When we watched "Nine Pin Sesame Officer" when we were children, we all thought that this movie was a spoof, but in order to do the film, we checked the information and found that many of the allusions in the movie were not only self-contained, but also cleverly integrated into the plot.
For example, why the "Nine Pins" in the title of the film is just a "sesame official", the official position in the film who is big and who is small can be seen from the class. And the Qi Qin clan in the plot was framed for adultery and exterminated, "I want to write a tragic word" and so on are really true, Shang Fang's sword and yellow coat also really have their own things, and even Fang Tangjing, Chang Wei and other characters are actually really human!
Today I want to share with you the "5 Cold Knowledge of the Nine Pin Sesame Officer", hoping to make you more aware of why this movie has such a lofty status in everyone's heart!
The "Nine Pins" in the title "Nine Pin Sesame Officials" is actually used by imperial court officials in chinese dynasties to distinguish between high and low ranks. According to historical records, the earliest grade system originated from the "Nine Pins Zhongzheng System" founded by Chen Qun, Cao Cao's adviser during the Three Kingdoms period, also known as the "Nine Pins Official Law", which would make nine grades according to the background, talent, and merit of the officials, in the order of "up, up, up, up, down, down, down, down, down, down" in the order of "up, up, down, down, down".
Later, in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, after a thousand years of evolution, the grade system became 18 grades arranged sequentially according to numbers and "positive and subordinate", with "正一品" as the largest and "from a product" as the largest.
And Bao Longxing's "alternate Zhixian" is based on his father to spend money to "donate" in exchange, should only be "from the nine pins", so is the lowest level of the government class of officials, so small can not be small, will be described as "sesame green beans" as a description and called "nine pin sesame officials". However, bao Longxing was later appreciated by the emperor, and was named the "Inspector of the Eight Houses" and hand-picked as the "Minister of Chincha", allowing him to jump more than a dozen steps at a time like an elevator.
"Inspector", that is, "patrolling the localities, touching the towns and the people", is responsible for all the affairs of a region, including internal affairs, taxation, and even military power. Generally speaking, the official rank of "Inspector" is "Congererpin", while Bao Longxing's "Inspector of the Eight Provinces" is responsible for eight regions at a time, and the power can be said to be very large. The "Chancellor of Chincha", on the other hand, had nothing to do with rank and was an ancient temporary title appointed by an emperor, and the recipient was equivalent to representing the emperor, so it was usually only used for one-time tasks.
Of the other characters who appear in the film, we speculate that the grades should be as follows: Lord Shangshu (Lord Hua) - from Yipin, Admiral of the Water Division (Chang Kun) - from Yipin, the General Manager of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Li Lianying) - Zheng Erpin, The Inspector of the Eight Provinces (Bao Longxing) - From Erpin, County Order (Chen Baixiang) - Zheng Jiupin, Alternate County Order (Bao Longxing) - From Jiupin, Catcher (Thunder Leopard) - Wupin.
Judging from the above list, Bao Longxing's rank of inspector is actually smaller than that of Lord Shangshu and Admiral Shuishi, but that is because usually the admiral is responsible for more than one area, and most of the inspectors are only responsible for one area, so if Bao Longxing is the "Inspector of the Eight Provinces", it should be larger than the Admiral of the Water Division. However, although it is purely on grade, then whether it is Lord Shangshu, Chang Kun, or even Li Lianying, they are actually greater than Bao Longxing, but Bao Longxing is the "Chincha Minister" who represents the emperor, so he still has the greatest power when retriing the case.
In addition, the movie mentions that Li Lianying is only a five-pin official, but in fact, the "head of the internal affairs office" in the Qing Dynasty was Zheng Erpin, and the film should be deliberately lowered for the sake of dramatic effect.
Did you know that many of the plots in this movie are actually adapted from famous novels or wild histories, and even some are real events in history!
The main axis of the whole film revolves around the Qi family, which is destroyed by Chang Wei, the son of the admiral Chang Kun, and the only survivor, Qi Qin, who is sexually assaulted, and later framed for adultery with Ding Laifu, so he is imprisoned and sentenced to death. This plot is rumored to refer to one of the famous "Four Strange Cases of the Late Qing Dynasty", the case of "Yang Naiwu and Xiao Cabbage".
In 1873, a man named Ge Pinlian died, and the initial autopsy result was poisoning, so Ge Pinlian's wife Ge Bishi was considered a prisoner. Not only that, she was also accused of adultery and murder by Yang Naiwu, a new scholar who taught her to read, which is also an allusion to the film's lied claim that "madame appreciates her literary talents". At that time, Liu Xitong of Zhixian Concealed Evidence and tampered with the confession, beat the two defendants into confessions and was sentenced to death. The Yang family was not convinced, and filed a complaint against the imperial court, and later after seven retrials, even to the two empresses who were listening to the government, they ordered a retrial to finally return the innocence of the two.
