Hero’s Adventure: Road to Passion – Word Riddles and Exam Questions Explained

I have played many fun RPG games, like P5R, KOEI games and even HOI4 (Yes! HOI4 is RPG and Gal-game SHHHHH), however, I have seen many translations that vaguely conveys what the original thing was, or straight-up lose the original meanings.

When it comes to Chinese Wuxia genre, it pains me so much, as Mandarin and English speaker, to see that some of the trivia and quizzes become frustrating and just undoable for English-only players. If you are the ones that are actually interested in why the answers are like so, well, I will try my best to explain everything to you.

First up, the word riddles. Make absolutely no sense in English? Here is your quick lecture ‘Chinese word riddles 101’:

• The answer to a word riddle is always a word (how surprising), and in Mandarin, that is 1 Chinese character. The reasoning as to how to derive at the character may vary:

  it might be the literal meaning, e.g. (this is horrible) lizard respires –> dragon-breath,

  or it can be addition or subtraction of characters, e.g. (please don’t make me do this any more) a plot of earth –> island (is land),

  and it can be something just intuitive, e.g. ABCDEFGHJKLMN –> Iran

  To sum it up, if you start to get a hang of it, then honestly I feel like these riddles are easier to understand than a shiddy pun.

• The question can differ a lot. E.g. the little girl in the starting Nameless Village gives out the most generic word riddles, nothing special at all, whereas the muted old lady in Daliang always gives riddles that consist of 4 Chinese characters. You might think this is very cliches, well, some might think this gives the extra VIBEs just like all the language techniques in Shakespearean Sonnets.

First example: Subtraction then Addition

Second example: Subtraction

Last example: Subtraction

Conclusion:
Hopefully by now, you start to understand why a question like ‘January 7th’ has an answer of ‘Fat’, which is simply absurd. And it would make me happy if you begin to understand and appreciate the beauty of word riddles after my explanation. Time to move on!

The basic idea of a Chinese couplet is simple – the synonyms and the antonyms. Quick examples, sun to moon, river to lakes, sky to ground, bird singing to flower blooming, stealthing dragon to crouching tigers, then you work all the way up to the epitome of Jinyong Wuxia couplets, like

琴瑟琵琶，八大王一般头面
to
鸡鸭鹅鸽，四小鸟都蛮好吃
魑魅魍魉，四小鬼各自肚肠

• Note that in each character of 琴瑟琵琶, there are 2 of the characters 王, which totals to 八大王 (8 high kings), and 琴，瑟，琵琶 are all traditional Chinese instruments, this corresponds to:
  魑魅魍魉, there is 1 of 鬼, that sums up to 四小鬼 (4 little devils) whereas all characters in fact represents a different devil in Chinese Mythology.

• 八大王vs四小鬼, they all begin with a number, 8 to 4, then it’s big to small and king to devil. The easy and boring way to look at this is if you have an adjective in the first half of the couplet, then there must be an adjective that is either the synonym or antonym to the first adjective to make up a good couplet.

• Finally, 一般头面vs各自肚肠, first two characters mean ‘all the same’ to ‘have their own’, but the last two characters mean ‘looks (on the outside)’ to ‘minds (plots for something)’

The best of the best about this couplet is the context: In She Diao (The legend of the Condor Heroes), the female main protagonist Huang Rong replied with the second half of the couplet to four followers of the Southern Emperor, which is being satirical and calling them the 四小鬼, 4 little devils, and stating that 各自肚肠, they are all plotting something on their own.