The Apothecary Diaries – 20 – The Hidden Spare

Maomao’s fine, everyone! If anything, she looks even more like a chuunibyou from the future with her new face and leg bandages. But there’s no rest for the recently beaten and wounded: she must make a full report to Jinshi, Gaoshun, and Basen about just how she knew that pillar would fall.

Maomao lays out Suiren’s conspiracy, much of which I had already inferred last week. Jinshi & Co. having to catch up, combined with Maomao’s subdued reaction to learning how important Jinshi is, kind of takes the air out of the room and feels recappy, even if we needed verbal confirmation. Basen constantly angrily interrupting was also annoying.

Things pick up a bit when Lihaku, who is apparently Maomao’s police informant now, tells her that Suirei was found dead of poison in her room and is scheduled to be cremated. Before that happens, Maomao asks Jinshi to allow her to inspect the corpse, remembering the “resurrection” medicine Suirei mentioned at her hilltop garden.

Maomao opens up the coffin to reveal the corpse of an entirely different woman. The doctor who examined Suirei, and knew her personally, is shocked, but Maomao indulging her curiosity has blown this case wide open: Suirei, the one with the intellect, courage, and cojones to pull off such an intricate conspiracy, is still at large. Maomao wants to catch her so she can teach her that resurrection medicine.

However, the “Suirei incident” is swept under the rug for now, which is probably for the best considering how many people ended up dead. The episode re-focuses on Jinshi, and the revelations continue to trickle out: He’s not a eunuch, nor is he twenty-four. Rather, he’s the nineteen-year-old brother of the current emperor, and he takes drugs to suppress his manhood.

The Empress Dowager gave birth to him the same time Ah-Duo gave birth to the current emperor’s firstborn son, who died soon thereafter and resulted in Ah-Duo being unable to have any more children. The younger brother’s identity was concealed as “Jinshi the eunuch” to run the Inner Palace and ensure the emperor produced a son to replace him as heir apparent to the throne.

Thus far, the emperor has had a son with Lihua, who passed away, and a daughter with Gyokuyou, who can’t be emperor. That said, things may soon be changing: Jinshi informs Maomao that Gyokuyou’s cycle has halted, a sign she’s pregnant again. Perhaps this time the emperor will get his son and heir and Jinshi can get his own life back…maybe a life with the brilliant and cute apothecary??

Jinshi dispatches Maomao, whom he trusts over any other physician, back to the Inner Palace to tend to Gyokuyou. She’s happy to be back in a place where she doesn’t have to worry about bumping into Lakan, and seeing the emperor play with his daughter, her opinion of him as a lewd lecher is starting to soften.

What with Loulan being the daughter of a high-ranking official who is no doubt trying to ascend the ladders of power, and the loss of his longtime friend and most trusted advisor Ah-Duo, even the emperor’s got his problems, and isn’t just an old dude who loves big bazongas.

The Apothecary Diaries – 11 – Just a Little Longer

Maomao meets with Fengming and details her deductions. The “deep clean” of Ah-Duo’s pavilion was only an excuse. The reality is, Ah-Duo is leaving the Rear Palace, because after she gave birth to her son, she was no longer able to bear children afterwards. When Fengming says it’s none of Maomao’s business, Maomao says it is, because her father was the attending doctor.

As for Ah-Duo’s son, Fengming fed him honey, not knowing that it could be fatal to infants. Fengming only learned that she caused the death of Ah-Duo’s only child when Ah-Duo befriended Lishu, who herself nearly died as an infant after eating honey. Not wanting Ah-Duo to put two and two together, Fengming saw to it Lishu was kept away from her lady’s pavilion, only for her to return when the new Emperor came into power.

Maomao deduced that to protect Ah-Duo, who could not bear children, Fengming poisoned Lishu’s soup. Once Maomao delcares this and Fengming does not dispute it, there isn’t really much else to say. But then Fengming breaks down, demonstrating to Maomao that she kept Ah-Duo closer to her heart than Maomao could ever imagine keeping anyone. She knows Fengming is doomed, but still wants to do all she can, so she merges her two motives into one: protecting her lady, Ah-Duo.

Maomao doesn’t end up telling Jinshi anything; Fengming turns herself in, and Maomao simply tells him her motive was to protect Ah-Duo’s status as a concubine of the Rear Palace. The thing is, the decision for Ah-Duo to depart as concubine was made by the emperor long before Fengming’s actions came to light.

Maomao, ever the poison junkie, tastes the nectar of an azalea, and Jinshi follows her lead, until she tells him it’s (non-lethal) poison. Fengming is then executed, and one night when Maomao can’t sleep she climbs the wall to view the stars, and is soon joined by Ah-Duo, who offers to share her booze.

