Treasures Of Heaven And Earth

Time Units:

I have had a number of questions about time units used in the novel.

My thought process is that being descended from Ancient Chinese cultures (far in the distant past) they are still using ancient Chinese time measurements.

Some Ancient Chinese time measurements are almost directly analogous to western/modern ones thus I have left them as the straight English word i.e.

Day - 24 hours (or 12 Shi)

Week - 10 days (Despite being longer than Western ones, the intent is identical so I left it)

Month - 30 days

Year - 365.25 days

Other time measurements are much more precise - literally measured in milliseconds - and thus I have used the 'old' terms as an Ancient Chinese person would not understand or use the concept of Seconds, Minutes, Hours etc. and they do not translate well at all between the two i.e.:

niàn - 18 milliseconds

miǎo - 144 milliseconds long

shùn - 360 milliseconds (also known as the 'blink and you miss it' moment)

fēn - 14.4 seconds or 100 miǎo

kè - 0.24 hours, 14.4 minutes or 60 fēn

Shi - approximately two modern hours or 8​1⁄3 kè

Thus it make sense to use that terminology as we are seeing the story from the perspective of the characters that think in those terms. It is interesting to note that similar time measurements are still used in combination with western timekeeping today. It made no sense to me to f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y translate to milliseconds or 14.4 seconds etc.

I have also used artistic licence and 'the effects of millenniums away from Ancient China in a fantasy XiaXia world' to explain any changes in the the way I use time in the novel vs how the Ancient Chinese use it.

I admit to simplifying the use where possible - the way it was used in Ancient China was quite a bit more complex than simple one to one use as I've laid out here. A good example is that there was another time keeping system used at night, which so far I haven't needed to use extensively. I may have mentioned it once?

In general, I've also avoided precise times - using the combination of Shi and kè was used to give precise times is not straight forward if you haven't grown up with it. e.g. First kè in the second half of Mǎo - like the Female MC says it in chapter 24 - is not quite how it would have been said back then.

Wikipedia has a lot of information on this subject which I have relied on extensively.

I have had a few readers point out slip ups where I used minutes and seconds as time measurements. Thank you for that - I have cleaned out the ones I found. If I've missed any, please let me know.

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Chinese Slang terms:

These are Chinese words which are uniquely Chinese and don't really have direct equivalents in English or they have more than one depending on usage thus I have chose to leave them in pinyin:

The filler word "nèige":

Is similar to 'umm', 'ehhh', 'you know', 'like' etc. in English.

However, it can also be used to express stuff you don't want to say directly (in the right context - i.e naughty talk). It is also a way to get someone's attention, similar to 'Excuse me...?' and can be used as a reference/directive equivalent to someone saying in English 'That/it... one/there.'

It's also considered slightly less polished to use it frequently, so it makes sense for someone like Chún who is from a poor and rough background to say it a lot when he's having issues articulating.

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As an author, I thought unique/hard to translate words like this too useful not to use. It also didn't make sense that such a useful connective word like 'nèige' would drop out of use once the Ancient Chinese wound up in the 99 Heavens Universe. It also serves to remind readers that the characters are not walking around speaking English.

Let me know if I've used Chinese pinyin in the story that I haven't listed here. Especially if I've misapplied it really badly - this would not be my intent.