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GetBackers translation note, pedantic
So recently I figured out where "Rouran" was. My mother was watching a drama set in the Han Dynasty, and one of the female characters was a princess of Loulan. So I said, where's Loulan? And was told it was an old name for Xinjiang, which upon research was half right. It's a ruined city that lies in Xinjiang, between Kazakstan and Mongolia. (map)
Loulan, capital of the Loulan (Kroraina) Kingdom, was a small, prosperous commercial city on the famous Silk Road about 2,000 years ago... until it was mysteriously swallowed by the desert.
There's controversy over what happened to the Loulan civilisation, I think, similar to that over the Minoans. I suppose the GB backstory is that they picked up and left when the desert encroached, becoming the Chinese equivalent of the Romany. XD Or, well, any one of the nomadic tribes of the region: they were Caucasian, like the Uighurs or the Kazakhs, not ethnic Chinese.
The sense of major accomplishment in which I'm currently basking derives from the fact that I know what language Emishi's attacks come in now. The "robu no ruu" whatever furigana that bore no resemblance to the character pronunciations in Japanese or Chinese? Mongolian. It actually starts off "lop nur", like the name of the lake - it means "wandering", which in the case of the lake is due to the fact that it's not so much a lake as patches of salt marshes that expand and shrink. In the case of Emishi I suppose it means "wandering hither and to, pleasing only myself". The Chinese characters used to write that part of the attack are 彷徨 (pang2huang2), which actually has more the sense of "wandering about in circles like a headless chicken" but maybe the meaning's shifted a bit in Japanese. Or, yanno, Emishi.
Once again I don't know if I want to shake Aoki Yuuya's hand or beat him with a baseball bat.
Loulan, capital of the Loulan (Kroraina) Kingdom, was a small, prosperous commercial city on the famous Silk Road about 2,000 years ago... until it was mysteriously swallowed by the desert.
There's controversy over what happened to the Loulan civilisation, I think, similar to that over the Minoans. I suppose the GB backstory is that they picked up and left when the desert encroached, becoming the Chinese equivalent of the Romany. XD Or, well, any one of the nomadic tribes of the region: they were Caucasian, like the Uighurs or the Kazakhs, not ethnic Chinese.
The sense of major accomplishment in which I'm currently basking derives from the fact that I know what language Emishi's attacks come in now. The "robu no ruu" whatever furigana that bore no resemblance to the character pronunciations in Japanese or Chinese? Mongolian. It actually starts off "lop nur", like the name of the lake - it means "wandering", which in the case of the lake is due to the fact that it's not so much a lake as patches of salt marshes that expand and shrink. In the case of Emishi I suppose it means "wandering hither and to, pleasing only myself". The Chinese characters used to write that part of the attack are 彷徨 (pang2huang2), which actually has more the sense of "wandering about in circles like a headless chicken" but maybe the meaning's shifted a bit in Japanese. Or, yanno, Emishi.
Once again I don't know if I want to shake Aoki Yuuya's hand or beat him with a baseball bat.
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IOW probably an unesoteric reason why Aoki knew about Loulan. /Everyone/ saw the King Tut exhibition.
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(You are... not fond of mummies? XD XD Coincidentally there's a display of Egyptian artifacts at the Montreal Fine Arts, on loan from the British Museum.)
Novel, really? Historical reconstruction à la Renault or how-we-rediscovered-the-lost-city?
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OK- any excuse to put off work is a good excuse, especially when it unearths my copy of Mencius as well.
Inoue Yasushi-
Lou-lan and other stories, Kodansha ISBN4-7700-0960-7 This one is a novella and reads like an historical essay in the site's history far more than fiction.
Tun-Huang, Kodansha, ISBN4-7700-1086-9
Full-scale historical novel, but hardly as racy (or enjoyable) as Renault.
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Thanks for the info!
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