« Four main factors will influence the course of the war. The first is the level of resistance and national unity shown by Ukrainians, which has until now been extraordinary. The second is international support for Ukraine, which, though recently falling short of the country’s expectations, remains broad.
The third factor is the nature of modern warfare, a contest that turns on a combination of industrial might and command, control, communications and intelligence systems. One reason Russia has struggled in this war is that it is yet to recover from the dramatic deindustrialisation it suffered after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The final factor is information. When it comes to decision-making, Vladimir Putin is trapped in an information cocoon, thanks to his having been in power so long. The Russian president and his national-security team lack access to accurate intelligence. The system they operate lacks an efficient mechanism for correcting errors. Their Ukrainian counterparts are more flexible and effective.
In combination, these four factors make Russia’s eventual defeat inevitable. In time it will be forced to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. Its nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Didn’t a nuclear-armed America withdraw from Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan? »
— Prof. Feng Yujun, Director of the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies at Fudan University, writing at The Economist (archived).
Prof. Feng is one of China's leading "Russia watchers". His views may not reflect official thinking of the Chinese government though they are probably not distant from it.
China is currently benefiting economically in several ways from the war, but this does not mean Putin is highly regarded among Chinese policy makers.
Putin made a gross miscalculation with his invasion of Ukraine. He has put his military on international display as embarrassingly incompetent. Russian military hardware has been shown to be generally inferior to what Ukraine has gotten from the West and also inferior to various items of Ukrainian manufacture. Russia's few recent successes involve using its own troops as cannon fodder to make slow and costly advances.
With Putin's three-day "special operation" heading into day 789 and with Russian casualties equal to the population of a medium large city, Putin has clearly lost face in China.
so the nominations for the magnolia awards are finally out. the bad news is three-body didn’t get any acting nominations even though wang ziwen was a fan favourite for the best actress category. there was also a lot of hope for zhang luyi to be nominated. but you know, since zhang songwen, who was so highly praised by every living being for his performance in another show, didn’t even get a nomination, i’m like...meh whatever...
but the good news is that we still got 5 nominations:
three-body for best tv series
yang lei for best director
tian liangliang for best adapted screenplay
three-body for best cinematography
three-body for best art direction
i didn’t get the energy to fact check this, but some people are saying the best actor award and best tv series are almost never for the same series in magnolia awards, so it’s likely that three-body is going for a win as the best tv series, which is going to be something that every cast and crew can be proud of.
(honestly i just want to see zhang luyi coming out of hibernation lol; btw did any of you see yu hewei at the huabiao awards?)
tl;dr for the uninitiated: what if all homestuck characters were chinese people
John Egbert: 光勇 (Guang Yong). Lives in Beijing (im sorry /j). Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry.
egbert means "bright edge" and guang means "bright" and also sounds a little like john even if its the surname. john means god is gracious, which is not really a type of name chinese people give their kids so i just went with a common masculine name that sounds good with guang: yong, which means "brave" which i thought was fitting. i think dad egbert definitely calls them by the diminutive yongyong.
June Egbert might choose the name 小玉 (Xiaoyu), meaning "little jade", in reference to her sister.
Rose Lalonde: 刘秀兰 (Liu Xiulan). Lives somewhere in Jiangsu, probably Shanghai. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry.
i literally just went with a random common surname that vaguely sounded like lalonde here. xiulan means elegant orchid, so it's a flower name like rose and i think it fits her vibes. she shares the character xiu with roxy's name, tianxiu.
transmasc rose probably steals his name from a book character.
rose is very similar to canon i think, except she lives in a penthouse in central shanghai. i want to say initially she feels her heritage doesn't matter to her but later in life she tries to reconnect with not being "100% han".
Dave Strider: 赵大伟 (Zhao Dawei). Lives in Chongqing. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry (same as Rose).
zhao has a similar meaning to strider and was also a surname of the emperors so it has a connection to royalty. this works for both the lotr reference and king david. dawei is... a generic chinese boys name thats the name you give your kid if you want their english name to be david. it means "extraordinary".
david means "beloved" and every single chinese name like that is feminine. Dove Strider takes this as inspiration for the name Xinyan, spelled either 心燕 meaning "beloved swallow" or 心焱 meaning "beloved flame" instead of the more conventional 心妍 meaning "beloved beauty".
dave struggles with their cultural heritage more actively than rose does, and thus leans hard into their sichuanese identity. i headcanon them as making fun of chengdu (chongqing's rival in representing the cultural center of sichuan) in addition to making fun of northern chinese culture. SICHUAN RAHH
Jade Harley: 林玉平 (Lin Yuping). Lives in rural Shaanxi. Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry (same as John).
lin has similar meaning to both harley and halley, meaning grove/forest. yuping means "peaceful jade".