Ah-Duo confides in Maomao that after her son “left her”, she returned to being the emperor’s friend, not his concubine. She actually never quite felt right in the position of concubine, and was eager to pass it on to someone more suitable, only to cling to it for years. Before parting with Maomao, Ah-Duo pours out some of her booze into the moat where the servant took her life, noting just as Maomao did that it must have been cold and painful.

Later, when Maomao climbs down the wall, she is startled by Jinshi and falls, but he catches her. Rather than let her go at once, he embraces her tightly, claiming it’s too cold. Maomao notices he’s drunk and he reports that “someone” (Ah-Duo) drank him under the table and ran off. When he starts to weep, Maomao lets him continue to hug her.

The next morning, Ah-Duo departs the Rear Palace in a ceremony full of pomp. She hands the crown of the Pure Concubine to Jinshi, and Maomao realizes there’s a very good reason the two resemble one another so closely: there’s a good chance Jinshi is her son. Maomao thinks to when Ah-Duo said her son “left” her, rather than saying he died, and considers whether her infant child and the Empress Dowager’s were swapped.

That would mean that it was the Dowager’s child that Fengming accidentally poisoned with honey, while Jinshi grew up to become the chief administrator of the Inner Palace (whether he’s actually even a eunuch remains to be seen). When Lishu chases after Ah-Duo and bids her farewell, Maomao observes that Ah-Duo looks every bit the caring, loving mother.

The Apothecary Diaries – 10 – Blood and Honey

Maomao gets the pulse of the Inner Palace from Xiaolan, who says word is the servant who tried to poison Lady Lishu committed suicide, and Ah-Duo may be on the cusp of being replaced with a new, younger concubine. This has Maomao reflecting on the fragility of the fruits in the Inner Palace. Ah-Duo had borne the emperor a son, but the babe died. The primary purpose of concubines is to provide heirs.

In the meantime, Maomao attends Gyokuyou’s tea party with Lady Lishu, and notes what a tense affair it is, with every woman sizing every other woman up. She remarks how skilled Gyokuyou is at extracting information with simple conversation, and also takes note of Lishu’s reaction to being offered honey—a very similar reaction to the fish she had an allergy to. Finally, she sees that Lishu’s ladies-in-waiting continue to look down on their lady.

Jinshi, more annoying to Maomao than usual, wants her thoughts on whether that servant really took her own life or if it was only meant to look that way, and who is responsible. To that end, he dispatches her and two other of Gyokuyou’s ladies to the Garnet Pavilion, home of Concumbine Ah-Duo.

Maomao is given no further instruction, but suspects that Jinshi wants her to use her time there to observe the various parties there, to either implicate or rule out their role in a possible murder. So Maomao observes and takes mental notes as she and the others help do a deep clean on the pavilion.

Despite being 35, a year older than the emperor, Ah-Duo appears younger, with a “androgynous, gallant” beauty that Maomao suspects would look better in a riding outfit. And whether she’s being intentionally obtuse or not, Ah-Duo’s resemblance to the androgynous Jinshi is clear to see.

Maomao is impressed by the diligence and work ethic of Ah-Duo’s ladies-in-waiting, and sees that the head lady Fengming leads by example. While she’s from a powerful house that runs a large apiary (i.e. honey), Maomao finds her down-to-earth, kind, and easy to converse with.

But the fact Fengming’s family runs a honey farm, and the bandage on her left arm, makes her a potential suspect in the colored-fire case. Maomao doesn’t put the various pieces together until Jinshi teases her by backing her against a wall and asking her to taste the honey from his fingers.

A pissed Gyokuyou thankfully puts and end to that, and Gaoshun owes Maomao a favor for simply standing by during the prank, so he gets her an audience with Lishu, who is disappointed Maomao didn’t come with Jinshi. Maomao only has two questions for Lishu. The first is about whether honey disagrees with her.

Lishu tells her that she once had some when she was a baby and it nearly killed her, so that’s a big yes. Lishu’s ladies express their displeasure with Maomao’s direct questioning of Lishu, which sounds rich coming from them. Maomao realizes that they’re intentionally isolating Lishu by making her think they’re her only friends.

Maomao’s second question goes unanswered, but Lishu’s face says it all: she does know Ah-Duo’s head lady Fengming, and it’s a name she fears as much as the foods to which she’s allergic.

Maomao asks Gaoshun to provide her with some Inner Palace records to get more context, and she unearths a bombshell: her dad, named Luomen, was the doctor who delivered Ah-Duo’s son—the one who didn’t make it and now has Ah-Duo in danger of losing her position as one of the emperor’s top Concubines.