There are many passages in the film that pay tribute to this story, including autopsies, torture, drug shops selling arsenic, a complaint filed in Shangjing, and the emperor sending a minister to retry him. Among them, the protection of officials and officials is even more delicately depicted, even if it is a comedy, it still makes the audience feel bitter about the various vices of bureaucrats.
In the movie, in order to avoid being hunted and killed, Bao Longxing hid in the "Piaoxiang Courtyard" of the Qinglou, practicing ventriloquism while paying off debts. One day, by chance, he met emperor Tongzhi Emperor, who was traveling in micro-clothes, and went to the Piaoxiang Courtyard to want a family flower brand "like smoke" Fangze. At that time, Bao Longxing and Lei Leopard originally hid under the bed, listening to the emperor's harassment like smoke, but they did not expect that at this time, the assistant minister also came, forcing Tongzhi to hide under the bed, and the two became acquainted.
This plot is based on the Song Dynasty Zhang Duanyi's "Gui'er Collection", which records the famous song Dynasty scholar Zhou Bangyan, when visiting the famous prostitute Li Shishi, suddenly the Daojun Emperor also came to patronize, forcing Zhou Bangyan to quickly hide under the bed.
In the movie, in order to force Chang Wei to confess, Bao Longxing secretly found his own son to pretend to be the son of Qi Qin, and staged a fake "blood confession". The technique of "blood drops and recognition of relatives", which is often seen in film dramas, has actually existed for a long time, and is divided into two types: "combined blood method" and "bone drop method".
Among them, the "blood combination method" is more common, that is, the blood of two people is dripped in clear water in the film, and if it is fused into one, it means that there is a blood relationship. In the Qing Dynasty Ji Xiaolan's "Notes on Reading Wei Caotang", it was recorded that two brothers used the "blood method" to identify blood relations in order to compete for production.
The "bone drop method" can be traced back to the Three Kingdoms period. The practice is to drop the blood of a living person on the bones of a dead person, and if the blood dissolves into the bone, it means that the two people are related by blood. However, whether it is the "blood combination method" or the "bone drop method", it is only the method used when medicine was not developed in ancient times, and the results will be affected by various reasons, and if it is to be used as evidence for judicial judgments, it can be said that it has no reference value.
Chang Wei, who was originally conclusively evidenced, was not only acquitted under the manipulation of Fang Tangjing, but the only surviving victim, Qi Qinshi, was also framed, and it was an adulterous affair with Ding Laifu, who secretly murdered thirteen members of her husband's family, so that Bao Longxing, who had found the motivation to become a Qing official, could not believe it.
It was the early summer of June, and I didn't expect it to snow, which made Bao Longxing shout excitedly. Later, when the Tongzhi Emperor heard about this, he said: "The representative of the June Flying Frost will have grievances." And this is derived from the yuan dynasty well-known literati Guan Hanqing's miscellaneous drama work "Dou E'e Wrong", the people's daughter Dou E was falsely accused of killing her husband and then tortured to confess, before being beheaded to show her innocence, she swore an oath to the heavens, and after her death, she would "splatter blood on the ground and cover her body with frost in June", and cursed the local drought for three years. Later, Dou E's grievances were rehabilitated, and "June Flying Frost" was used to describe great grievances.
When Bao Longxing retried the case as the "Inspector of the Eight Houses", in order to let the witnesses tell the truth, he used the trick of "attacking poison with poison", and found Bao Youwei to pretend to be the boss of Huichun Hall, falsely claiming that he was found to have collected money for perjury, and Bao Longxing beheaded him with a "dog's head", his upper body was stained with blood, crawled in front of Laifu, and wrote a "miserable" word on his feet, which frightened Laifu to blurt out the truth about his illiteracy.
The punishment of "waist beheading" has existed since ancient times, and it is said that during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, an official named "Yu Hongtu" was sentenced to waist beheading for accepting bribes, but after the execution, he did not die for a while, and his upper body rolled in a pool of blood for a long time, and even dipped his fingers in blood on the ground and wrote seven "miserable" words in a row, before slowly dying due to excessive blood loss. Although there is no historical evidence of this, the punishment of beheading was very cruel, and in modern times it is also used to describe the situation of "stopping halfway" or "only half left".
In addition to the historical or wild history allusions just mentioned, many of the characters who appear in the film are also real in history. The Tongzhi Emperor, Li Lianying, and only the mentioned Empress Dowager Cixi certainly need not be said. But do you know that Fang Tangjing and Chang Wei, who are hated in the film, can even find them in ancient books!
