Remarkable Women in ancient China (25)- Zhao Rao

Who is she?

  • The nanny of Emperor Ling of Eastern Han dynasty, the last second Emperor of the dynasty

Notable Life Events

  • The only known fact about her origin is that she was a palace maid but eventually selected to be nanny to Emperor Ling
  • In January of AD 168, the death of Emperor Huan meant that the Dowager Empress Dou Miao became regent over her son, the Emperor Ling, and she gave Zhao Rao an official position at Court which allowed her to handle Court paperwork. In fact, it was said that Zhao Rao was one of the people always besides the Dowager Empress (the others being eunuchs) who all sucked up to her 
  • In August of AD168, the plot of Dou Wu, the father of Dowager Empress Dou Miao, to kill eunuchs was unearthed. Zhao Rao, alongside many enunchs held the Dowager Empress hostage and forced her to give up the Imperial Seal and Royal Writ which allowed the Emperor Ling to rule in his own right, an event that has become known as the Jian Ning Coup
  • In AD 169, Zhao Rao received a title from Emperor Ling. It was said that her wealth rivals that of the Imperial Treasury and that her tomb even surpassed that of Emperor tombs in splendour. In addition, both her sons and her brother were made government officials.  

Why is She Remarkable?
She is not the only palace maid who has risen to a high position (nor the only nanny for the Emperor for that matter) but I did find it interesting how it was effectively palace servants, of which Zhao Rao is one, that the Dowager Empress trusted in and gave a lot of powers to that eventually turned the tide between the struggle between her and her son. 

Moonlake’s Thoughts on her: 

I’m not sure how instrumental she was in the coup, of whether she had high political acumen and switched sides astutely or whether she was forced to do it by the other enunchs. But she certainly gained a good outcome from this single action of hers. 

Oriental fantasy 2025 (1)

I had turned up a book for Oriental fantasy this year- a reimagining of the Romance of Three Kingdoms in female form. The book is called Strike the Zither by Joan He. I had read loads of online novels written in Chinese set in this period, making this one of the most known historical periods to me personally. But this will be the first novel set in that period that I read in English. 

I have just gotten my hands on it and have not made much inroad into it. But so far this does feel to me like this is inspired by Romance of the Three Kingdoms in basic characterisation for the good guys. But the turn of events have already been significantly changed in an important way two chapters in albeit potentially still heading in the same broad direction. Subsequently, the dynamics between the protagonist and her arch nemesis is drastically different from the original Chinese classic and how an average Chinese familiar with the period or the original work would think about it. I think I really welcome and value this approach chosen by the author since one of my major difficulties with Grace of a King, even though I don’t refute that it’s well written, was that there was not enough differentiation from real history as I knew it for me to not get bored with the story. 

One small nitpick is that the gender nouns and pronouns seem a little confused to me (I’m about to start chapter 7 as of the time of writing which is just one day before the actual post because I’m updating this post to reflect the most up-to-date progress on it) but perhaps there are more nuances to the world that will resolve itself to me so I’m reserving judgement on this point until I finish the book.

The 4 Great Chinese Classics and historical fantasy 

None of the 4 Great Chinese Classics are strictly historical fantasy but I think they all have elements of both genres, just in very skewed proportions relative to a historical fantasy written in English. 

Now let’s look at each of them in turn. The Journey to the West is a fantasy adventure inspired off the historical event that a monk in the Tang dynasty had travelled to India to bring back Hinduism/Buddhaism texts written in Sanskrit.  In fact, I should say that it is a fantasy retelling of this particular historical journey (I’m not sure that the monk had an entourage but I presumed that he did, he was definitely leaning towards being a scholar so he must have needed protection along the way). 

The Dream of the Red Chamber is a literary fiction based in an ancient Chinese setting (but not a specific historical period). It details the fall of the aristocratic Jia family and the main plotline revolved around a young male from this family and the tragic fate of the 12 beauties who were related to him. It has got multiple elements: family drama, romance, political intrigue and a touch of the supernatural in that it alludes to the origins of the majority of the main casts being mortal incarnations of immortals. 

