Her expression full of cocky self confidence, Miss Hua begins to fuss with her clothes to ready herself to receive the award.
“These three.” The Emperor ties gold, silver and white ribbon respectively on the three scrolls according to their status and signals to his servant for the winners to be announced.
Eager with anticipation, the crowd sits up taller as their eyes blaze with curiosity.
Pulling out the three paper scrolls, the servant begins with the third place winner.
“Daughter of Official Shang, Miss Hua.”
An uproar reverberates through the crowd as Miss Hua’s expression turns a ghastly shade of gray.
How could she possibly not be the winner?!
Miss Hua”s placement was of course a shock to everyone in the room. After a moment of stunned silence, a majority of people quickly thought this was a pleasing turn of event.
Qiu Yu Luo knew her own ability well enough to know that she has no hope of winning. A bit gleeful also a bit worried at the sight of Miss Hua’s overwhelming disappointment, Qiu Yu Luo asks her “What do we do? Is my crazy sister going to win instead?”
Miss Hua naturally wasn’t concerned about Zhi Wei. After all, other than being a bit huffy at how much attention Zhi Wei has gotten, to Miss Hua Zhi Wei is already engaged to Prince Helian so she is not her competitor. Sneering at Qiu Yu Luo’s question, Miss Hua replies “Even if everyone in this world is dead, your sister still wouldn’t be the winner.”
“Second place up,” the servant continues “Granddaughter of Official Hu, Miss Hu.”
Miss Hua smiled gracefully but there was a hint of mild disappointment and surprise on her face. She came prepared and even had some help with her question so how could anyone else win over her?
“The winner…” The servant dragged the word out long and loud, making everyone’s eager anticipation jump as they held their breath- the best and most well known scholarly girls both took the second and third place so who else could surpass them?
The ladies look at each other thinking it could be any one of them…but then none of them seem likely either. Of course no one spared a look towards Zhi Wei’s direction.
Ning Yi is back to drinking in his leisurely manner as his expression returned to their usual calm…with even a hint of glee in it.
Twirling the drum hammer in his hands, a bord Helian has little interest in what’s going on. It wouldn’t be Feng Zhi Wei anyway. She wouldn’t compete in something like this…that woman’s heart is not in such things.
Zhi Wei is still immersed in her own drinking as well– it wasn’t going to be her anyway…since what she wrote…let’s just say it will be fortunate if someone doesn’t explode in anger.
The high pitched voice of the eunuch vibrates through the dead silence. “Feng Zhi Wei!”
Astonished yells.
Restless commotion.
Countless people who stood up in shock then sit down once they belatedly realized what they did.
All sat down…except two who still stood, unable to recover from their shock. Tugging on their daughter, Miss Hua and Qiu Yu Luo’s mothers forcefully make the two girls sit back down.
Not hiding his glee now, Ning Yi picks up his speed of drink until his face is tinged with a red glow, somehow making him more handsome if that’s possible… much to the bitter disappointment of all those ladies who were not lucky enough to be one of the three winners.
The drum hammer in Helian’s hand falls, nearly hitting his feet.
Zhi Wei too, accidentally crushed her wine cup into a golden leaf.
How did this happen? Her question? The winner?!
Full of smile, the Emperor says “A woman without talent is a virtue. It’s not the blessings of a nation to have women dally into politics. Although some of the questions were good but it would not be appropriate to bring them to attention. Women should be concerned with women affairs. Therefore, despite the fact that the winner’s question might seem like a vulgar joke at first glance but in actuality, it is refreshing, creative and daring. I liked it very much.”
Her face turned pale when the Emperor said “women dally into politics”, Royal Concubine Chang promptly agrees “Yes, I also thought the winner was very much worthy of the first place.”
This made people that much more curious of how the crazy and ugly Miss Feng gained the approval of both the Emperor and Royal Concubine Chang. How could she win over Miss Hu and Miss Hua? Not to mention Royal Concubine Chang’s niece didn’t even make it into the top three winners.
While everyone is amazed at her good fortune, Zhi Wei is drowning in a sea of regret, so much so that she wants to bang her head against the wall.
She was wrong!
Eager to prove themselves, all the misses had focused on the grandiose and important political affairs but instead of gaining the Emperor’s approval it had instead made him uneasy and irritated. So of course, in contrast, her joke of a question promptly become the shining example the Emperor is using as a warning to his restless wives for overstepping their bounds.
