Yes, definitely. Here’s a mostly complete list: if I remember a few more, I’ll add them in later. If you find this post through a reblog chain, please keep in mind that the version on my blog will be updated from time to time, so click back for additional references if the reblogged post contains broken links or doesn’t have what you’re looking for.
Masterpost of references for the MDZS/CQL fandom (re: terminology, look here for naming guides and a list of familial terms. You’ll also find information on wedding and funeral customs, cultivation lore, MDZS maps and sect history, and novel/audio drama summaries.)
- Click here to find the “40 Q&A’s” interview with MXTX.
Detailed glossary/explanations of concepts in wuxia, xuanhuan, and xianxia novels. Look here for a guide to weapons, martial arts, more cultivation lore, and a few units of measurement.
Guide to the martial family. You can also find a separate guide through the masterpost.
Guide to modern/historical titles. This is a Wikipedia page and most likely incomplete, but came in handy after the guide in the MDZS masterpost was removed.
Guide to Chinese nobility. Look here for basic information about the peer ranks of various dynasties.
Guide to Chinese clothing, by @ziseviolet. Click here for information on historical fashions, hairstyles, accessories, and so on. Try this link for clothing/textile references for other countries/cultures.
List of mythological creatures. This is a Wikipedia list of individual pages and is most likely incomplete.
List of Chinese fairy tales and folklore (not comprehensive).
Brief overview of Chinese musical notation and guqin musical notation. Not detailed, but provides a fair explanation of how written music was recorded.
Color terms you’re not likely to find with google translate, by @linghxr. These include translations for colors like cyan, indigo, luminous white, etc.
- More about colors and their symbolism here.
Timekeeping. Wiki article about the dual hour, fifteen daylight hours, etc.
Traditional calendar. I bookmarked this page for the phenological month names used in TMAAF, but there’s a lot more information here. Look here for a list of traditional Chinese holidays.
For food: someone on Twitter made a detailed guide to the dishes that the characters in MDZS would have eaten, but I’ll have to go looking for it. In the meantime, try these links.
(Note: most of the recipes in the Twelve Moons and a Fortnight verse are from The Woks of Life and Made with Lau.)
For individual words and characters: try hantrainerpro or its full dictionary index. Given a word/character, you can find its definitions, synonyms, other words that contain the character, and a list of different words pronounced the same way. I also use Written Chinese to look up the individual radicals within a character, but there are several better dictionaries out there.
- For a mobile Chinese dictionary, try Pleco.
- For help choosing Chinese names, click here.
Rhyming in Chinese:
