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「隊商」 (Kyaraban)
“Caravan”
The caravan is in town, and with it, the whole palace goes abuzz with excitement. I have major respect for Gyokuyo showing restraint and prudence the way she does- not having too many ladies in waiting, not spending overly much at the market. Spending copious amounts of money has always seemed sickeningly wasteful to me, though it was a given in the palace where concubines have an image to keep up. That Gyokuyo doesn’t lose her purse over that shows she has confidence in keeping her position the way she is, and a head for economy.
I love how Maomao wryly notes that in contrast to the Flower District, the rear palace is so entertainment deprived. Much as she puts on the whole cool cucumber act, Maomao gets some fun out of it (and admits as much), spending a day out on the market with Xiaolin. It was adorable to see Xiaolin’s reactions and Maomao enjoying herself with something non-experiment related. At the tea stall, the pair runs into Shisui, an acquaintance of Xiaolin’s, and the three girls head back to Maomao’s home base for tea and cakes. The “quack”’s surprise “You have friends Maomao?!” cracked me up. It is nice to see her making some friends and forming a social life compared to before. I love that Maomao has found a kindred spirit in Shisui and that the two plan on a bug-hunting outing together on the North side ruins.
In addition to bugs, the North side has had strange smells recently, according to Shisui. Maomao thinks it’s blocked sewage, but you know it’s something deeper than that. The North isn’t the only side with smells, as the court ladies saturate their clothes in the new perfumes from the caravan. I personally don’t like perfumes- they tend to be too strong, especially when you walk right into a cloud of it that floated off the wearer, so I can only imagine the state of the palace. It doesn’t take long for Maomao to sniff out trouble, with the perfume components like rose, jasmine, and frankincense all potentially harmful for pregnancies.
Let the poisoning begin. As Maomao mentioned, this case smells suspiciously like the first case back in season 1 with the face powder. Rather than feeling old and recycled, though, it feels like events are coming full circle, with speculation that the same suppliers behind that could be behind this one. After all, much as Maomao vacillates over coincidence versus purposeful, in this series, there are no coincidences. Especially with the fact that all the clothing is maternity style when Gyokuyo’s pregnancy hasn’t hit the press yet.
Having formerly been a scientist myself, I find the concept of the fine line between medicine and poison, two sides of the same coin kind of concept with herbs to be fascinating. What better place to hide potentially harmful ingredients than a marketplace, where spices and perfumes abound. This brings up the interesting question of how much should or could be restricted in the palace. As Maomao mentioned, each of those ingredients on its own and used as prescribed in small doses is not harmful, so it seems over the top to ban all of it. On the other hand, safety first, as they say. The problem lies in mis-using it, which does not take a large stretch of the imagination to see that happening, especially given the death of the middle ranking concubine at the end. The palace really needs to improve their employee candidate vetting- it’s the same scenario on repeat, the wrong people get in and kill or almost kill a concubine. It doesn’t look like they’ve learned the message either, judging from the lady in waiting in the Crystal Palace.
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