What a mistake!
- Once the three winners were announced, then the rest of the ladies are given the chance to challenge a question of their choice. (They had to choose who to challenge first before the question was read. The three winners had already answered their own questions on the paper scrolls but the challengers will have a chance to answer the question first before the winners’ answers are read.)
- Miss Hua’s question was the first one to be challenged. Much to Zhi Wei’s surprise, Miss Hua’s question was pretty much the question Ning Yi had written on the waxed covered paper. Apparently, Ning Yi had shot a wax covered ball into Miss Hua’s cup as well when he had walked past her. Overjoyed, Miss Hua read the paper and the question NIng Yi had written on it. Instantly assuming that Ning Yi as the Emperor’s son would know his own father’s preference, Miss Hua’s little heart almost exploded with joy since she figured this was Ning Yi’s way of telling her that she is the one he wants as his wife. Remembering back to the Emperor’s words now, Miss Hua’s face pales as she belatedly guessed what Ning Yi’s real intention might’ve been.
Guessing the truth when she saw Miss Hua’s expression, a faint smile appeared on Zhi Wei. Miss Hua indeed has some real knowledge and talent in her. She didn’t lose her head completely and instead of writing the question exactly as Ning Yi had given her, she knew enough to disguise the question a bit. If she had not, she might’ve been thrown into the dungeon by now. On the surface, everything is still friendly between Prince Zhang Ning and the Emperor. Prince Zhang Ning is just a hidden worry right now to the Emperor so how could it be bandied about publically? In order to show the Emperor’s “trust” in Prince Zhang Ning, whoever dared to bring up the prince’s loyalty would’ve been quickly thrown into the dungeon. Fortunately for Miss Hua, she was smart enough to disguise her question so the Emperor was able to give her another chance.
Playing with her fingernails as she lazily worked out all the details, Zhi Wei has a guess that she herself was also tricked by Ning Yi.
Ning Yi is extremely skilled at reading people. He had seemingly set up two identical traps for her and Miss Hua but there were completely different. For Miss Hua, it was to drag her off the winner’s seat and defeat her. For herself, it was to make her the winner.
He knew the proud Miss Hua who is infatuated with him will without fail use his wax ball to cheat.
He also knew she would refuse to meekly listen to him and would figure out the dangers within the question so there is no way she would use the question he gave. Moreover, not only would she not use it but because she would be suspicious that he has intentionally laid a trap for her so instead, she would do the complete opposite and make fun of him somehow.
Indeed, she couldn’t resist the temptation and made fun of him.
Which caught the Emperor’s attention.
Just as he had predicted, just as he had wanted.
Gritting her teeth, Zhi Wei silently fumes Prince Chu and Silly Gu (she is talking about Gu Nan Yi here) are both difficult to live with! (That’s a jab at the common Chinese saying that both women and scoundrels are hard to live with.)
Skipping over the second question which is something about how to combat a much troublesome weapon from their enemy nation. Our heroine of course had some thoughts about that but she kept her answers to herself. It’s finally time to reveal our heroine’s question.
“I will challenge it!” Miss Hua stands up proudly as she casts a provoking glare towards Zhi Wei’s direction.
Zhi Wei returns an innocent smile. Answer it. I hope you can answer it.
The eunuch glances over the question quickly and after a moment of surprise, lets out a laugh. Realizing right away that he is in big trouble, the eunuch falls down on his knee and pleads for forgiveness. Impatient everyone lets out a frustrated sigh in unison. Unable to hold back any longer, Prince Helian walks over and grabs the scroll “Let’s see what impressive thing she wrote…”
His voice suddenly trails off before bursting out in a loud laugh “Yes! Yes! This is so true!”
Everyone looked at each other and wondered in exasperation if this one is going to be too busy laughing to read the question as well.
Thankfully, Helian didn’t forget the waiting crowd as he keeps a laughing eye on Ning Yi and reads “What does a woman hate the most?”
Miss Hua blinks in surprise along with everyone else. Who would’ve though the winning question would be one that sounded more like a joke?
What does a woman hate the most?
To be from an ordinary family?
To be plain in appearance?
To lose youth and beauty to time?