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a historical fiction recounting the main events occurring in the Period of the Three Kingdoms in ancient China which starts from the decline of the Han dynasty. It touches on warfare, personal bravery, loyalty between sworn brothers and romance. Most of the fiction element in this work was in characterisation as opposed to plot. As far as fantasy element goes, there was one major plot point concerning the summoning of an Eastern wind via magic but I always took the interpretation that this person doing the summoning was basically just adept at making weather forecasts. 

Water Margins is another historical fiction detailing the rise and fall of a total of 108 outlaws in the Song Dynasty. It is an embellishment of the recorded uprising of about 30 outlaws led by Song Jiang (who appeared in the novel as himself) recorded in real history. Similar to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it had little to do with fantasy except for the start which left the hint that the 108 outlaws had some mystical origin as 108 stars of destiny that represented 108 repented demonic lords that were banished by a supreme God in Chinese folk religion and subsequently escaped imprisonment. The theme of immortals escaping to exert major influence in the mortal realms was a somewhat prevalent theme in Chinese folklore and potentially caused by Emperors and Feudal Lords liking to circulate stories of how they are different from birth, hinting that they are chosen by Heaven.

22 days train trip in Spain and Portugal- Spain part 2

The second leg of our Spanish trip was based in Madrid. I chose an aparhotel to offset the cost of our Barcelona accommodation but I still chose a central location. The first day was just Almudena Cathedral plus Royal Palace of Madrid since the train trip from Barcelona was almost 3 hours. We had lunch at Plaza Mayor and the plan was to have dinner here for a couple times but Mum didn’t like the setup much- basically a plaza with outdoor sitting that she considers very stall-like and we weren’t that impressed after ‘shopping around’ looking at menus. For dinner, I booked a place that only had the 8:30pm slot open a month prior and I was only on the waiting list for it initially (but it was confirmed the day after). I only booked it because I was interested in learning how Europeans cooked tripe so we had cow tripes which was okay (basically the same as how Chinese cook them except cut up finer and with the addition of chistora). So we ordered that, asparagus with mayonnaise (I wanted to order wild asparagus but it wasn’t available on the day), the cow tripe and cod fish (I wanted to order the scorpionfish pie but again it wasn’t available on the day, the menu had changed). The asparagus was horrendous due to the fact that I don’t eat vinegar but this asparagus is actually soaked in vinegar and is completely soggy, nothing like the normal green asparagus I usually eat. Mum said it tastes fine alongside mayonnaise and with bread. The codfish wasn’t to our taste either- we preferred softer fishmeat than codfish but I know it was a local fish and the waiter recommended it when I told him I was thinking about a 3rd dish, some form of fish dish, but did not quite know what to order. I also didn’t like it because the sauce was tomato based. 

The second day was mostly spent at Parque del Retiro (Retiro Park) but in the morning we went past Palacio de Cibeles and Puerta de Alcala because they were on the way. We don’t tend to visit the inside of buildings because we are not interested in history and audio guide tours so it was just some photo snapping of the palace and the gate. We did have a second go at photo snapping the gate in the afternoon after we are done at the park. Mum was initially grumbling a lot about how the park was a lot of walking and not much to see/snap for photos and at multiple times we wanted to quit the park except that we found new markers to a different section. So basically we managed to cover a lot of ground at the park including the artificial lake (which is just at the entrance and basically that’s the unskippable part of the park), the Alfonso X11 monument and Velazquez Palace (Palacio de Cristal right next to it was closed for renovations so we gave it a miss). I originally also put the Rose Garden on the agenda but Mum decided we are really done so we went back towards our aparhotel. I didn’t book for the night but still ended up having it at the place that I saw online at Plaza Mayor. I think I ordered an octopus dish but overall it wasn’t a memorable dinner. 

