Sadly, this is what it has come to. The dearth of compelling shows this fall — you might even call it a drought — has led to me going against my gut and covering this show. Welp, it is what it is. Let’s just get right to it.
A locust plague threatens to destabilize the empire. Loulan even warns Jinshi directly about it… well, as direct as a letter can be. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman is going from one devastated location to another, offering a magical panacea to starving, down-on-their-luck farmers. How foreboding. I like to think this show is fairly grounded, so fantasy medicines can’t possibly exist. But what exactly is her aim? What does a woman get out of tricking farmers into taking a drug? Will this somehow lead to a backlash against the emperor as well? To be fair, when the people are starving and the emperor is just sitting there on his cushy throne, it’s hard not to feel a bit of ire. Nevertheless, I can only speculate, so I’m going to move on to something I have a little more knowledge about, i.e. the plague.
People didn’t really understand much back then, so it was easy to attribute terrible events like droughts and plagues to divine punishment. Clearly, the gods are mad, because the emperor must have done something to piss them off. That’s why there are bugs everywhere! Better start praying! On a similar note, I remember reading about how smallpox outbreaks would ravage the Wa people, and they really had no recourse against it. How can you fight an enemy you don’t even understand? Wash my hands after delivering a baby? Now you’re being unreasonable! But jokes aside, ruler after ruler would do nothing but dump money into erecting Buddhist temples in a futile attempt to appease the gods. Not only did they overtax the population, they also stripped the mountains clean of trees. So not only were the people sick, the environment was turning to shit as well. And when their luck wouldn’t turn because gods don’t exist… welp, off with some heads, I suppose.
But what’s really interesting about locusts is that they used to be grasshoppers. To be clear, not all grasshoppers will turn into locusts; this only applies to a certain subset, and it usually happens via proximity. It’s part of a boom-and-bust cycle. When rain leads to a surplus of crops, the grasshopper population booms. When the rains go away, they get squeezed into smaller and smaller areas where they can actually feed. Something about bumping into each other causes chemicals to be released, altering both their bodies and behavior completely. They start to swarm and devastate crops that were already struggling to grow under tough, dry conditions. It’s such a fascinating but scary phenomenon. Imagine if living in a dense city completely changed how you look and act. Well, certain folks do see city people as if they were monsters… As for the part where grasshoppers taste bad and locusts taste good? I don’t really have a clue about that. Maybe because the locusts are better fed just like how we fatten our cows with corn?
As for other matters, there’s a massive shift in the imperial court, but this is the least interesting aspect of The Apothecary Diaries’ plot. I don’t give a shit which consort ends up having sons, nor do I care who ends up becoming the empress dowager. Part of my reluctance to blog this show is simply because I dislike the setting that much. I just feel bad for Lishu. Great, the emperor’s not a pedo. Even so, she’s basically a prisoner behind the palace walls. I think there’s an entire genre of poetry dedicated to capturing the loneliness of these women (not that Lihua is a woman), but I’m no expert on such matters so don’t hold me to that claim.
Last but not least, we have Maomao doing her usual schtick, i.e., claiming “this is not my business” but nevertheless sticking her head into “the business” anyway. But this time, I’d like to think an impending plague is everybody’s business. My only nitpick is that the chain of events in this episode leaves me a bit incredulous. So the kid Chou-u eats some fried locusts, but there are grasshoppers mixed in, which he dislikes. This leads to Maomao having the kid draw a couple of detailed diagrams of said bugs for comparison, and they remind her of a series of books she once encountered when she was being held captive in the Shi clan’s stronghold. Back in the present, she wanders through a bookstore and stumbles across one of those books. What are the odds of that?
Point is, the guy who did research into immortality might have also written down a thing or two about preventing a locust plague. As a result, Maomao is going to have to let Jinshi know about this, which is exactly what the audience wants anyway. To hell with the immortality potion, to hell with the locust plague! Everyone just wants Maomao to wrestle with the pretty boy’s frog! Well, the immortality potion sounds like hogwash to me. I’m more curious about the plague prevention. Did they really have the know-how to stop it? I’m a little skeptical, but I’m no expert on agriculture or bugs. That’s what I’m the most curious about as we delve deeper into this arc.
Stray thoughts & observations:
— Damn, lady, take the kid indoors and away from all the dust!
— Constant population growth is a relatively modern phenomenon. The vast majority of our history on the planet is defined by stagnancy.
— Maomao gets a heaping of fried locusts to eat, but it’s not poison, so she doesn’t care. I’ve never eaten insects (that I know of), and I never will. Sorry, but looks matter. As they say, we eat with our eyes first. There is, however, at least one guy who is happy to scarf down those locusts.
— Shrimps have the shit sack, and they’re pretty much bugs of the sea. I would imagine that you have to do the same with actual bugs, which might explain why they hollow the bugs out first.
— I watched the first two seasons, but I obviously didn’t blog them. As a result, some of the finer details are still a little fuzzy in my head. I know Jinshi shed his secret identity to lead an army to save Maomao and crush a rebellion (I think). So is his secret out for a lot of people now? Or still just a select few?
— I’m kinda surprised Maomao’s mom’s mind is intact enough to play Go.
— Geez, do they really just let it all hang out like that back then? I mean, this is an official ceremony, no? You dress like this for the bedroom, not naming the next empress dowager.
— I binged the first two seasons of The Apothecary Diaries with the English dub, but I gotta start getting used to the Japanese voices now.