Open way one: Understand the background of the story
"The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" is a novel published by the character ghost Ma Boyong in 2017. The novel originally stemmed from a question from Zhihu: If you were writing the plot for Assassin's Creed, where would you put the background?
Ma Boyong chose Chang'an City.
Imagine the figure of an assassin, under the full moon of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, hunting him down the fiery red lantern from Suzaku Street to Qujiang Pond, startling countless birds on the plains...
A brain hole developed into a long story, and this "Twelve Hours of Chang'an" was created.
The story takes place in the Tang Dynasty Tianbao Sanzai (744 AD), which is an interesting point in time.
The history books have focused on the knowledge points of Tang Xuanzong's Kaiyuan Shengshi, and we have also privately learned about the wild history love stories of Tang Xuanzong and Yang Yuhuan.
Li Longji, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, was the grandson of Emperor Gaozong and Wu Zetian of Tang, reigned for 46 years and changed his era name three times. The first was Xiantian, who ascended the throne in the first year of the xiantian era (712), and after two years of the stabilization of the regime, he changed his era name to Kaiyuan, showing his determination to work hard to create the great cause of the Tang Dynasty.
The era name of Kaiyuan took 29 years, and this period was the most diligent period of Tang Xuanzong, who single-handedly created the Kaiyuan prosperous world.
However, after the kaiyuan dynasty, Tang Xuanzong was depressed, content with pleasure, deposed xianliang, and reused traitors. In 742, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang changed his era name to Tianbao and began his performance of "no making no die".
The "old calendar XX year" used in many places in the play is actually the meaning of the previous year number, the new century XX year
In the three years of Tianbao, Tang Xuanzong was already 60 years old. He only hopes that he can retire soon and find a quiet place to enjoy life with his yuhuan.
"The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" unfolds in this context.
In the Tang Dynasty, half an hour was now one hour, and twelve hours was 24 hours. So in fact, this story is just the story that happened within one month of the year of the Tang Dynasty Tianbao Sanzai.
But this is not an ordinary day, this day is the day before the First Yuan Festival (Lantern Festival). Why is the upper meta festival different?
The Tang Dynasty had a curfew system, and the "Palace Guard Order" stipulated that every night when the "daytime carving" of the yamen was exhausted, six hundred "closed door drums" were beaten; every morning after five o'clock and three o'clock, four hundred "open door drums" were beaten.
Anyone who walks on the streets of the city for no reason after the "closed door drum" and in front of the "open door drum" will be flogged twenty times, even if he is guilty of "committing the crime of committing the night".
The exception is only during the Lantern Festival, when people are allowed to go out at night to see the lights.
There are more people, and more dangers.
"The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" tells the story of a wave of Turkic wolf guards mixed in with Chang'an City on the eve of the First Yuan Festival, Chang'an City was in danger, and the death row prisoner Zhang Xiaojing and Jing'an Sicheng Li Bi joined forces to defend Chang'an for 24 hours.
Open method two: character archetype
Ma Boyong's works, historical backgrounds and characters are very elaborate. Many of the characters in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" have their real historical prototypes.
For example, the role of Li Bi, played by Yi Qianxi, is based on Li Bi, a courtier in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Li Bi, the character Changyuan, has been a prodigy since childhood, seven years old can write, and when he was young, he had already roughly understood the Huang Lao and Liezhuang doctrines.
In the thirteenth year of the new century, a seven-year-old prodigy named Li Bi entered the palace for hajj. Tianzi is playing chess with Zhongshu Ling Zhang. Tianzi ordered Zhang Shu and Li Bi to chant chess under the title of "Fang Yuan Movement".
Zhang said that what he wrote was: "The square is like a chess game, and the circle is like a chess piece." Moving like chess, quiet like chess death. And Li Bi said, "Fang is like righteousness, and round is like using wisdom." Moving like a talent, quiet as a will. "Greatly appreciated by Tianzi, he sent him to the Eastern Palace to accompany the prince to study."
