#lijian

The reason I find it extra funny is because I literally feel like I’m going feral right now and I did just draft another Twitter thread ramble before coming on here and immediately seeing my scheduled post with those tags LADNSKDNS.

My Twitter is still on hiatus until further notice—aka when I am more comfortable interacting and sharing things socially—but over the past few weeks, my drafts have become very full of thoughts on LiJian (Li Yu and Jian Suiying) and YuBai (Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu).

And the main reason I feel so feral right now—as in right this minute—is because of the author of this really good fic (which I found thanks to the fan audio drama adaptation on MaoEr FM) that’s multi-chaptered where the premise is that a younger Li Yu ends up in the present day in Li Yu and Jian Suiying’s house. Li Yu is obviously very upset by this because he hates his younger self for how he treated Jian Suiying, and the story is about helping him heal from that past.

And well anyways this post isn’t about that fic specifically, although it’s a really good fic and I went crazy over it a while ago as well: since it’s told entirely in screenshots on Weibo at least, I actually captured every image of text until I had everything and then I MTL’d them using Google Translate and then I severely edited them on-and-off based on my own Chinese knowledge—so this included grammar and pronouns but also less obvious stuff where I had to check line by line or turn it into audio to listen to. 😂

It’s a really fucking good fic though. So worth it.

And well the author has done other versions; one is where a younger Yu Fengcheng gets transported into current Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu’s life, and I’ve already collected every part of that one (it’s still incomplete).

Except it referenced a case where there were two Jian Suiying’s, a fic the author said they were planning to write back when they released the two Li Yu’s fic, which obviously made me a little feral.

I struggled to find it until I finally did (yay!!) alongside a masterlist of their fics in general (yay!!!), and I really really want to translate and read it right now.

But part of me also wants to save it—because I like saving things I like—to the end, since the author has other fics I can translate first, including one where Li Yu gets amnesia, which will definitely also be quite interesting.

And yet. I cannot get over the concept of there being two Jian Suiying’s and how that might resemble or reflect or differ from the fic where there were two Li Yu’s (especially since the two Li Yu’s one is just very thematically perfect).

I might just translate it first because I can barely resist??? I already translated the second half of the first part just to tease myself, and it has me screaming because like:

(The above screenshots are from this fanfic here by 丧心病狂de凌子 on Weibo!)

The image of Li Yu dragging whom he assumes is his spouse (and he is; just from a different time period) back home only to come face-to-face with his actual spouse (of this time period) being all cute in his soft cozy home clothes with a little mug instead of having gone out drinking (which the Jian Suiying from a different time period in his arms had been doing—as all the fics so far have had the person from the past end up in the present after getting blackout drunk) which was a thing about Jian Suiying that Li Yu used to worry about…

(The above screenshot is canon and from the original novel!)

Yeah do you see what I mean???

I’m just so excited because you’ll get the chaos of two time periods intersecting, but also because Jian Suiying used to go out to such places and it upset Li Yu a lot since he knows Jian Suiying’s past life and their relationship took so long to get to a good place that he’s afraid Jian Suiying will discard him again when out partying—so seeing Jian Suiying here, at home on time, patiently waiting for his husband to come home from his business trip…

*sigh* They’re pretty cute even after all the craziness of their original novel lmao. 🥹

lijian chibi icons

source (1 2): official 188 weibo

Music: Li Jian (李健)        Lyrics: Han Han (韩寒)         Fan Music Video

那曾是雾中的列车

That once was a train in the fog

通往我年少时候                                                   

Which passed through my youth  

它从此让我一天天孤单                                                   

Every day it left me lonely

心随它去天边                                               

As my heart followed it to the horizon

然后呢然后啊

And then, oh, and then

然后我就去到天的另一边

And then I would go to the other side of the sky*

火车冒着烟冒着烟

Smoke billows and billows out of the train

我的爱人也在天边

My lover is also at that horizon

远方我来了带着我的一切

The Distance, I’m coming, bringing all that I have

梦之城我是你的人

The city of dreams, I am one of your people

远方我来了高楼亮的灯

The Distance, I’m coming for the skyscrapers’ lights

那就是我的星辰

Those are my stars

这不是雾中的列车

This is not the train in the fog

当我再次离开时候

When I left again

归途中不再是少年不再去冒险

Somewhere I stopped being a young risk-taker 

然后啊然后啊

And then, oh, and then

然后没有一个人和我告别

And then not a single person wished me farewell

总说在天边在天边

They all said “at the horizon, at the horizon”

却不知道天在哪边

Yet they don’t know it doesn’t exist at all***

远方再见了我也曾努力过

The Distance, goodbye, I once put in the effort

原谅我无法生起火

Forgive me as I can no longer find that fire

故乡再见了我只能路过

My hometown, goodbye, I can only pass by you

原谅我继续漂泊

Forgive me for continuing to wander

谁记得雾中的列车

Who remembers the train in the fog?

就像人海中的我

Just like me in the sea of people

那远方那故乡那里的她

That Distance, that hometown, that “her”

路过啊错过吧

I pass it by, let it slip away

This song was a promotional song for the movie Miracles of the Namiya General Store. The more widely known version is the duet version between Li Jian and TFBoys member and idol Wang Junkai (Karry Wang, 王俊凯). The addition of a younger voice adds another layer to the conflict between passionate youth vs weary experience presented in the song.

李健/岳云鹏《唐僧在女儿国抒怀并看着女儿国王的眼睛 (Live)》

https://c.y.qq.com/base/fcgi-bin/u?__=uR3hVd8

啊 真绝

Journey / Lijian, Yunnan, China - 2012 -