According to records, Fang Tangjing' real name was Pan Jing, born in 1845 and died in 1900, he was a famous teacher at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and he once passed the examination, so at the beginning he once said in the public court that "he has a meritorious name, and he does not have to kneel as usual." In folklore, Pan Jing is harsh and mean in nature, and often colludes with the Yamen government to oppress the good, so it has the nickname of "Absurd Mirror". However, Pan Jing's ability to fight lawsuits is indeed strong, and he is known as the "Four Great Masters of Guangdong" together with Chen Mengji, Liu Huadong and He Tanru.
As for Chang Wei, who was born with divine power, he appeared in the wild history "Qing Barnyard Banknote". The book records that Zuo Zongtang, a famous minister of the Qing Dynasty, once encountered a rich man in Changsha surnamed Chang who paid him a bribe, hoping not to pursue the murder of his only son, but Zuo Zongtang refused. And this "Chang Gongzi" bribed the government to try to exonerate himself after killing people, is it somewhat similar to Chang Wei?
In addition, it is mentioned in the movie that the Tongzhi Emperor finally died of flower willow disease because of a prostitute, which is also the same as the hobby and cause of death recorded in the history of the wild!
In addition to the characters, the film also includes many well-founded props, such as "Shang Fang Sword", "Yellow Horse Coat" and "Tiger Head".
The Shangfang Sword, also known as the "Shangfang Sword" or "Sword of Strength", can be traced back to the Han Dynasty, and was forged by the official "Shangfang Sword" in the "Shaofu" of the "Shaofu" in charge of the production of the process in the imperial court, which was cast on the orders of the emperor and represented the will of the Son of Heaven. Those who hold the Shangfang Sword can kill people according to the situation, without having to report it to the imperial court in advance, which is the privilege of "cutting first and playing later".
In the movie, Li Lianying once said that "since the founding of the Qing Dynasty, I have never heard of any Shangfang sword", but in fact, the Qing Dynasty did have a record of shangfang swords, and even other similar items appeared. One of the most famous is the "Shu bi long sword", which was given to his subordinates by the emperors such as Qianlong and Xianfeng, and gave them the power to cut first and play later.
When Li Lianying came to observe, she brought a "yellow coat" given by Lafayette to Chang Wei to wear, indicating that no one could torture him. "Horse coat", also known as "walking coat", is an official costume of the Qing Dynasty, functionally similar to a coat, usually worn on the outside of the robe, so it is also collectively called "robe horse coat".
In ancient times, yellow was a color reserved for the emperor, and could only be worn by the emperor's bodyguards or by the emperor's personal gifts. Therefore, the "yellow coat" represents the favor of the emperor and is a very high honor. For example, in the "Yongzheng Dynasty", there was also a fragment of the northwest general Nian Qianyao, who was demoted to guarding the city gate and wore the yellow coat given by Yongzheng that year.
If you have seen the popular "Bao Qingtian", you must be very impressed by Bao Zheng's sentence in the film: "Come on people, dog head waiting". In the movie, Bao Longxing, as a descendant of Bao Zheng, also prepared three kinds of "dragon and tiger dogs" as torture tools like his ancestors, and later used the "tiger head" to correct Chang Wei on the spot.
In fact, the three knives of the "Dragon Tiger Dog" are actually fictional items derived from the Qing Dynasty novel "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness", which mentions that Bao Zheng was named a scholar of Longtuge University, and when he was ordered to investigate the embezzlement of public funds by his uncle, Gongsun Ce changed the imperial three roads given by the emperor to "Imperial Three Paths" and designed the three shapes of the "Dragon Tiger Dog" as a torture device.
Among them, the dragon head was used to execute the emperor's relatives and princes, the tiger head was used to execute the ministers and officials, and the dog head was used to execute the common people.
Many friends said that Stephen Chow's movies are still interesting to see the original Cantonese version, although I myself prefer Cantonese, but most mainland audiences are more familiar with the Chinese version dubbed by the well-known voice actor Shi Banyu. And I have to admit that the sound that Shi Banyu helped Xingye to match is really too classic.
However, because of the language difference, some of the lines in the movie inevitably need to be modified. For example, the names of the brothers and sisters who sell art have been changed from the original "Wu Guangde" and "Wu Haoti" to "Mo Zai Jiang" and "Mo Zai Ti" with the same meaning. Li Lianying changed from Chang Wei's dry father to dry grandfather and so on.
After reading the above content, do you have a deeper understanding of "Nine Pin Sesame Officer"? Feel free to leave a message in the comments section and share your thoughts