One of the reasons I started watching The Apothecary Diaries was the focus on plants and flowers. Although mammals were my area of study in college, I love biology of all kinds. I’ve always had a soft spot for learning about wild plants, as well as growing herbs. So, before we jump into episode reviews, I’ll make some quick notes about two plants mentioned in these episodes. They are the plants Maomao uses to make nail polish: Balsam and Woodsorrel.

I don’t have experience with balsam, but a bit of googling reveals it is a pretty reddish flower in the heather family. Its scientific name is Impatiens balsamina, and it is sometimes known as touch-me-not because its seeds will explode outward if you touch the fruit/flower. Found in India and Asia, balsam has been used in apothecary medicine for many centuries.

As for the Woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata), it can be found in many countries including Japan, where it is sometimes called Cat’s Foot (Neko Ashi). Due to its clover-like leaves and bright yellow flowers, it is also sometimes called yellow shamrock. (But it is different from the actual shamrock plant, which has pink flowers.) I have direct experience with this plant’s relative, the North American Yellow Woodsorrel (Oxalis procumbens).

The leaves are edible at a certain time of the year. They are sour but surprisingly refreshing, with a nice, soft texture. This plant grew all over the property near my old house, so I moved some to my herb garden and used it to spice up my salads. I didn’t know it could be used as a dye, but I’m not surprised, as many different flowers are used for this purpose.

That’s the end of the biology lesson, so without any further rambling, let’s take a look at The Apothecary Diaries episodes 22 and 23.

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Episode 22: Blue Roses

A garden party is coming up which is primarily to celebrate Lady Loulan. Jinshi is in charge of decoration, and Lakan tells him to display blue roses. As far as Jinshi knew, there was no such thing. But Lakan was insistent, so Jinshi went to ask Maomao. When she realizes that this was a sort of challenge from Lakan, the apothecary decides to take responsibility. She’ll do her utmost to produce blue roses in one month.

Roses aren’t in season until another two months, so Maomao needs a way to speed plant growth. She essentially creates a small greenhouse out of the sauna that was built for Lady Lihua during her illness. The temperature in the “greenhouse” is controlled by releasing hot steam inside it in small amounts. On sunny days, the roses are moved outside to maximize their exposure to light.

During that long month, Maomao wasn’t working alone. She had help from her friend Xiaolan, who I find positively adorable. It was great to see her again. But even with the help, Maomao was worn ragged by the workload. She had to stay up all night on many nights to carefully manage the steam heater. I felt bad for the apothecary, working herself to the bone.

By the time of the garden party, several roses have started to flower. They aren’t in full bloom, but the half-opened rose buds will suffice. Maomao uses dyes of different colors and lets the roses soak it up through their stems. My mom and I did that trick once when I was a kid, turning a white rose pale green with food coloring. I kept mixing colors into it after that, but it just turned black. I’m glad this episode reminded me of an interesting memory.

As Jinshi presents the flowers to the Emperor and Empress Dowager, Lakan walks around, admiring the sites. He notices many ladies wearing nail polish. Maomao was largely responsible for spreading the trend of bright-red nail polish around the inner palace. She learned it from the Verdigris House. Lakan was preoccupied with the garish red polish, comparing it to the lighter, softer red version he saw on a certain courtesan long ago.

It’s at this point that we learn something important about Lakan. As he walks around, we see what the world looks like through his eyes. The people all around him are faceless. He sees their faces as black-and-white Go stones or chess pieces. So far, it’s unclear why Lakan sees people in such a way. Perhaps he suffers from prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Alternatively, he might just undervalue and objectify people so much that he can’t stop seeing them as chess pieces. Either way, I love character psychology, so this reveal about Lakan was extremely interesting to me.

The 22nd episode ends with Lakan running into Maomao. She is holding a chess board set and wearing light-red nail polish. Jinshi and Gaoshun are with her. This is the first time we’ve seen Maomao face Lakan. She’s about to challenge him to a game he will never forget.

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Episode 23: Balsam and Woodsorrel

Warning: This will be quite a lengthy episode review

The second-to-last episode of The Apothecary Diaries was truly eye-opening for me. We finally learned the full story of Lakan and the courtesan who was Maomao’s birth-mother. Before we get into that, though, let’s talk about Maomao’s challenge to Lakan and how their game went down. That was also a great part of this episode. I was super excited to watch it play out.

There will be five matches of “chess” (or the Oriental equivalent) and the first to win three rounds is the overall winner. If Lakan wins, Maomao will come live with him after her contract with Jinshi expires. (Jinshi wanted to object, but Gaoshun reminded him he promised not to interfere.) If Maomao wins, Lakan must buy out a courtesan from the Verdigris House.

(I’m not sure what Maomao’s intentions are in this case. She could be trying to make some extra money for the Madam, and perhaps find a good home for Meimei in the process. On the other hand, she could be trying to make Lakan take on the care of her birth-mother, the severely sick and mentally ill woman at the Verdigris House.)

Maomao introduces more rules to the game. There are five small cups of hard liquor. After each round, the winner must make the loser drink one cup in one gulp. This sounds like a fun drinking game, except that Maomao mixes a mysterious poison into three of the cups. She states that three sips of it are enough to be deadly. The last rule is that if someone abandons the match – for any reason – they will be declared the loser.

