Production Notes - Episode A | Not Chapter 9 and why did Lady Yin have to die

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0:21 Thank you, Journey to the West and Audio drama Series Production Notes Episode A Hello, dear listeners, this is Lynn, the voice of the 5th Monkey. Welcome to Episode A with the A being the Addendum. Naturally, there won't be an episode B because this is the only chapter with a unique history of its own.

0:52 As for why the addendum exists, please refer to Production Notes 8. And again, if you're currently reading EU or Jenner translations, the addendum is 99% identical to the Chapter 9 of both versions. There are some smaller differences, but they don't really affect the overall plot. For example, the addendum mentioned that Chen Guang Re lived in a place named Zhu Xian Zhuang, the talent Assembling Manor that wasn't mentioned in the base text from which Mr. Yu and Mr. Jenner translated.

1:29 Another difference would be that in the Yuan Jenner versions, Lady yen abandoned her baby into the river just one day after she gave birth, whereas in the addendum she managed to breastfeed him for a month before doing that. Again, the story isn't the creation of a single person, so it's natural for different versions to vary in small ways.

1:53 When you go through the events of the Addendum, Please remember what we told you before that. The story is more a reflection of how Ming Dynasty Chinese saw the world rather than how the world truly was, and this applies to their view of Tang Dynasty as well. This is a case of 15 to 16th century laymen imagining what life looked like back in the 7th century. Imagine if you suddenly had to make up a story about people from almost 1000 years ago.

2:23 There was no Internet and no historian as advisor. Their only resource pool was their own lives and a list of famous historic figures. So a lot of the things talked about in Journey to the West is a more accurate reflection of Ming Dynasty life rather than Tang. Keep that in mind, especially when there is mention of the inner workings of the Imperial Court, government, and military.

2:49 This will be significant in the coming chapters as well. For example, the dark Ghost Hat Guang re war in the parade will be something anyone, regardless of social status, could wear back in the Tang Dynasty. But in Ming Dynasty it became something worn exclusively by government officials, so the item also became a symbol for the job.

3:12 You sometimes see people in period drama say things like I will make a bet on my dark gauze hat. This would mean they're making a bet on their government job. If they lost, they would resign. In the story, we know that Chenguang Re received an official post after scoring top in the imperial exams. This exam system or Kudu in Chinese, is a way for Empress to select talented new blood to help them run the country. It is widely considered a system that greatly increased social mobility and marked the beginning of the end of aristocracy in China.

3:50 Many young intellects were able to rise from low birth and poverty this way and be acknowledged for their talent and contributions. This exam system did go through a lot of changes over different dynasties. The process shown in the novel is closer to the Ming system, not Tang. Moreover, the system was also far from perfect. For example, despite what the novel tells you, there are actually a lot of factors that could disqualify you from entering the exam.

4:16 In Tang Dynasty, young man whose family worked as merchants are excluded from the exam because merchants are considered a lowly occupation. That's why the renowned Tang poet Li Bai never took the exam. His father was a merchant. And there's of course the gender factor. Women are excluded from the exam period.

4:39 Hence the Tang poet Yu Shen XI lamented as she stood before the autographs of the young scholars who aced the exam, how I resent the fact that my silk gown obscured my poetry. Looking up, I could only in vain envy the names on the chart. There's also the mention of a lot of cities in the Addendum, but apart from Chang'an you really don't have to remember any of them or check where these places are in modern day China.

5:09 The storytellers of Journey to the West constantly mixed them up and they probably had no idea where these cities actually are anyway. Just don't get yourself too caught up in the geography aspect of the story, and we very briefly met a new dragon God in this chapter. Remember what I said about them being supernatural, but have very limited powers? This dragon King got himself caught in a fishnet by a human. Enough said.

5:41 They do have a lot of different magic pearls to offer, no doubt, but as you can see from the story, they can't actually resurrect a dead person and must play by a higher set of rules. The dragon kings of the Seas are the most powerful, of course, but as you move down to smaller water bodies, the Dragons that rule these places have less and less to offer.

6:05 You'll know what I'm talking about in the future, and for the final part of this episode, we will focus on the true hero of the story, Lady Yin Wenjiao. In the novel, she is described as someone who could sink fish and make wild geese fall from the sky, from which the moon would hide and flowers would shield away. This is a direct translation of the idioms Chen Yu, Luo Yan and Bi Yue Xiu Hua, both of which derived from text that described the beauty of a woman.

6:37 It's a very classic example of indirect description. Instead of directly painting her appearance, you talk about the reaction of fish, geese, moon and flowers. When stunned by her beauty, you may wonder why it was so hard for Lady Yin to communicate with her family for 18 years. This was again the age of horses and ladders, so information already moved much slower than the present day.

7:07 There's also the factor of Liu Hong controlling what went in and out of the residence. Lady Yin was probably watched all the time and there were very few she could trust. And also identity theft like what Liu Hong did here has been attempted and succeeded in real life in a similar criminal case from a Qing Dynasty record. The criminal basically murdered every family member of the victim who came to visit so no one could go home and tell the truth.

7:37 In the story, Chen Guang Ray and his mother did not seem to have an extended family. This definitely made it easier for Liu Hong to stay safely in his fake identity. But again, this entire Shenzheng origin story is fictional and this is where our listeners need to start separating. The Shenzheng in Journey to the West who's more of a crier than a problem solver. As you may have already noticed from the real life monk named Shenzheng, the Rio Shenzheng was the 4th son of a man named Chen Hui.