The last day at Madrid was spent on a day trip to Segovia and I think we had covered the city really thoroughly (*Segovia Aqueduct, Plaza Azoguejo, Segovia Cathedral and a few other churches, Jewish quarter, Segovia Alcazar) except for climbing up stairs to see the old city wall. We also climbed a set of very short stairs to a “mirador”, the only one we visited for the entire trip since we are both not enthused about stair climbing in general and Mum’s basically all into photos where you can insert a person into it. For lunch, we also foie gras on bread and the roasted suckling pig which the waitress said was the restaurant special (I did read that suckling pig was a speciality at Segovia). The suckling pig, in particular, was delicious- skin cooked as crispy as how it would be when prepared in Hong Kong and the whole section of the meat (it was a standard serving, not a whole suckling pig as would be if you order them in Hong Kong) was somehow flattened so that the whole dish tasted less oily and more crisp. I would say it’s a must-try at Segovia. I pre-booked the bus tickets from Madrid and back but actually it was probably better to not book the return time since we are done with Segovia at around 3pm but I booked the 5:15pm slot back and bus tickets don’t really sell out that crazily (but I still think it’s good that I booked the bus ticket to Segovia). But anyway, the bus slot I booked was still early enough since we spent a major block of time getting ourselves lost finding the restaurant I booked for dinner (actually, the 3 days we were in Madrid, we got lost every single when we went out to dinner both in trying to find a specific restaurant or finding our way back to the aparhotel. The only landmark we knew was the Puerta de Sol which was a big plaza with that signature statue of the Lion with a Ball that’s a symbol of Madrid).  But back to dinner, we had oysters, house salad (tuna, mango, egg and mixed veggies) and grilled razor clams. I didn’t actually know what razor clams were but figured out we couldn’t always be having clams and I actually knew it when I saw it- I just didn’t know the English name for it basically. So in general, we found Spanish oysters substantially salty compared to AU or NZ varieties but just found them tasty. The razor clams were excellent, just as good as being stirred fried (the problem with grilled stuff is often that they are overcooked and become very tough to chew). 

*The photo for this post is the pic I took of the Segovia Aqueduct

Scene by Scene breakdown

I learnt the original form of the scene by scene summary from the UBC novel writing courses on EdX and it has the following elements:

  • One line summary of events
  • What do each character want in the scene? 
  • The emotion transitions for the characters involved (you can do the full transitions if you are really up to date on character feelings or you can just do the opening and closing emotion in the form of A goes from feeling A to feeling B)
  • The direction of emotion movement (does this scene go from positive to negative or vice versa or positive to more positive etc.) 

As time goes by and I read more writer craft books I had come to think that for me at least, what the characters want is often not foremost on my mind and I have to do really hard work to dig it out. So I’ve switched to replacing character wants with stakes for the scene- what the character stands to gain or lose, which is a concept I can relate to far better. 

So in my recent attempt to downsize my WIP back into index cards again, I have changed the breakdown to having the following elements:

  • One line summary of events
  • Stakes for the protagonist
  • Emotion transition for the protagonist, just the opening and closing emotions. I had previously tried to track the moment to moment or at least broad feeling transitions. But to be honest, even with the help of a feelings wheel which gives a set of predetermined words to summarise a broad range of feelings, I’m using apprehensive as a feeling most of the time whenever I’m really stuck. So I think just tracking the opening and closing emotions for me personally is probably the best I can do. 
  • Movement the scene goes in terms of emotions 

Now there are other ways you can break down a scene, this is just one method. Drop me a comment if you want to discuss alternative methods or just want to hear about alternative frameworks I have come across.

Moonlake’s Book Discoveries: June 2025

Science Fiction

Defy the stars by Claudia Gray

This is part of my mini reading challenge for this year, book 1 of the Constellations trilogy. I’m not much of a science fiction reader but this is really more speculative futuristic solar system space opera featuring the blossoming of a romance that is just right for me. I mean, I am just very against soppy or melodramatic romance and there is none of that here so I am 100% on board. Some dry, perhaps dark, humour here. I was pleasantly surprised by this book and went on to book 2. 

Defy the worlds by Claudia Gray

This book has really ramped up the stakes for the protagonists from the start right up to the very end. I think that is enough said. 

Defy the fates by Claudia Gray

The author has really worked on stakes since the grand finale ups it again for Neomi and Abel. I do find the conclusion satisfying in a hopeful type of way. I don’t think there will be another series featuring these two and I might not be that tempted to read it but it’s a good point to leave things at. 

Children’s fiction 

The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson

The second book for my mini reading challenge that didn’t turn up in my initial search. I was actually waiting for Gideon the Ninth and am currently 10th on the reservation list. So this was the tie-over book. 

This book is for you if you like heartwarming stories featuring family and/or stars. So far, I’m pretty happy with what has turned up for my mini reading challenge this year. 