Other important details: Ah-Duo was the emperor’s foster sibling, and became his only concubine when he was still a prince, while her son was born around the same time as the emperor’s younger brother.

Her dad was then expelled from the palace. This is the first we learn that he is not her biological father, as he is also a eunuch. But it’s also the first we learn that her connection to the palace is much closer than she ever imagined. What she doesn’t seem to consider yet is what that means for her, a girl adopted from the former doctor responsible for delivering the potential imperial heirs.

We’ll see how much more we and Maomao learn about her father, her own origins, whether Fengming’s honey connections and Lishu’s allergy, or the resemblance of Jinshi and Ah-Duo are merely red herrings. Whatever transpires in the final two episodes of the season, whether she likes it or not Maomao is no longer just an apothecary … if she even ever was.

The Apothecary Diaries – 09 – Sweet and Salty

One evening at a drinking party, a clearly sloshed older man doesn’t even finish one jar of booze before letting it shatter to the ground and asking for more. Someone whose full face is obscured offers him a new jar after adding something to it.

Gaoshun eventually gets Gyokuyou to “stop laughing uncontrollably” long enough to explain that Maomao didn’t sleep with Lihaku, she merely set him up with a star courtesan. While surely relieved, Jinshi remains in an unproductive childish mood and his work piles up.

This only adds fuel to one of my working theories that he may be an actual prince—perhaps the emperor’s brother?—and may not even be a eunuch. There’s plenty of show left to confirm or debunk this theory, so we shall see.

In the meantime, when Jinshi meets with Maomao by way of Gyokuyou, Maomao assumes an open-shut case of the older Sir Kounen simply drinking himself to death, as alcohol is a poison when abused. She can’t muster much sympathy for someone she never met who apparently did himself in, but she also notices Jinshi isn’t his usual “excessively shiny” self.

Upon sampling the booze at the party (something she’s very excited about) she finds it has a distinct taste: sweet, but also very salty. Examination of the broken jar reveals considerable salt buildup. When Maomao learns that a change in tastes from spicy foods to sweet eventually led to Sir Kounen losing his ability to taste salt.

Perhaps someone who wanted to play a prank started adding more and more salt to his drink, and the salt is what killed him. But unlike your Holmeses or Poirots, Maomao is weary of pointing the finger at a specific culprit, loath as she is to be responsible for their execution. She may call herself a coward, but no decent person would want that burden.

Kounen became a different man after his wife and child were lost in an epidemic. His resulting unbalanced diet, stress, and alcoholism led to his loss of salt. When Maomao also learns that Kounen played a key role in Jinshi’s upbringing, Jinshi’s dour demeanor makes more sense.

Maomao is delighted to receive the reward of a bottle of booze for her investigation, but when Jinshi teases her about it, she tells him to get back to work. When he tells her that work involves a bill setting the legal drinking age at 20, complete with peace sign and return of his shiny smile, Maomao freaks out.

She grabs his cloak and pleads with him not to pass such a bill, and he watches her squirm in his lack of response. Call it revenge for her getting one over on him with Lihaku, but we see later that evening that Jinshi’s mood has improved considerably. Maomao didn’t need to make a medicine for him; she just had to be herself.

The second half is considerably more dour, as guards retrieve the corpse of a tall servant woman with bound feet (the first time that unpleasant custom is mentioned in this show) from the moat. When the doctor is summoned with Maomao, he is terrified of the corpse, while Maomao notes the cold weather slowed the decomp considerably.

We learn that Maomao’s dad forbade her from handling corpses, as her innate curiosity might well eventually lead her to use “human ingredients” for her apothecary work, leading to grave-robbing. That she heeds this rule even in her dad’s absence speaks to how well Maomao knows full well who she is and what she’s capable of.

But more than any previous victim, Maomao internalizes this woman’s death, even thinking about how cold the water must’ve been. While the guards believe the woman climbed the wall and threw herself in to off herself, Maomao notes the difficulty (though not impossibility) of someone with her bound feet scaling the wall. The possibility exists she was thrown in by someone.

The victim’s red and bloodied hands also suggest she clawed at the wall trying to get out after falling in, either because she had been thrown in against her will, or threw herself in and immediately regretted it. In this case, Maomao can’t say for certain whether it was murder or suicide.

But as she admires a fruiting plant in Jinshi’s office, she thinks about how impossible she would find it to try to kill herself. She likes living, because it means she gets to test poisons and make medicines. She’d never take that away willingly.

