Link to the novel (Chinese original)

Here is a link to the novel (in Chinese) behind this drama. I don’t know if there is an English translation…

https://www.hetushu.com/book/4480/index.html

read the completed novel translation here: https://mydramanovel.com/brocade-odyssey/

 WatchingTVSeries:

read the completed novel translation here: https://mydramanovel.com/brocade-odyssey/

Thanks for posting this link to the translated novel.  I finished it in 3 days.  The translation is really good for  Machine translation though with human oversight.  I really like the website.   I enjoyed both the characters of the male and female protagonists., especially Yang Jing Lan/ Yang Jin Yuan.

 tofuscramble:

How closely is the drama following the novel?

Part I

Fair warning- there are spoilers here.    Though in both the drama and novel, the main theme is about the silk brocade business and the competiitiveness of the various merchants, the drama diverges a bit from the novel In terms of personalities and sequence of events and at times a complete divergence in what happened  to the characters.  The drama has several characters  that were not in the novel and vice versa.  I will write only about the main characters and major events that differed.  I assume that you, the reader,  had already watched the drama or is watching it, so I may not always refer to the drama at times but write about the novel instead.  

In the novel,  madam Ji is not as weak and poor as in the drama.  She was the daughter of a concubine of a duke in Changan. She managed  the Ji family business  for many years after her husband died of sickness and brought up her 2 children single-handedly.   They had workers and maids.  In the drama, her husband  was executed causing JYY trauma whenever she sees flowing or streaming red.  And the family was left destitute.   Madam Ji is adamant that her daughter  not learn to dye silk because girls cannot inherit the family business and the business secrets cannot be passed down when the daughter marries.  This reasoning was not in the drama where for her daughter’s safety, she did not want her to learn silk dyeing.    In the novel, Ji Yingying’s brother had a larger role in her life and I liked his character more there, where he really took care of her.  In the novel, there is no Yu  Ling Long (  JYY’s brother’s love interest).  Ji Yingying’s brother was engaged to another woman not mentioned in the drama and they did  marry..  Nui Wu Niang  is really ugly with pock marks all over her face from Small Pox.  She wears a veil and puts tons of white powder on her face to hide her pox marks.   She has a perpetual crush on Yang Jing Lan till her dying day.  She was doted on by her parents whereas in the drama, she was her father’s pawn to do as he wished and was treated badly by him.  Her family had sent a marriage proposal to Yang Jinglan because she had fallen for him at first sight.  Fortunately, his parents declined saying he was practicing some martial arts that required celibacy lol! .  She never forgave him and took her revenge  and jealousy out on Ji Yingying time and again .  Yang Jing Lan hated Nui Wu Niang for her evil scheming  and even called her ugly to her face.  She thought wrongly  he would be happy to marry her to improve his status.

In the novel, Yang Jing Lan ( aka Yang Jinyuan in the novel ) was his  father‘s favorite son and they have a loving relationship, whereas in the drama it was contentious, fraught with anger.  He also had a good relationship with his 2 step brothers and the First wife whom he called ‘mother’ .  His biological concubine mother was still alive for half the book but tragically committed suicide when his father was murdered by 2nd uncle Yang with help from Prince Bai.  His biological concubine mother had selflessly given him to the first wife to raise to protect him from her.  Consequently, and sadly, mother and son did  not have a relationship  though they would  steal glances of each other from afar.  As he grew up, he noticed her more and more and how subservient and docile she was with the First wife.  The First wife indulged him excessively to make him useless and  idle and not a threat to her 2 biological, ’legitimate’ sons but ended up loving him though she did not realize this until he left upon his father’s death.  

The novel has details  on how terribly concubine children could be and were treated.  Yang Jing Lan being deemed illegimate because he was a concubine’s son, cannot inherit the family business and therefore was not allowed to learn the silk brocade business.  This was only touched upon in the drama when JYY asked  why he is the Brocade official when he does not know anything about the silk brocade business.    As a concubine’s son, he cannot share in the family’s assets and upon the death of his father has to move out of the family compound.  He was given a small house, some land and a shop with the First wife’s blessings - a very small fraction of the Yang family wealth.  To make up for this, he was allowed to learn martial arts and he excelled in it.    These family dynamics did not come through in the drama.  Yang Jinlan‘s father had secretly transferred some of his private assets to a trusted friend and upon his death, to Yang Jinglan so that he and his concubine mother would not starve.  I thought this highlighted the plight of concubines and their children, yet men of the time had so many children with concubines.  They were dealt an unfair hand from the time they were born. 

When Yang Jinglan’s father died, there was a huge falling out between him and the first wife whom he had called ‘mother’ because he suspected she caused the death of his biological mother.  He left the Yang  family with nothing to join the army to make his way in the world.  He also left JYY behind in Yizhou though he was already in love with her.  His family had even considered sending her a marriage proposal before the death of his parents , but due to misunderstandings, the proposal was never sent.

 It was while he was in the army that Ji YingYing was pressured by her mother to marry Yang Jinlan by proxy.  There was some rule that they could marry as long as it was within so many days of his father’s death but it was a no fanfare wedding.  By then, First wife was missing Yang Jinlan and wanted him home and she knew what JYY meant to him.  It was an attempt to bring him home by bringing JYY into the Yang family and ofcourse  help them win the Brocade competition the following year.  Throughout novel, Yang Jinlan’s eldest brother was the head of the Yang Family business, whereas in the drama, JYY headed the business when she successfully opened another silk route for the Yang family.   In both the drama and novel,  first wife helped JYY when the Ji family was in dire straights due to the mess with Madam Ji’s sister.    In the novel, Madam Ji had a falling out with her sister and her own family  because her sister had caused a switch in their husbands from her scheming.  Madam Ji ended up marrying down with  JYY’s father.  The sister married a nobleman intended for Madam Ji.  In the drama, JYY almost became Yang Jinlan’s  2nd step brother’s concubine  but  Yang Jing Lan returned in time to stop it.  In the novel she married Yang JinLan by proxy and he was furious when he found out but he eventually got over it and they remained married till the end..

In the drama, Yang Jin Lan is the brocade supervisor/commissioner backed by the Crown Prince.  In the novel, when he first meets Ji Yingying,  he the idle, pampered 3rd Yangmaster, willing his life away, practicing martial arts.  His Shifu was alive living in the Mountains but there’s  no mention that Yang Jinglan knew the crown Prince.   In the drama, his Shufu was murdered and he and the crown prince wanted  to investigate the cause of their shifu’s death.    In the novel, Yang JinLan joined the army as a low level soldier and got promoted after carrying  out a very dangerous mission and he remains in the army until he quits.  I am now on Ep 30 and there are several very tragic events in the novel which I don’t know if they will happen in the drama.  Therefore, I will  stop here and continue  with my observations after the series ends rather than speculate.  Stay tuned for part II.

Yes, the novel has a happy ending for the two leads, but they have to go through a lot of hardship and separation.

Wow thank you for the detailed summary of the novel. It sounds like the novel and drama differs dramatically. Around what chapter does the leads get together?

P Lam - 

Thank you so much for summarizing the key points from the novel!  Appreciate all your work in the write-up.  It helps to get more depth into the characters motivations, personality, and thought processes that  informed the choices and decisions they made.   I hope you enjoyed reading the novel.  It seems the novel covered a lot and 40 eps was probably insufficent to do the story justice.  Best ✌️❤️🌺