XQW: Thank You + Opinion Post

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[Chiyomira’s Corner]
Ahem, addressing some practical issues first! I did my best with formatting this but for some reason, the visual just doesn’t cooperate and show how it actually should look. Of course, it probably looks even worse on anything other than a computer. Some of your names may be capitalized when it’s not supposed to be due to the fact that the software I used to organize the names sometimes randomly capitalized names. I only collected names from the ToC of yumeabyss and moonbunnycafe, plus the names of those who commented in the chapter pages so if I missed you, I’m sorry! The names were collected a couple days after I finished translating the last chapter, so if you commented afterwards and want to be on the credits, it’s very simple, comment below and add yourself to da post~ I probably won’t re-edit this to add names tho~

So, thank you all for all the support! I read through every single one of the comments and was either grinning, laughing or pouting the entire time! I literally could not have come this far without so much encouragement. I had actually considered dropping this after I translated chapter 10 due to how painful it was but because of the supportive comments, I resolved to try for a few more chapters and Serene ended up dropping before I did. Which I’m glad, cause after finishing this book, I feel that it was totally worth it! So many hearttugs, so many fluffy and hilarious moments, ahem the h-scenes, and few bits of important reminders about life here and there.

Next will just be my opinions regarding this novel~

I was wavering between writing a long post or not, and in the end, wanting to talk about the novel won. Will try to pick and choose the parts I talk about though.

So first of all, there was Susan’s list of bullet points that gave me the idea of making an opinion post. Since I’m trying to keep it as short as possible, I’ll just be addressing the parts I want to argue with since I feel like some parts display the story too negatively or are off. 

4. The husband married Xiao Qi for her money and she hates that. She looks down on men who marry for money. She also feels that her father sold her. C: Xiaoqi doesn’t hate that Song Liangzhuo married for money only because he was using it not on himself but for the good of the common people and she just hates that he married her instead of just taking the money without dragging her along. When she found out her father didn’t sell her, she was outraged at the fact that her dad betrayed the spirit of a business man and suffered a monetary loss since he pretty much paid someone to marry his daughter lol.

10. Husband doesn’t let Xiao Qi keep a keepsake/toy that she purchased. C: Xiaoqi didn’t manage to buy it before Chen Zigong snatched it.

12. When the female cousin leaves the residence, Xiao Qi wants to give the cousin a hair pin as a good-bye gift. The cousin grabs all the hair pieces (10+) which are very valuable (expensive, some are rare). Xiao Qi naturally wants back the hair pins. The husband looks down upon Xiao Qi for trying to take back the jewelry. C: Idk if Song Liangzhuo looked down on Xiaoqi, but in any case, it is important to mention that Ruoshui gave back most of them and just happened to pick out the best ones… However, Xiaoqi kinda brought it on herself. Don’t show off things that you don’t want to be stolen.

13. C: 13 is about the flood part. I don’t remember what relative that said all the stuff Susan mentioned, but there were a lot of people raging at Song Liangzhuo due to Xiaoqi suffering so I just want to address that. *clears throat* Did Song Liangzhuo ever ask Xiaoqi to come after him and drown herself!?? He was moved by her act of love, but he didn’t do anything, say anything to Xiaoqi and ask her to put herself in harm’s way to prove her love for him. Of course Xiaoqi’s dad blamed Song Liangzhuo, you don’t blame your own child for loving their husband, but really, Xiaoqi was the one at fault. Yet like a man, Song Liangzhuo accepted responsibility for not taking good enough care of her. 

Responding to a reader, no I didn’t read the whole story back then but I have now. The second slap was on the butt! That’s not the same as one on the face and it’s how any good Asian parent would react to a child doing something stupid. And Xiaoqi was acting like a child. Climbing the tree is one thing, but doing something to injure yourself is either just a behavior to seek pity or something done out of stupidity. Now before another reader argues to me that the analogy of being a parent doesn’t apply here, if a sister can be a mother to a younger sibling, then why can’t a spouse also be like a guardian figure to his wife? You certainly can’t say that Xiaoqi acts like a responsible adult. Song Liangzhuo works, feeds her, spoils her, listens to her, plays with her and teaches her. Are those not parent-like actions? 

So, in the end, I don’t like Xiaoqi that much. At first I liked her because she was cute, adorable, and hilarious. But then she never grew up on the outside. The experiences she went through must have matured her, but behavior-wise, she doesn’t change and that bothered me since she thinks of her children as ‘toys’ and her husband as someone that must ‘dote on her’. She just lives happily with the world revolving around her. I guess the main qualm I had with her character was that though she seemed more ‘modern’ in the way she loved freely and unrestrictedly at first, I came to realize later that Xiaoqi was actually the perfect mold of an olden era woman: naive, helpless, and sweet. In contrast with that, Zixiao, who sheds her ignorance and chooses to take fate into her own hands, is more modern, pitiable, and admirable to me. However, this story would have become a revenge story rather than the sweet lovestory it is if Xiaoqi didn’t stay generally static the entire time as a silly main character that provoked laughs.

I don’t like Chen Zigong as a possible male lead cause he just wants to marry people too sucky to lie persuasively to him… His seducing techniques need work… I wanted to pat his head in the lost child arc… What do I like about him? Probably nothing except he made Song Liangzhuo jealous. I still burst out laughing whenever I think about that mustache incident in his extra story though.