At the same time, as the faces and bodies of all the people who have ended up dead around the palace, she thinks about how delicate and cheap her commoner’s life is. Death can come for her at any time, even for making a mistake, so it would come down to how she’d meet her end.

Assuming Jinshi would be the one to make the call, she considers what poison she’d use to die, and asks that he use that potion if he ever had to execute her. Needless to say, all this morbid talk upsets Jinshi, who’d never considered the possibility he’d have to kill her.

But even as he tells her he would never do such a thing, he tells him it’s more of a can or can not issue. If the emperor told him she had to die, could he a.) do it, and b.) do it the way she preferred?

Maomao is probably being realistic and pragmatic with this kind of thinking, as despite her current high station as lady-in-waiting to the emperor’s favorite concubine, this society still assigns a low enough value on her life to at least consider the details.

Meanwhile, Jinshi is looking more and more like someone of such high birth his true identity is being concealed. That said, part of me still believes Maomao is of far less “common” blood than she’s been led to believe her whole life.

As all of that simmers in my mind, we learn the drowned woman was present at the garden party where the poisoning took place, while Gaoshun has finally found someone with burns on her arms, as instructed by Jinshi. That person is none other than the head lady-in-waiting for Concubine Ah-Duo, whom we have yet to formally meet, and who has purplish hair and eyes reminiscent of Jinshi’s. Coincidence?

The Apothecary Diaries – 06 – Poison, as a Treat

Maomao soon learns the extent to which an imperial garden party consists of a lot of standing around freezing your ass off. Even with the pocket warmers she prepared, it’s still cold out there in the open. The party is also an opportunity for the ladies-in-waiting of the four concubines to engage in petty sniping.

When Maomao sees that one of Lihua’s ladies-in-waiting who is talking shit about her is someone she’d already set straight back in the Crystal Pavilion, so it only takes one extremely unsettling look (while covering her lack of freckles) to cause her to flee in terror. She’s definitely gotten the hang of putting jerks in their place!

Maomao also learns, and is rightfully skeeved out, by the fact that the emperor’s youngest consort, Lishu, was technically his oldest consort Ah-Duo’s mother-in-law, despite being all of nine years old when she was with the previous emperor. Even now she’s still but fourteen—and her ladies-in-waiting don’t seem to be big fans of her.

When Maomao sees Lihua’s ladies freezing, she offers them some stones, but they recoil from her. That’s fine, because plenty of people like Maomao and show it by offering her hairpins. First there was Jinshi last week, then Lihaku, a Golden Retriever of an officer, and then most surprising of all but then again not, Lady Lihua gives her savior a hairpin. That said, I doubt Maomao is in any hurry to be poached from Gyokuyou.

Maomao’s favorite part of the garden party is the food tasting. The first dish is fine, but she notes that the second is odd in that it contains a different ingredient than usual, and when Lishu eats that same dish a table over, not only does she seem thoroughly troubled by having to eat it, but her food taster seems to be getting a kick out of her discomfort.

When Maomao tastes the next dish, a bowl of soup, Lihaku and the other officers watch, transfixed. For a second, I thought from her reaction to the taste of the soup that it contained another aphrodisiac, perhaps meant to embarrass her lady. But no, it’s just straight-up poison. Maomao just gets off being poisoned, or poisoning herself. The more the poison courses through her body, the more excited she gets.

Hey, I ain’t here to kink-shame, but the fact she swallows the poison soup calls into doubt whether it’s actually poison, so a minister tries some and collapses. By that point, Maomao has rushed to the fountain to wash out her mouth, but Jinshi is still concerned.

Maomao gives him her sweetest doe eyes and asks if she can have more poison, but he’s not there to enable her. As he takes her by the hand to the infirmary for a proper purge, she notes that he’s acting more adult while ironically appearing younger; she notes that she “prefers him like this, somewhat,” but when she sees that even he has a hairpin, her mind wanders who gave it to him.

Once Maomao has taken “the good drugs” and purged all traces of the poison from her body, she asks Jinshi to bring Lady Lishu and her taster before her for some questions. Almost immediately upon arriving, Lishu strarts scratching at her sleeve, which Maomao lifts to reveal a nasty rash.

Maomao has seen this before, including with her own body: she doesn’t use the words “allergic reaction”, but she understands what’s happening and that it’s caused by certain foods. In her case, it’s buckwheat, but in Lishu’s case, it’s mackerel.

Maomao goes on to note that Lishu and Gyokuyou’s dishes must have been swapped, and she gives Lishu’s food taster a good long stern look and gives her a list of things to avoid if she wants to keep Lishu alive and happy. Maomao leaves out the “…or else you’ll fell the wrath of the emperor”, because that’s implied.