Mystery

Girl, Forsaken by Blake Pierce 

I feel like I am actually getting 2 for 1 with this novel in that it alternates between two female cops which I wasn’t expecting from the blurb (well, one is the actual protagonist of the series and the other is her partner). It’s an engaging read overall and I might be tempted to read more of the author and this particular protagonist. 

The Empress Murders by Toby Schmitz (audiobook narrated by Jennifer Vuletic) 

I wanted a light reading to tie me over after my EU trip so I got back to audiobooks but so far I’m zoning out on this. 

23 Minutes by Vivian Vande Velde

I think this is actually classified under urban fantasy since the protagonist has a special power but I see it more as a thriller (and the majority of thriller I read is mystery so hence I put this book under mystery). 

It has short chapters and a fast pace, a good twist. 

Fantasy 

The Wilderwoman: A Novel by Ruth Emmie Lang

I think this is the supernatural sub-genre of fantasy and I would probably later reclassify it as mystery. It’s about two sisters trying to find their missing mother from the blurb. So far it reads okay but I won’t have more to report until I get to the end. So stay tuned for the September post. 

Moonlake’s Writing Updates- June 2025

After a rest of about a week after my recent trip, I went back to my drafting but there was no juice to it. So sometimes towards the end of last week, I decided I would remake the WIP into a scene by scene summary on index cards. 

Why am I doing this and what do I hope to get out of it? Well, one thing about the WIP is that I currently have a block of old scenes when my extensive outline was made in not quite but almost two years and then a block of new scenes added through the iteration of my decimal drafts and the successive rounds of structural analysis. Not surprisingly, the new scenes are not as well-formed and sometimes I’m struggling to see where a particular scene is going to fit amongst the actual draft I’m working on which is full of meta-writing and notes to self which bounces between the last scene and the current scene at the point of writing but then no longer applies after the addition or amendment in a later round. Therefore, the thought emerges to turn everything, old and new scenes, all into the same form: index cards. 

Then, hopefully, I can pull up specific index cards and see what is going on within there. I am going slowly with this because there is really no point rushing and get down all the wrong things about a scene. So I am doing 2 chapters per day, 5 days a week. I am up to chapter 10 from the current draft and I’m doing a bunch of new scenes that I haven’t yet integrated into the draft in a different colour. The WIP currently has 85 chapters so this exercise will occupy me until the middle of August. I am hoping that it would give me greater clarity and fast track my progress with the WIP so that there will be more positive news for my September update. Stay tuned. 

Remarkable Women in Ancient China (24)- Xun Guan

Who is She? 

  • A girl who lifted a siege at the age of 13 

Notable Life Events

  • The fifth generation grand-daughter of Xun Yu, a major advisor to the warlord Cao Cao who won the titanic struggle of the famous Three Kingdom period at the end of the Han dynasty, Xun Guan was born in 303 AD in the Jin dynasty to Xun Song. The Book of Jin described her as having an exceptional spirit since young. 
  • In 315, a rebel leader laid siege to Wancheng, the city base of her father and the only viable option was for someone to lead a party to break through and seek out reinforcements. Guan volunteered for the job, successfully led several thousand of men through a pursuit by the rebel group and reached reinforcements at Xiangyang. The siege was successfully lifted when reinforcements arrived. 

Why is She Remarkable:

We don’t know anything more about Xun Guan but just that feat at the age of 13 is awesome, right? I don’t think anything more needs to be said 

Moonlake’s Thoughts on Her:

I don’t have any more thoughts. This seems more a fictional or folklore type of story but is not so what more is there to say? 

English reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Guan

22 days train trip in Spain and Portugal- Spain part 1

We landed in Barcelona around 8:30am after an overnight stay at Dubai for connecting flights. It was too tiring an experience to repeat- two very early morning flights over two days. As a result, the first day was basically nothing. We basically just took a few pics amongst the crowd at Casa Battlo (see pic above) which was right across the street from our hotel and then found Casa Mila which was further along on a straight road and just called it a day. We had a pretty good dinner at El national Llotja of oysters, Iberian ham and octopus, so much that we booked for dinner again the day after. 