Jude Harley might choose the name 洋 (Yang), meaning "ocean" in the sense of expansive, or he might not feel a need to change his name. swapping names with his sibling is also a possibility.
i think her upbringing just translates to the rural northwest well? also i think its kinda cool she'd grow up near a section of the great wall of china. i could see her engaging in cultural traditions like papercutting and folk singing :> also buddhist jade real and true im not projecting trust
thanks for coming to my ted talk be on the lookout for more posts like this ft me struggling with traditional characters and cantonese pronunciations
So, a little bit about the translations of the names and titles that we meet in the first episode, not including the legend at the beginning, haha.
These are the words that I think it was important to translate or not to translate. At least once, so that people like me get it better, lol.
So, the title of the series itself. 苍兰诀 Cāng Lán Jué I hate how they translated it. "Love Between Fairy and Devil". No, no and no. This translates as "Parting of the Fairy and Devil". Or "parting" can be replaced by the word "farewell". But the most interesting thing is that the translation doesn't include the full names of the characters. This includes the word "cang" dark blue; deep green; ash-gray from the name of Dongfang Qingcang. And also the word "lán", which translates as orchid. And jué as "to bid farewell, to say goodbye". This adds an additional meaning to the title, right? Dark blue orchid to bid farewell.
玉京 Yujing. If I had known right away that it translates as the Jade Capital, it would have been a little clearer to me why so much attention is paid to this stone in the series. Because its significance would be more obvious. I confess, I didn't know about the importance of jade in the Chinese mythology of this genre.
(also 玉京 Chinese words, meaning that the Taoists called Heaven where of Service; refers to the Fairy are; refers to Royal Park in)
水雲�� Shuiyuntian. Translates as "Water clouds". And again, if I had known about the presence of the word water in the name, it would be easier for me to understand why they have so many water pavilions and fountain palaces. So I think you need to familiarize yourself with the features of the genre to understand this better.
司命殿 Arbiter Hall. Oh God. That's what I clutch my head about now. How could it be translated like this?! It killed the whole meaning for me. A very important moment! Siming translates as the god of fate, the keeper of fate. This is the God in charge of human life. Yes, it can be translated as a proper name. But Siming is not just the name of the master, it's her role, position. Therefore, then the guys are surprised that the master is a woman, because Siming is usually a man.
And although it can be translated by many different ways: Master of Fate, Controller of Fate, Deified Judge of Life, Arbiter of Fate, Director of Alloted Life Spans, and Director of Destinies, it's always important to emphasize the word "fate". And not just leave the word "Arbiter".
I think it's better to translate it as "Keeper of Fate Palace" or even "Arbiter of Fate Hall" or something like this. Otherwise This greatly interfered with the correct perception of the story and confused.
仙 Immortals and 仙界 Fairy realm. This translation made a very big confusion for me, because it seemed that the Shuiyuntian's people are immortal, but at the same time we are told that the true immortal is only Dongfang, and the Moon Tribe seems doesn't belong to either mortals or immortals. And here again it's important to learn the history of the genre.
In this case, immortals can also be translated as celestial or divine. These are people who live on the ninth cloud or among the clouds. The Moon tribe are also immortal, but they have left the heavenly capital.
I believe that for a better understanding of the difference it's worth translating it as the heavenly world and the celestials. This would be less confusing and more understandable.
仙女 Fairy. It's important to understand the difference between the European image of fairies and the Asian one.
A little lecture.
Originated from Chinese mythology, to describe persons of high moral character, intelligence and extraordinary, healthy, elegant to behold, and with extraordinary abilities, immortality of the woman and the high status of God. In the context used to describe looks pretty good, dignified and beautiful, delightful woman. In many minds, also refers to the appearance is not beautiful, but the temperament of someone charisma of women.
Western fairy is a fairy tale or myths and Legends of one of the female spirits or elves, is often described as a supernatural or preternatural spirit thereof. Fairies are generally described as having a human outer body with magical power, which originated from the inability to research folklore. Although in modern culture, even though they are often depicted as young, sometimes winged, A diminutive humanoid creature, but they are with the initial human expression are completely different. The English word“Fairy”is sometimes also can be used as the elves, the dwarfs, the gnomes and goblins, and other various shape close to people or having supernatural creatures in General. In such a case, the "Fairy" will be translated into elves. (Sorry for the translation from Chinese without correction, huh).