And so not long after saving Lady Lihua from toxic makeup, she’s saved Lady Lishu from a negligent food taster. She continues to demonstrate her indispensable ability to identify causes of problems and formulating solutions.

She may not know who poisoned the soup, but it’s another instance in an ongoing pattern of incidents Jinshi is keeping a close eye on, and I’m sure he’ll continue to rely on Maomao for council where medicine is concerned, while also ensuring she doesn’t get overexcited and kill herself with that sweet, sweet poison.

The Apothecary Diaries – 05 – Preparing for Battle

Only Gaoshun witnesses a shirtless, sweaty Jinshi elegantly sparring with a promising underling. If there were any women present they would surely faint from the hotness. But after the session, Jinshi asks about the apothecary, specifically whether she’s restored her weight and health after going all out for Lady Lihua.

Maomao is in good spirits owing to the fact she’s found some fresh Matsutake mushrooms on the palace grounds. She also learns from her girl on the street Xiaolan that a servant managed to seduce a military officer, and suspects an aphrodisiac was used. Maomao keeps quiet about the fact that Jinshi had her make it.

After enjoying some grilled mushrooms with salt and soy paste with her partner-in-crime, the quack doctor, the two new best buds are interrupted by a eunuch who believes he’s been cursed. He shows them the nasty rashes on his hands, and Maomao believes an ointment should do the trick.

When the lad tells the story of how the rashes came to be, and that a strange colored flame led him to believe it was a curse, Maomao replicates the many-colored flames he saw, and chalks up the rashes to the fact he touched the wooden tablets containing the stuff that changed the flame’s colors, like fireworks.

With this little mini-mystery solved with science, Jinshi takes Maomao aside and shows her a number of different salts that can color flames if they were mixed with water or oil. Jinshi asks Gaoshun to find anyone else who may have suffered burns; both he and Maomao suspect the colored flames could be a code, for possibly nefarious purposes.

If there is some secret scheming going on, Jinshi, Maomao, and Gyokuyou and her retinue have to be on alert, especially with the emperor’s lavish garden party on the horizon. Gyokuyou’s other ladies-in-waiting dress her up in the formal garb they’ll be all be wearing. All four of the emperor’s top concubines will be in attendance, and it will be a war of looks and charm.

Maomao, as ever, is extremely practical about the upcoming event. Since it’s autumn it’s bound to be cold and there’s going to be a lot of standing around, so she makes a candy with orange and ginger to help bloodflow and provide warming, and sews pockets into her underrobe so a warming stone can be placed there.

When her co-ladies-in-waiting learn of these hacks, not only do they ask her to make them for them, but even the emperor’s cook and seamstress reach out. By just being who she is, she’s making a lot of friends and turning heads in the court.

When the day of the garden party arrives, Gyokuyou dons exquisite crimson robes that set off her coral hair and jade eyes, while Maomao and the other ladies are resplendent in their pink formal robes. Gyokuyou “marks” her ladies with fine jewelry, explaining to Maomao that they may otherwise attract “bad bugs.”

She marks Maomao with an elegant necklace of gold and precious stones, and then the ladies accost her and prepare to hit her with the (non-toxic) makeup kit. The first step is to wipe down her face and get rid of her infamous freckles.

But to both their shock and Jinshi’s upon laying eyes on her in her garden party best, Maomao never had freckles to begin with. She made fake ones with clay. When Jinshi, who is clearly bowled over by Maomao’s beauty (those eyes), asks why she would do such a thing, Maomao is blunt: so she wouldn’t be dragged down an alley.

She proceeds to tell him that in the red-light district where she worked, the short, skinny, ugly girls were less likely to be scooped up by awful men. Turns out she was anyway, but they only sold her, they didn’t do worse. Jinshi is angry on Maomao’s behalf, and she admits she’s angry about it too, but it’s not his fault.

Maomao is as thrown off by Jinshi being straightforward rather than his usual games, but it’s Jinshi who is so smitten by Maomao that he puts one of his hairpins in her hair, which is what Gyokuyou was trying to prevent. Now, by custom, Maomao is not just hers anymore.

The “curse” of the man’s hand rashes foreshadows potential foul play during the party, especially as the four concubines are vying to become the emperor’s official consort by marrying him. Eyes will be on all four of them, and a woman in the darkness preparing to serve a meal suggests she’s an agent in treachery to come.

But if it’s food meant for Gyokuyou, Maomao will be tasting it first. But her glow-up this week confirms the beautiful dancing Maomao in the OP is no illusion, but what she looks like when she doesn’t frump herself up. The preparations are complete; now it’s time to party.