the Analects, Mencius or the Book of Rites etc in full.

That is so true. No one wants to take risks bc of the deep drama downturn.

From her billing, it looks like ZHHZ has a bigger role.

I don't really like her performance here but I preferred her to the FL in In Blossom. I guess it goes to show she is a much better actress than JJY but she is way outshone by Li Meng here.

Hey glad to see you here. She is stealing the show but yes, hopefully she gets different roles going forward.

Yes of course her acting is good but the character as portrayed is one note. I guess for such a famous actor I had expected more. But maybe the script doesn't give her much to work with.

I know Guo Keyu is a highly regarded actor but I find her weepy performance as Lanxiang's mom annoying.

I think he immediately understood his sisters intentions when he saw the flower pin and he got angry when he realized Jinqi was not going to go along with it. Just from his face.

I have the impression she is helping Cuique. She is timid bc she is the daughter of a concubine and has not much status in the household. I think she is second master Lin Jinlan's full sister. The siblings are up to something.

Yeah the consistent message of this drama is it sucked big time to be a woman during Ming dynasty!

That said, there was no way for all the men present to know Ms Du's given name was Cuique, it was actually third bro Lin that blurted it out and second bro tried to shush him.

He should be the ML's brother from a different mother, his father's (deceased) concubine and therefore not a legitimate son.

Yes he totally has motive, means and opportunity! He is Jinqi's half brother - his father's dead concubine's son.