閣老. From The Encyclopaedia Sinica, by Samuel Couling, 1917 www.google.com/books/editio...

I tend to use 1.6:1 (字数 inclusive of punctuation:words), but the actual number varies. The bigger ratios in this chart (all harder SF titles) are probably due to tech jargon and foreign names. But I’m positive that if I took another look at that 1.5:1 outlier, I’d find a pretty baggy translation.

Congratulations! 🧨

Tom Clancy’s Junk

I picked up 女仙外史 and 绿野仙踪 off a mention in a 倪湛舸 interview and started them both, but Daoist sorcery quickly won out over military strategy. I should really give it another go. Alice Poon recently published a retelling of the Tang Sai’er story, which I’ve heard good things about but haven’t read.

He was walking up and down the line encouraging people to ask him about the rules

A woman yelled, "Can you sing us the rules?"

He immediately sang, "Don't bring your firearms on the plane/There are signs everywhere that you ignooore"

The voice does feel a little elevated but it’s pretty inconsistent—dialogue is largely 白话 and even the narration lapses into vernacular. Maybe it’s situation dependent? I’m reminded of 笏山记, which interrupts archaic 三国-style passages with more ordinary 19th century prose.

IT’S VALENTIMES!

Do it! Immortalize the note-taker online.

Entirely off-topic, but while pulling up the 三百亿兮 citation, I got this garbage as my first search result—and it’s Baidu-hosted garbage to boot! Incorrect source, plus a gloss for 胡 (胡：指无节制地贪婪、贪心) that’s like a ’60s Analects commentary, only illiterate. (On-topic: 亿 is a bushel, 万 is a peck.)

One possibility is 陰陽路柒撞到正 Troublesome Night 7, which isn’t from the ’80s (it’s a 2000 release) but does feature a film crew on an island shoot and uses Teresa Teng’s 海韻 Rhythm of the Sea to soundtrack a reunion of ghost lovers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9RR...