The game begins, and Maomao soon loses two rounds. She drinks two cups as the rules state, but nobody can tell if she was drinking poison or just booze. Maomao would have looked happy in either case. Lakan, however, was afraid to let his daughter poison herself. So, he allowed her to win one round. Maomao told him to pick a cup at random.

As we’ve seen, Maomao has no special skill in chess. The brilliance of her plan lay in these two facts: 1) the “poison” was actually extremely strong alcoholic spirits, and 2) she knew Lakan didn’t drink and thus had no tolerance. So, sure enough, Lakan gulped down the doubly strong alcohol and promptly passed out. With the man unable to continue the game, Maomao was declared the winner. Perfection.

Since most of the rest of the episode spends time on it, we can now delve into Lakan’s story. My suspicion from the previous episode was correct – he was born with quite severe prosopagnosia, or face blindness. This is an extremely interesting condition in real life, so I recommend looking it up if you like psychology, neurology, and human development. (You can start learning about it in this fact sheet from the UK’s NHS.)

Living a normal life with this condition was was difficult, but Lakan found solace in his uncle, the only person who tried to understand him. This uncle was actually Luomen, who would later adopt Maomao. Luomen coached Lakan to help him tell the difference between people. With his uncle’s aid, Lakan eventually trained himself to see chess pieces in place of the blank blurs where faces should be. This idea came to him because, even a young age, he was already great at strategy games like chess.

Lakan became an excellent military strategist with ease. In his mind, he was playing chess with real people as pieces. Not only was he good at it, but he also enjoyed it. When he was sufficiently well-off, Lakan went to the Verdigris House to see a courtesan who was famously good at strategy games. She was the best chess player in the entire pleasure distinct, and she was a beautiful and proud woman. Her name was Fengxian. Much to Lakan’s awe, he could clearly see and recognize her face.

Despite losing to her often, Lakan kept coming to see Fengxian. She also liked him, and the two fell in love. Eventually, Lakan heard the news that Fengxian was being bought out by a rich man. He went to see her again before the deal happened, and again, they played several games together. But this time, their hands touched as they moved their fingers over the board and pieces. The lovers could no longer resist the urge to show each other their love physically. It was completely consensual.

This blew my mind because, all this time, I thought Lakan forced himself on Maomao’s mother. The way he phrased things when talking to Jinshi was extremely misleading. I was completely wrong all this time. Lakan is not some vile rapist. He’s just a man who made a mistake and didn’t realize it in time. He didn’t know he had gotten Fengxian pregnant, and she wouldn’t tell him. Lakan heard that Fengxian’s buy-out deal was canceled, but he didn’t put the pieces together to understand it was because of her pregnancy.

To make things far worse, Lakan was ordered by his father to go oversees and study abroad. He couldn’t disobey without further ruining his family’s reputation. (Luomen had just been exiled from the inner palace and made into a eunuch, bringing the family much shame.) Though Lakan intended to return in a few months, he was unable to get back to his home country until three years later. Such was the nature of seafaring in the old days. (The Apothecary Diaries seems to be inspired by the late Ming Era in China.)

When Lakan finally returned, he found stacks of letters from Fengxian. One of the most recent letters was stained with red and came with a small cloth bag. Upon opening the bag, Lakan found one of Fengxian’s fingers – now rotten almost beyond recognition – and one other suspiciously tiny fingertip. Sending your severed finger to someone was understood as a way of cursing them. Everything hit Lakan suddenly. He realized what he had done. Desperately, he ran straight to the Verdigris House.

Because of her pregnancy, Fengxian lost her reputation and good standing. To earn money to live, she was forced to take on customers of lower status and income. This eventually led to her catching a terrible STD. As the three years passed, the proud and independent Fengxian lost her mind. She would never recover. We the viewers know that the Verdigris house kept taking care of Fengxian in secret, but it’s unclear if Lakan is aware of that fact.

When Lakan arrived at the Verdigris House, the Madam refused to even let him inside. She beat him with a broom until it snapped. She told him it was too late and Fengxian was no longer there. I assume Lakan later found out that Fengxian’s baby had been taken in by Luomen. It was a truly tragic story that made me feel deeply for Lakan. I can’t believe I misjudged him so badly. While it’s true he got a courtesan pregnant and ruined her life, he never intended for that outcome, and he never forced himself on anyone.

I’m confused about one aspect of this story. Why isn’t Maomao missing a finger? If understood correctly, in her madness, Fengxian cut off one of her own fingers and one of her baby’s. This part makes no sense unless Maomao has a prosthetic finger – or perhaps it was a toe she lost? I guess I’ll have to wait and see if there’s an explanation in the final episode.

I’ve got one last note. When Lakan wakes up from his drunken blackout, he’s in a room at the Verdigris House. Meimei gives him a delivery from Maomao: a small box containing a withered rose. As Meimei points out, even though it’s dead, it retains its shape perfectly. I won’t pretend to know what this message is supposed to mean. If anyone can explain what Maomao was trying to communicate, please enlighten me. Unless, that is, it’s a spoiler for the final episode. In that case, don’t tell me.

That’s finally the end of my notes. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

~Thank you for reading~

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PATREON