The Apothecary Diaries – 22 – Le Bleu en Rose

Maomao is actually having a blast back at the inner palace with Gyokuyou, her adorable daughter, and her ladies in waiting. But new unreasonable request from Lakan forces Jinshi to summon Maomao back to his office. He asks her if it would be possible to create blue roses in time for the emperor’s garden party. Once Maomao deduces that it was Lakan who asked, she accepts the challenge. Blue roses do not exist in nature, and only in the 21st century have they been created using genetic modification.

Indeed, due to this fact they are often a metaphor for something else unattainable. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Maomao secures the use of Lady Lihua’s convalescence steam room and repurposes it as a greenhouse to trick the roses into blooming two months before they should. Since Maomao’s leg is still healing, Gaoshun assigns Xiaolan to assist.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Xiaolan, but the Servant Girl-Queen of Goss is always welcome in my books. Alas, Maomao trusts no one, not even Xiaolan, to the nightly tending of the roses. If the heat in the greenhouse is too high, all the roses will die. So she pulls all-nighter after all-nighter tending to the fires to keep the temperature optimal. This puts a toll on Maomao’s slight frame, but she powers through.

When she and Xiaolan notice that various ladies in waiting are curious about what they’re up to and watching while hidden behind pillars, Maomao decides to distract them … by giving her and Xiaolan manicures. The bright crimson color is very pretty and makes those who wear them feel extra special, so soon the entire inner palace is getting their nails done the same way. And here I thought bandages would the fashion trend Maomao would start.

The day the first bud finally appears, Xiaolan embraces Maomao with joy and excitement, only to find that she’s passed out from exhaustion. But clearly she allows herself to pass out and enjoy some shut-eye, as that bud is proof that they’ve cleared the toughest hurdle: getting roses to bloom long before nature intended, and with enough time before the garden party.

When the day of the party arrives, it is primarily to unveil Concubine Loulan to the court. She is flanked by her powerful and influential father Shishou, whom Jinshi observes the Emperor still cannot look in the eye for some reason. Jinshi can deal with envy (of other officials) and lust (of women and men alike), but he doesn’t know what Loulan, Shishou, and particularly Lakan are thinking at any given moment, which makes them far tougher to deal with, and thus potentially dangerous.

As for how Maomao made the roses blue, she simply dyed them by feeding them colored water. Lakan thought he had made a request that couldn’t be fulfilled, at least in the time frame he made it in. But he underestimated his daughter’s knowledge and resourcefulness.

We then learn that Maomao may have intended to kill two birds with one stone by starting the manicure trend. Just as pornography has been the ultimate decider of what kind of media survives (i.e. VHS versus Beta), the red light district’s high-ranking courtesans are always at the forefront of fashion. Maomao can do nails because her big sisters taught her.

In a trippy sequence, we see the world as Lakan perceives it: virtually everyone has a go piece for a head. Men are black, women are white, and even high-ranking officials appear as labeled chess pieces. But etched in his mind are the nails of a courtesan with whom he once played go, vivid balsam and woodsorrel, a softer color than the gaudy crimson nails he’s now seeing everywhere.

While everyone else in Lakan’s vision has game pieces for heads, even Jinshi, he sees Maomao’s face clearly, along with her crimson nails. And judging from Maomao’s smirk before confronting him, that is part of her plan to stick it to the old monocle creep.

 

The Apothecary Diaries – 14 – A Whimper and a Bang

The big news in the Inner Palace this week is the arrival of the New Pure Consort, Loulan. She arrives under cover of darkness on a snowy night with only her retinue of ladies-in-waiting. Upon entering her parlor, she removes a jeweled hairpiece, unceremoniously drops it into a box, sits down, and … well, that’s pretty much it.

The arrival of a new consort spurs both Gyokuyou and Lihua to recommend that all four high-ranking concubines undergo some concubining lessons, and they both recommend to Jinshi that Maomao be their teacher. Maomao is all for this as it means she gets paid a bonus.

Like a curious Jinshi, the exact content of the lesson is kept secret from us, but we can assume that it involves the bedroom knowledge Maomao has learned from her big sisters at Verdegris House, some of which she already imparted upon Lihua to great success.

In all honesty, I hoped we would learn a little more about Loulan, but she proves far too cool for school, yawning frequently, avoiding eye contact, and saying nary a word. She’s either uninterested or unimpressed with Maomao’s lesson.

Maomao don’t care; she’s getting paid either way, plus Gyokuyou and Lihua got something out of it (Lishu, on the other hand, was simply scandalized). That night she’s exhausted, but hears a distant blast. But not wanting to get on Suiren’s bad side, she resists the urge to investigate. The old man with an eyepatch, however? He’s immediately on the scene.

That changes the next day, when Maomao is gathering herbs when she spots her old pal Lihaku with another military officer next to a bombed out warehouse. Lihaku says it was a small fire, but it doesn’t take long for Maomao to determine that an explosion occurred. Inside she finds the warehouse quite dusty, and a burnt smoking pipe on the ground.

Maomao has a theory, and to test it, she borrows some wood, nails, flour, flint, and a rope fuse for a little experiment out in the courtyard. When she lights the fuse she runs for cover and urges Lihaku to do the same, but just as he’s asking why the flour blows up in his face.

Maomao and his adjutant put him out with water, but Maomao’s theory seems to be confirmed: someone, possibly an undereducated warehouseman, lit his pipe in the warehouse and ignited the loose flour in the air. The only issue is that the pipe seems far too fancy for a mere warehouseman. Was this just an accident, someone else’s experiment, or something else? Like Loulan, it remains a mystery to be solved.