Chapter Text
There was a roar of approval as each cast member was introduced and walked onto the stage of Hall H at the annual San Diego Comic Con.
The moderator asked the usual questions to each cast member about favourite scenes, memorable moments, who was the prankster on set, whose character’s personality most resembled the actor in real life.
And then there was the question about relationships and how members of a family or members of a sect referred to each other. The moderator explained that he was a bit confused because the subtitles didn’t seem to match with the Chinese terminology used (the moderator, not being Chinese but having heard from Chinese-speaking friends that there was a mismatch, wanted to clarify). All heads swivelled immediately toward actor Huang Ziteng, who played the strict uncle, Lan Qiren. Mr Huang gave a theatrical sigh (the question was pre-arranged, of course) and stepped over to the podium. He asked the powerpoint slides to be projected onto the large screen, and then, for the next hour, explained the complicated Chinese family tree to a rapt audience. There were three slides in total: one for the father’s side of family, a second for the mother’s side of family, and the third for the martial arts family.
When the third slide was finally projected onto the screen, Mr Huang invited Zhang Jingtong, the actress who played the infamous Madam Yu, to take over. Ms Zhang cheerfully went through the generations of terms, explained that the terms for a martial arts family were basically taken from those used for patriarchal relations (China being even now a very much patriarchal society), and then, to the astonishment of the audience, went on quite a rant about how mean Madam Yu was to Wei Wuxian. She pointed out that he was allowed to call Jiang Fengmian “Jiang Shushu”, which translated as “Uncle Jiang”, probably because Sect Leader Jiang insisted upon it. Given that Wei Wuxian was the Head Disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, he should technically have called Sect Leader Jiang “Shifu”, or Martial Arts Master/Teacher. There is a phrase in Chinese that says, “Martial Master for a day, Father for life”, meaning that disciples looked to their shifu as another father. But because of this, Madam Yu would have had to allow Wei Wuxian to call her “shimu” and therefore would have needed to treat him as a son. To force him to continuously feel like an outsider, he had to call the Sect Leader his honorary uncle, call her Madam Yu, and call her children his martial siblings, “Shijie” and “Shidi”, respectively, instead of full siblings, “A-jie” and “Didi”.
Lecture over, Ms Zhang bowed and returned to her seat. The applause was so loud, with whistling and chants of “Madam Yu, Madam Yu”, that she was forced to stand and give another bow.
The moderator only managed to get the crowd to quiet down by saying that they were going to watch a short montage of some memorable scenes from the TV series.
~*~*~*~
And here are the charts that “Professor Lan” and “Madam Yu” explained to the audience. I hope it will be of some help to our non-Chinese authors and readers. I would like to point out that for some terms, there are alternate versions/variations. For example, older brother is “Xiong” but also “Ge” (Wei Wuxian calling Lan Wangji Lan-er-gege, literally “Second Older Brother Lan”). “Xiongzhang”, which is what Lan Wangji calls Lan Xichen, is a very formal way of saying “Older Brother”.
A note on the cousin prefixes:
(1) first, please know that "xiong (ge)" and "jie" refer to older male and female siblings, respectively, and "di" and "mei" to younger male and female sibs;
(2) "tang" is a prefix specific to the children of brothers;
(3) "biao" is the prefix for all other children of brother-sister and sister-sister relationships;
(4) the use of "xiong (ge)", "jie", "di", and "mei" in conjunction with the cousin prefixes of "tang" and "biao" is in relation to the ages between cousins.
Therefore, if your father's younger brother has a daughter who is older than you, you'd call her "tangjie". Likewise, if your father's older sister has a son younger than you, you'd call him "biaodi". I don't want anyone to think that the terms are specific to the parent of the cousin. It's just that, usually, the older siblings will tend to have children who are older than those of their younger siblings, and that's how I "simplified" my chart.
A final note: the Chinese place a lot of emphasis on maintaining order in terms of generations and the terminology reflects this. There is no such thing as a "cousin once/twice/thrice removed" in Chinese.
NOTICE: please also note that the above familial terms are the modern ones, what are currently being used by Mandarin speakers. If you want to be canon-compliant, go with the terms used in MDZS/CQL. (thanks to kuonji for the reminder to be precise!)
So, just to emphasize that Wei Wuxian calls Jiang Yanli “Shijie” because she is his Older Martial Sister. Jiang Cheng calls her “A-Jie” (or Jiejie) because she is his older sister by blood; he would never call her “Shijie”.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: members of the martial sect who are not children and disciples would address the leader as “leader term”, e.g., Zongzhu 宗主, and refer to him/her as “surname+leader term”; third parties would address and refer to him/her as “surname+leader term”.
In the rare case where the leader steps down and is still kickin’ around, members of the sect will still address him/her as “leader term”, though they’ll prefix a “lao 老” (old) if both the former and current leaders are in the room and both need to be addressed. Third parties would address the former leader as “surname+leader term” and refer to him/her as “former/前任 qianren+leader term(+full name)”; all sect members can also use this method to speak to third parties about the former leader.
If the leader has died, “qianren+leader term” would be the appropriate way to refer to him/her.
If there are any specific terms you want clarified, please ask in the comments.
Happy writing!