To have one’s husband fall in love with another?
To have the concubines flaunting about?
To have the mistress’ children grow up better than one’s own?
To have the person you like show up but after searching through your closest only to discover you don’t have a single piece of clothing that is pretty enough?
To run into someone who is wearing the exact same outfit you had special ordered? Or someone who had the exact same make up you had just learned?
To run into an old nemesis only to discover that her clothes are prettier than yours and her husband has a higher government position than your husband’s?
In that instant, everyone thought they knew the answer but then also felt the inadequacy of their answers in the next instant.
There are simply too many answers– women have never been creatures of contentment. To ask a woman to be content it would’ve been easier to ask Prince Helian’s foot to not stink. (There have been a few jabs at how stinky Helian’s foot is in the previous chapters. There is one funny scene when Helian lost a shoe in the academy’s pound and made the fishes float to the top due to how stinky the shoe was.)
Miss Hua stood in shock. She had thought of many possibilities including political, historical, astronomical, geographical, horticultural and so on. She is confident that she can answer any of those but who knew the question would be so encompassing but then nothing-at-all sort of question? The simplest question is the most difficult because the answer could be everything or nothing.
Lost in her own thoughts, Miss Hua thought about the wax ball from Prince Chu, thought about the strange question then looking at Zhi Wei who is still drinking elegantly. Perhaps…she was wrong about this woman…
“What women hate the most…”
“What women hate the most…” With a cloud of sadness around her, Miss Hua says “…it’s the deception of a beloved.” (Another translation could be the deception of a good man)
Ning Yi smiles and pours another cup of wine for himself as if it all has nothing to do with him.
Zhi Wei smiles and raises her cup towards the courageous but unlucky woman.
You are wrong.
One who lied to you can never be your beloved. (with the alternate translation then this would be “Once the man lies to you then he is no longer your good man.”)
Prince Helian shakes his head as he drags out his voice and reads the answer in a funny manner “As a woman, what does one hate the most?”
“…….to have Prince Chu more beautiful than her!”
I was extra good today! This post was quite a bit longer than my usual translation but I didn’t have the heart to leave you guys hanging for another week before you guys find out what Zhi Wei’s question was. Next week Ning Yi will personally reward the winner but of course our hero is not going to let Zhi Wei off so easily…
Oh yesssss pleaseee let us have a Ning Yi and Zhi Wei interaction!!!
Thanks so much for translating this! I haven’t seen the drama yet but I was wondering if this was included and if so, what episode? Thanks again!
Episode 37 on the Netflix version.
I love what you are doing, please can you direct me to where I can find the fully translated book? I would love to read it. Thank you!
There is no english translation of the book 🙁 as of yet.. Sadly
Okay Lena, thank you.
Good, good Ninja… thanks for not leaving us hanging yet again. I thought you would have, and what a cheeky end to the mysterious question. Thank you for also including some Helian details (he does sound like an awesome character). Further, I do appreciate your interpretation of the translation and also providing an alternate as subtleties like this add to the drama. Prize reveal next week!
Thank you!
😂😂😂😂😂👌👌👌 thank you!
Thanks for the translation!
Thank you!!!
That’s was good. Has I reflect on the drama, it seems like they took certain parts of the novel and made it into a different scene. I remember in the drama ZW told Ms. Hua that Ning Yi was more beautiful than most woman. I like the novel details surrounding how that scene came about. I can’t wait for next week as well. I really appreciate you translating all this for us. I still wish I could read Chinese. I just want to read the story for myself. I really appreciate all you are doing.
There are quite a few fundamental differences between the characters in the drama vs the novel so I think that’s why you are going to see the many changes the drama had to make to reflect those differences. For example, neither Zhi Wei nor Ning Yi in the novel are “good” people in the traditional sense. Survival is always THE most important thing to Zhi Wei so while she might risk her life to rescue someone she loves, she would have never killed herself. In contrast to our hero in the drama who had the praise worthy goal of creating a better world, Ning Yi in the novel spent all his energy on figuring out how to kill his own families before they kill him first. In this scene here, it makes sense in the drama that Ning Yi would use this opportunity to clear his mother’s name but the Ning Yi in the novel would not have bothered. His mother is dead, he will only be satisfied when all those who wronged his mother are dead so what does it matter if her name is cleared in front of a bunch of people whose days are numbered anyway.