Fang is the moral character of people, circle is the way of dealing with the world, moving is to show talent and ambition, and Jing is not greedy and often feels satisfied. It can be seen from this that Li Bi is a person with a broad mind and great ambitions since he was a child.
It is not difficult to understand Li Bi's sentence in the play, "You only have to look at the present, the long-term of Datang has me." ”
During the reign of Tianbao (742–756), Emperor Xuanzong summoned Li Bi to teach Lao Tzu, often conspiring with the crown prince. So he could be considered a close friend of a prince.
Because of his talent and erudition, many of the court's most virtuous ministers valued the young man, including Zhang Jiuling. In the play, the 86-year-old secretary Supervisor He Zhizheng is still thinking about his safety and future at the critical juncture of Li Bi, which also reflects the care of the predecessors for the talented juniors.
In the Twelve Hours of Chang'an, Li Bi is the Jing'an Si Si Cheng (靖安司丞). This Jing'an Division is a bit like a special case group and an intelligence bureau, which was temporarily established for major cases, has great power, and can call on the prince's brigade army. Li Bi was tasked with finding out the whereabouts of wolf guards who were trying to endanger Chang'an and defending Chang'an.
In the original work, there is such a description of Li Biqi:
Next to the sand table, two officials were watching intently. The old man has white hair, wears a purple robe with wide sleeves and a round neck, and wears a goldfish bag at the waist. The young man's face was round and small, the green qi had not yet faded, but there were already three shallow lines between the eyebrows, obviously thinking too much. He wore a narrow-sleeved green robe, a silver fish bag hanging from his waist, and a handful of Taoist dust in his hand.
Many people say that the performance of the four-character brother is slightly immature, and some details are not in place for the maturity and meticulousness of the teenager Li Bi.
For example, in the scene where the people and horses of the right-wing hostile forces block the door of Jing'anSi and ask Li Bi to hand over power, Li Bi's tone of "no handover" is slightly childish.
Zhang Xiaojing, played by Lei Jiayin, is not recorded too much in the history books. Yao Runeng, a lieutenant of Huayin County in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a book "An Lushan Deeds" after the An Shi Rebellion and circulated it in the street, which mentioned Zhang Xiaojing.
"In order to eliminate the traitor Yang Guozhong, Zhang Xiaojing opened his bow and shot Yang Guozhong off his horse."
In "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", Zhang Xiaojing is a prisoner to be beheaded, the commander of a former bad person in the city (equivalent to today's film police), or a soldier who has been a soldier for 10 years. He has a lot of secrets, so I won't give you spoilers here.
One of the main villains in the film, Lin Jiulang, is based on the right minister Li Linfu, a traitor who was reused in the later period of Tang Xuanzong, who wielded great power, rejected the talents, and also suggested the reuse of Hu General, directly laying the foundation for the subsequent Anshi Rebellion.
The wolf guard Cao Baoyan, whom Zhang Xiaojing had been capturing, was the leader of the Turkic forces, hated Chang'an and was loyal to the Turks.
After looking at the archetypal background of these main characters, you can feel even more that everything that happened on that day was not simply a superficial "catching a thief", but the mediation of various forces and the purpose of different characters were mixed in, making this story more thick.
Opening method three: recreate the scene of the prosperous Chang'an
Everyone has a Tang Dynasty in their hearts, but what exactly is the Chang'an City in the Tang Dynasty, we can only imagine through historical texts and excavated cultural relics.
When creating "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", Ma Boyong paid great attention to the accurate depiction of the details of life in the Tang Dynasty, and the novel was widely praised when it was published, depicting the prosperous Tang Dynasty in the hearts of many people.
The drama version of "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" visualizes the details in the book, whether it is the 108 squares of Chang'an City, the East and West Cities that buy and sell things, and the Xingqing Palace where Li Longji lives for a long time, which are all shown in the play.
What we see is not an empty Chang'an, but a Chang'an City with the breath of life and human fireworks. As director Cao Dun said, "My request is not to restore Datang, I am trying to restore Datang one day."