In regards to love. All Xiaoqi gave was love. You can say that the two years of giving love while Song Liangzhuo ignored her was admirable, but if Xiaoqi wasn’t the main female lead and Song Liangzhuo had chosen to give his love to someone else, Xiaoqi would be an annoyingly persistent person trying to force love on someone uninterested in her rather than an admirable heroine bravely pursuing one’s love. Song Liangzhuo only feels he owes her because now he loves her and he regrets the two years he didn’t love her which hurt her. It’s one thing for Song Liangzhuo to place responsibility on himself and it’s another for others to say he owes her because she had done things out of love for him. After all, Xiaoqi was the one that chose to put herself through that suffering, Song Liangzhuo neither encouraged her or forced her until he married her. Meanwhile, after Song Liangzhuo found that he loved Xiaoqi, he changed for her in order to give her all the love he could, such as buying things she liked, throwing away his face to make her happy, erasing mysophobia from his dictionary, and making her dreams reality. I feel like Song Liangzhuo definitely gave more, however, he also risked less. He gave love to someone who treasured his love. Xiaoqi pushed her love to someone that barely noticed its existence. But afterwards,  once she got his love, she just did her own thing and waited for Song Liangzhuo to coax her and pamper her.

Overall, I feel like Xiaoqi got what she wanted, someone to shelter and pamper her. Song Liangzhuo got what he wanted, someone cute and naive to heal his heart with fluffiness. I don’t think one slap… ok, counting the slap on the butt, two slaps were that bad if those were the only times he hit her over the course of an entire lifetime. Of course, this is speaking in hindsight as if your spouse hit you once, you wouldn’t know in that moment if it would be a common occurrence. However, I don’t think it’s abuse as abusing someone would be hitting them for pleasure or to vent your anger on them. The first time, Song Liangzhuo did hit her out of anger, but he believed he had a legit cause. The second time though, he definitely had a legit cause as Xiaoqi had done something stupid to injure herself and slapping someone on the butt is the usual Chinese way for someone older to punish someone younger that did something wrong in the family. And Xiaoqi did slap Song Liangzhuo back as well. Even if something like that can’t be equaled out, to say a man can’t be excused for slapping woman but it’s fine for a woman to slap a man is complete gender bias.

My main issue with people saying that they should divorce just because of the slap is that it seems to be over-exaggerating what Song Liangzhuo did and taking marriage lightly. If your spouse wronged you once and you ignore all his efforts to make up for it, instead just holding onto that one wrong, what you’re looking for is a fairytale fantasy in which everything is already perfect, rather than a true loving relationship that grows between two people after having weathered through rocky bumps in the road. Expecting love to start sweet and stay sweet forever is probably one of the reasons why the divorce rate in America is so high now along with the fact that individualism and self-respect makes people feel that changing themselves for another person is disrespecting oneself, a slap in a misunderstanding/argument is abuse, treating someone who is an adult but acts like a child as a child is condescending. I’m sure there are a lot of relationships that flourish without hardships and many people who found their ‘true loves’ after several tries and divorces, but just as I admire people that take fate into their own hands more, I also admire relationships that lasted not only because of love, but because the two involved dedicated themselves to it and worked out their problems.

*phew!* That’s all for my opinions! It was seriously hard for me to put all those serious opinions into words. I usually don’t think that hard about stuff cause I often feel like it’s a waste of time to think about topics which have no definite answers. However, at the end of this novel, these were the leftover trails of thought that I had and I couldn’t bring myself to just shelve them after reading what everyone else wrote.

Despite not liking to think hard about stuff, I do tend to get influenced by books. However, due to my personality, I tend to overlook the negative parts. I still don’t think the slap is that big a deal, however, as I was writing, I did realized that though it is true you might not necessarily know if it’s abuse the first time you’re slapped, waiting to get slapped a couple more times in order to figure it out is also a dumb move. 

Lol, I can’t think of a good way to end this, and it’s not a lit essay anyways, so I’ll just throw it out there~ I really enjoyed this story and these were my thoughts about it, now how about you guys? And please leave some reviews on novelupdates if you have time!! 

P.S. after drafting this and checking through the next three chapters to prep them for posting, I feel like I was too harsh on Xiaoqi again. She’s seriously just hilarious, and I guess the ability to bring happiness to others is a virtue in itself.


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3 Responses to XQW: Thank You + Opinion Post

  1. Chiyomira says:

    Btw, the next three chaps will be released one a day in two parts that are 3 hours apart.
    Ex. chp 71 p 1 will be posted 7/19 @12:00, chp 71 p 2 will be posted 7/19 @ 15:00 based on EDT I think… not very sure what mbc uses lol

  2. sierraimoet says:

    What a refreshing story. Xiaoqi antiqueness made me laugh really hard. I do feel sorry when she feeling down after knew her husband never truly love her sincerely. I adore Xiaoqi simple mind and wish for her to always bring happiness for people around her.

    I do feel his husband regret for hit her. There’s always one two accident in household life. But learn from mistake and try to start everything to seek true happiness, I’ll always have soft heart for that. So I’d never hate his husband.

    Thank you so much for translate this story and made my day full of pluffy smile.

  3. Raven says:

    Thank you so much for translating this novel! Your thoughts is also very enlightening and hit on many points right on the spot. Song Liangzhuo may have slapped her and overlooked her opinions at first but he gradually changed into a doting husband who listens to his wife. At first, I don’t think he took that slap as a big deal but after Xiao Qi brings it up again and again, he realized how much it hurt her and so apologized and admitted fault. He’s not the perfect male lead but there are definitely times where he earned some brownie points. As for Xiao Qi, I felt like she may be naive but naive also has its advantages and funny side. And at critical moments, she’s actually quite smart. Remember, she was the one who brought the medicine in preparation for the plague that probably helped saved many lives. The mosquito repellent pouches she gave to her husband and her maid prevented them from getting sick. Not to mention, when her husband was sent to jail, she was very mature about it, didn’t kick up a fuss, and went to the Wangye for help. So Xiao Qi’s support is instrumental to Song Liangzhuo and she is not someone who takes and not give back. In the end, the dynamics between this couple is quite balanced. Looking forward to more fluffy scenes!!!

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