I am glad that we get to have two different perspectives for our two main hero’ characters. We really get to appreciate them both, the good, bad and ugly.
Thanks for the explanation. I can see why they decided to make the characters more noble for the drama.
I love this week’s translation. It was awesome! Can’t wait for next week’s.
Many thanks for the translation and for not leaving us hanging for another week. I love ZW’s question but am not sure why Ning Yi would be mad about it. I would think he’d find it amusing.
The next post will give us his real reaction…
Oh, the suspense….. :).
Yay!! This was good – thanks so much for the translation.
Thank you for the long translation. You are the best. Now that you finished Journey of Flower translations, are you going to start giving us longer translations? 😉😉😉😉.
Do you have any projects in mind?
😍
I am planning on taking a break on my Wed translations so that could possibly mean longer translation on the Monday Phoenixes post on some weeks…which is what happened this time. I have been toying with the idea of trying you guys with a novel translation that I felt was one of the more well written stories I have read that fits in the same genre as Phoenixes and Princess Agents. (Sometimes people fall in love with certain dramas and so they automatically assume the novel is well written as well…but that is not always the case. Take Phoenixes for example. I do think the story is well written but it does have plenty of flaws. This particular author likes to go into way too many side tangents with the MANY male second leads she tends to give to her heroine so that means her hero are often forgotten at the sideline for chapters at a time.) However, that particular novel has not been made into a drama…yet, so it would really be more of a pet project that could get no attention at all which I will honestly admit would make it difficult for me to stay motivated.
So while I am having trouble making up my mind, I am open to suggestions from you all. Just remember there are a few conditions before I will take on a project: 1. The novel will need to be actually better than the drama. (For example, Love Lost in Time was SO much better as a drama than the novel itself) AND/OR 2. The novel has details the drama left out that most of us would be interested in. 3. The drama changed the ending…and not for the better. (this last one will usually get an automatic translation from me even if I don’t choose to translate most of the novel).
I have not watched any other Chinese drama that grabs my interest. I have tried a few of them. Can you recommend some for me? Also, I have notice of late that most of the Chinese drama have a heavenly connection. They are made in the sky lately, I can’t get past that, and then I start comparing them to TROP. My preferences have to be historical. I love watching Chinese historical drama.
Hmm…I am the wrong person to ask on C-historical drama…especially on palace drama since they are usually way too long and heavy for my taste. I will give a recommendation some thought though and perhaps put together a post if I can find enough of them.
As for the number of fantasy C-drama you have seen lately, I am guessing that’s due to the brief ban the C-government put on palace dramas. C-fantasy sometimes require familiarity with Chinese fantasy lore (ie. like watching a show that uses all of the stuff from Lord of the Rings’ background and not explaining them since they assume their audience would be very familiar with the story set up already) so that could be more challenging.
Thanks you for the time you put in translation
Thank you so much! I look forward to Mondays because of your translations!
Just curious, is there a Chinese novel in this genre that has been translated that you would recommend?
I am actually not familiar with the C-novel translation sites although from the cursory google search I did just now there was a surprising number of them. Doing a quick look through a few sites, this particular post: https://sharramycats.wordpress.com/2017/09/29/recommended-completed-chinese-romance-novels/ caught my eye since it is a recommendation of C-novel that has completed translations (“completed” being a very important point because sometimes the novel translators abandons the translation half way through because those C-novel tends to be so dang long). One thing to prepare yourself though is that C-novel LOVES time travel so that will be something you will have to get used to. Most of the C-drama (ie. Princess Agents, Love Lost in Time, Legend of Fu Yao) that is based on C-novels will usually have to cut out the time travelling part due to government regulations.
Thanks for the link, Ninja. It’s always interesting to hear about TV government regulations in China as we have very little (that I know of) here in the States.
Such a great post, Ninja! While their apparent ‘goodness’ is less noble in the book, the characters have that same chemistry.
I would love to read your translations of any other similar novels, whether they were already TV adaptations or not. I read somewhere else the Ashes of Love translation (which was done a few years before the TV adaptation) and really enjoyed it. It’s literature and prose we non-Mandarin speakers have never heard of so to read something you think is well-written would be fascinating.
Anyway, am loving TROP so thank you, thank you. 😊