Chang'an City was the capital of the Sui and Tang dynasties, a first-tier metropolis, and the grandest capital city in ancient China. It covers an area of 84 square kilometers, 1.4 times the size of the city of Beijing during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and seven times larger than Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire at the same time.
The city is divided into 4 parts, Miyagi Castle, Imperial Castle, two markets (West Market and East Market), and residential areas.
The Chang'an public opinion map snatched by the villains in the play
You can see the grand situation in Chang'an
Miyagi Castle, Imperial Castle, and civilian areas are separated by walls over 10 meters high, and no one can enter the Imperial City without permission.
The residential area is designed in a grid format, and the largest street of the six avenues that extends to the city gate is called Suzaku Street, which is more than 150 meters wide and divides the city into east and west sides.
At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the Fangshi system was implemented, that is, the residential area and the commercial area were separated. The city is a commercial area and the square is a residential area. The Six Classics of tang record: "The south of the imperial city, the east and west ten squares, the north and south nine squares; the east and west of the imperial city of twelve squares, the two cities in the land of four squares; where one hundred and ten squares."
At the beginning of the original book "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", there is a fragment describing Cui Liulang, Cui Qi's brother, when he went undercover to lead the way for Wolf Guard:
"We are Chang'an, there are a total of one hundred and eight squares, north and south fourteenth street, east and west eleventh street." Each square is surrounded by walls. Whether you're eating, having fun, talking about business or staying in a restaurant, you have to be in the shop. Ordinary nights, can not come out, will violate the night ban. But don't worry today, there is a Lantern Festival at night, and the curfew is temporarily relaxed. Actually, the day of the first yuan festival is tomorrow, but the lantern will start tonight..."
As Cui Liulang walked, he enthusiastically introduced the various palms in Chang'an City to the guests. Cao Baoyan glanced left and right, his eyes always full of vigilance, like an unripe eagle. Horses and mules were roaring, wheels were raging, and the passing travelers were hurrying, and no one paid attention to this small caravan.
The poet Bai Juyi also wrote that "a hundred thousand homes are like a Game of Go, and the Twelfth Street is like a vegetable plant." "To describe the uniform appearance of Chang'an City under the Fang City system."
The West Market and the East Market of the Tang Dynasty were different.
Dongshi mainly serves the dignitaries and nobles, "four treasures, all accumulated", and operates a "luxury" business.
The West Market is more popular and civilian, and is a large international market that sells a large number of goods from western regions, Japan and other countries.
In this way, the main storyline of "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" can be understood by unfolding in Xishi.
The capital of the Tang Dynasty was prosperous, commercial and foreign trade were accessible, merchants gathered, and songs and dances were peaceful, but in these scenes of drunken gold fans, killing, greed, injustice, and darkness were also brewing. These are all unfolded one by one in the "Twelve Hours of Chang'an".
Opening method four: fast-paced costume suspense blockbuster
Different from ordinary domestic dramas, the opening of "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" is very compact, and on the eve of the Shangyuan Festival, the Chang'an Flower Market is full of lights and laughter. In this jubilant festive atmosphere, a group of wolf guards infiltrated Chang'an City, and their purpose was to destroy Chang'an City.
Jing'an Si quickly launched an action, and Si Cheng Li Bi found the former bad marshal Zhang Xiaojing and began to work together to save Chang'an City. There were still twelve hours left before the Lantern Festival, and they had to catch all the wolf guards before that.
The plot is based on a time axis, interspersed with details that are lost minute by minute, adding time, which increases the tension of the rhythm.
Zhang Xiaojing shuttled through the fang city of Chang'an City, and we held our breath to see the truth, one of which was exposed in front of our eyes, and we really couldn't stop.
After watching the currently updated 12 episodes, I can't help but open the original and find that in many details and plots, the original has a more taste.
Good dramas are not easy, and they are easy to see and cherish; good books are not easy, and opening books is often beneficial.