Day 2 was mainly Park Guell and surroundings in the morning and Basilica de la Sagrada Familia and misc. in the afternoon. But as is our wont, we basically only visited Park Guell and the Basilica for the whole day. I joined a skip-the-line tour for Park Guell but Mum was not quite happy about it since we were stuck in the crowds for photos so we ended up leaving the group half way. On the other hand, I basically could not get individual tickets from the official website- it was sold out the day it was released in the 16 hour difference between Barcelona and Melbourne so I bought two skip-the-line tour tickets from Viator. This is also the only tour from Viator that I didn’t like because the meeting point information was not well organised- we almost missed the meeting time because the guide did not arrive before hand and we had no idea where to look for the person until we asked one of the park staff and they pointed us to the blue umbrella or something. But multiple groups had this same issue for the exact same time slot. We visited Carrer de Verdi for lunch and also because it was supposedly a good photo spot. We had lunch there as planned but there was nothing to photo. We made our way successfully to the Basilica in the afternoon and were supposed to go onto Gaudi Avenue etc in a straight path. But we ended up just photographing both sides of the Basilica from the metro station exits and really could not find where to go from the Basilica. But we just contented ourselves from that and called it a day. I booked at Vivo Tapas and we had sauteed clams and red shrimp paella for 2. Clams are one of my favourite Western dishes so far and it did not disappoint. The paella was okay which already said a lot for picky eaters like us. I was expecting half-done rice or else soggy but the paella was actually the first time in a non-Chinese country that had rice which I deemed okay to eat for me. The taste wasn’t great by any means but certainly not horrible. Red prawns weren’t anything special compared to Australian banana prawns but they were fresh. We were content with this meal but also content not to try any more paella on this trip. 

Day 3 was Sitges day trip and I was yet again conned by the weather forecast to bring two raincoats along with us that ended up baggage to carry on the day in my backpack, not to mention that we wore too much (again due to the weather forecast). Most of the morning was spent trying to find the way to Placa de Belaud and being unsuccessful with the help of Google maps and even after asking locals. At the end, we changed goals and aimed for the church. Then, we got pulled into side streets such as the Greek mimicking Carrer Fonollar (blue doors and stuff) etc. We also took photos at the place with the three door-way looking windows above an arched door that looked similar to the Bishop’s Bridge at Barcelona’s gothic quarters (lucky we did because we never found the Bishop’s bridge at the Gothic quarters when we visited it the day after). The church was actually under maintenance so I only took a faraway shot of it. By this time, we had forgotten about the original goal of Placa de Belaud but at the end we took a faraway shot of it by itself without bothering to take the stairs to go down to it. We didn’t think there was much to see at Sitges but the photos were not bad and it’s a nice beach town if that’s what you are looking for. We also had an ultra expensive lunch at Sitges (I believe the most expensive on this particular trip): 55.4 Euro for sauteed clams and codfish cakes, 2 juices and a coffee but I guess that’s because Sitges is a tourist town. We made our way back to Barcelona early and spent the afternoon trying to find Plaza de Catalunya which was just 5 mins from our hotel and La Rambla beyond. However, due to me being direction blind and walking the wrong way, we had made a big loop and accidentally found the Plaza on the way back to the hotel. We had given up the idea of going on to La Rambla since we are not really wanting to shop. For our second dinner at El Nacional Llotja, we again had excellent oysters, scallops and the angler fish stew which actually contained more seafood including one prawn, one mussel and one clam but it had two pieces of angler fish meat so was called the angler fish stew. Both the scallops and the angler fish stew were pretty good, well worth the 200 Euros we spent (by coincidence, also our most expensive dinner for the trip). 

We made a late start on the fourth day because we heard that the Gothic quarter at Barcelona was not quite safe so we decided to travel with the crowd. We basically made the Barcelona Cathedral the main attraction for the day. I had created a map but we decided to just wander randomly and only found a number of the attractions I had planned and we found most of these other places dark and grey and not much photographable (Mum’s all into putting herself and me into the foreground whereas I’m all into scenery capturing but we both found dark buildings to be dull material for either purpose). I did take a picture of Palau del Lloctinent. For dinner, we decided to randomly cruise La Rambla de Catalunya which was the eating street near us. Mum didn’t much like the environments (small stalls, street food type of eating). We ended up ordering chorizo and baby squids, both of which are food I wanted to try. We both found the chorizo too salty for our tastes but the baby squids were fine. 

And that concluded the first leg of our Spanish trip.