8:11 We can save his real life story for another episode, but just know that Chen Guang Re, Grandmother Zhang, and Lady Ying Wenzhou are all fictional characters. Ying Kaishan, on the other hand, was a real general in Tang Dynasty, but he died a few years before the reign of Zheng Guang. We will talk about Emperor Tang Taizhong and Wei Jung in the next chapter, but you should be able to tell by now how Sloppy Journey to the West is with history.

8:39 And this leads to our final question in this chapter. Why did Lady Yin have to die? Some suggested that this may be one of the few instances where she could finally have some control over what went on in her life. However sad her ending was, she finally could decide for herself. This would make some sense if she were a real person, but she isn't.

9:04 She's entirely fictional, which means her actions and thoughts are dictated by those who created her. Her decisions are a reflection of the opinions held by her creators. If Journey to the West showed us how far our imagination could go, it also showed us exactly where that power of imagination comes to a halt.

9:25 Because like every other story created in that age, as well as those from the many centuries before or after that point in time, Journey to the West too suffers from the longest and most persistent disease in human history, misogyny. Lady Yin didn't kill herself out of her own will. Lady Yin was killed off because her creators consider it necessary. And it is especially ironic because this story was considered a happy ending.

9:57 What could be more of a happy ending than a dead loved one coming back to life? This is a story where dead people can be brought back to life. Hell, this is a story where a dead tree can be brought back to life. But somehow the spring of creativity just completely dried up when it came to the fate of a raped and tortured woman. The storytellers had no idea how to deal with her, but the fact that she was still alive and with her family bothered them. In a seemingly perfect ending of a classic revenge story, the suffering woman was taken out of the picture at the last minute to clear the final stain of this family tragedy. Even though without her it would have been impossible for the family to reunite, for whoever

10:41 sealed her fate, it was not enough for a dead father to come back to life. The story was not perfect until the living mother, along with her shame and grief, was buried once and for all. She must die. As the story's imagination fell short of saving her from shame and grief, of giving her happiness and peace, they did not know that she was not at fault.

11:04 That's hardly possible, since in this story Lady Yin's father already reasoned with her on why this whole thing wasn't her fault and why she shouldn't die for it. Here you once again get the sense that the story was definitely not the work of a single mind. Because why was someone who already explained why the lady shouldn't die and not killing her off anyway?

11:27 They could just not mention her at all and it wouldn't affect the story, to be honest. Unfortunately, in this invisible battle for her fate, the wrong side had the last word. Not only did she have to die, but she had to die in grace and to make things worse, there wasn't any proper follow up to her death. How did her family react?

11:51 How did the emperor react? And Shenzhen just left and went about his business as if nothing happened. He was crying the entire chapter, just thinking about his mother and now he just moved on. Not only was an innocent life taken for no reason at all, but the humanity of her loved ones were also stripped away because their grief would immediately expose how wrong her death was, and so they ended up looking indifferent and heartless. But surely this was not as bad as letting the lady live, right? Whoever added that last sentence to the chapter saw no possibility for her other than death, and we weren't even told where her soul went in the end.

12:38 And this is a story where people's souls always go somewhere after death, but instead we're forced to end the chapter right there. I told you, you won't like everything about it. If you check the ending screen of all our episodes on YouTube, you will notice that we have dedicated this project to the late Mr. Lin Jiao Ming.

13:04 He was the performer who produced the Cantonese audio drama series 4 Journey to the West, which I grew up listening to from cassette tapes. Throughout the story, he would drop bits of his own commentary here and there, as any seasoned storyteller would, often for the laughs. The death of Lady Yin, though, was one rare moment where he let out his own feelings without trying to make anyone laugh.

13:42 Quote. Lady Yindo still could not free herself from the obsolete belief of having to follow one man to her death, so she ended up taking her own life. To end this episode, I would like to quote the legendary writer and revolutionary Luxun from his 1918 essay My Views on Chastity, translated by Gladys Yang and Yang Xiang Yi quote.

14:10 Later on, her father, brothers, husband and neighbors will get together with the writers, scholars and moralists, and no wit, abashed by their own cowardice and incompetence, nor concerned how to punish the criminal, wells, start wagging their tongues. Is she dead or not? Was she raped or not? How gratifying if she has died, how shocking if she has not? So they create all these glorious women, martyrs on the one hand, and these wantons universally condemned on the other.

14:43 If we think this over soberly, we can see that far from being praiseworthy, it is absolutely inhuman. UN quote And that's all for this episode. This episode is sponsored by Patreon Sparrow, Drew B, Ellie, L, Grace W and also our dear subscribers on podcast. Don't forget to Yi Jin, Sun Leon or subscribe.

15:06 This is the fifth monkey and thank you for listening. Journey to the West and Audio Drama Series is an independent production by The 5th Monkey. For subtitles, please visit our YouTube channel. Subscribe for free on YouTube to get us closer to monetization. For access to all the locked content, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for less than three U.S. dollars per month on Spotify, or support us on Patreon and Kofi. You will have a chance to access the latest release and other exclusive content.

15:39 Head to www.thefifthmonkey.com for links to all the platforms we're on and support us on social media. Shares, comments, emails. All are welcome. This is Lynn. See you in the next episode.