Learn Chinese with Blossoms of Power (百花杀): Character Names, 香刃, and Palace-Intrigue Vocabulary

A costume drama is one of the best places to learn Chinese, because its writers choose every name and title on purpose. Blossoms of Power (百花杀) rewards that attention more than most: the title is a poem, the names are arguments, and the heroine's entire arsenal is vocabulary. Here's the language of the show — names, court terms, and fragrance words — broken down so you can watch with subtitles doing real work.

The title: 百花杀

Start with the words on the poster. 百花杀 (bǎi huā shā):

• 百 (bǎi) — a hundred; here, "all, the whole lot of."
• 花 (huā) — flowers. 百花 together means "all the flowers, the hundred flowers."
• 杀 (shā) — to kill, slay, cut down.

Read cold, it's "all the flowers are slain" — ominous and a little cryptic. That's because it's a fragment: the full line is 我花开后百花杀 (wǒ huā kāi hòu bǎi huā shā), "after my flower blooms, the hundred flowers die," from a Tang rebel's chrysanthemum poem. The heroine is the one flower; everyone who wronged her is the hundred. We unpack the whole poem in the title-meaning piece — but even at the word level you can see the English Blossoms of Power quietly deleting the verb 杀.

The heroine has two names — and both mean something

The lead, played by Meng Ziyi (孟子义), lives under a dual identity, and the two names are a study in contrast.

沈汐和 (Shěn Xīhé) — her frontier-princess identity:

• 沈 (Shěn) — the surname (also written 瀋; here a family name).
• 汐 (xī) — the evening tide. (Its partner 潮 cháo is the morning tide; 汐 is the tide that comes at dusk.)
• 和 (hé) — harmony, gentleness, calm.

Put together, the given name evokes tides under a surface of calm — water that rises, turns, and pulls, dressed as serenity. For a heroine whose whole method is a still exterior over a moving strategy, it's a precise choice.

顾清枝 (Gù Qīngzhī) — her original, destroyed-family name:

• 顾 (Gù) — the surname.
• 清 (qīng) — clear, pure, clean.
• 枝 (zhī) — a branch, a bough.

清枝, "a clear, pure branch," is the noble scion — the well-born daughter of a flourishing house — and the name aches precisely because a branch is what gets cut. The show even calls back to the flower imagery of the title: the pure branch severed, the bloom that has to grow back somewhere else.

Her rank is its own vocabulary lesson: 昭宁郡主 (Zhāoníng jùnzhǔ).

• 昭 (zhāo) — bright, luminous. 宁 (níng) — peace, calm. 昭宁 = "bright peace" — a serene title worn by a woman running a revenge campaign, which is either irony or camouflage.
• 郡主 (jùnzhǔ) — a "commandery princess," a real rank below 公主 (gōngzhǔ). A 公主 is typically the emperor's daughter; a 郡主 is usually a prince's daughter (or a granted title). Knowing the gap tells you her exact altitude in the hierarchy: high nobility, but not the throne's direct line — she has to climb.

The Crown Prince's name hides his edge

The male lead, played by He Yu (何与), is 萧华雍 (Xiāo Huáyōng):

• 萧 (Xiāo) — the surname (a classic aristocratic one in costume drama).
• 华 (huá) — splendor, magnificence, flourishing.
• 雍 (yōng) — harmonious, dignified, stately — the character in 雍容 (yōngróng), the poised grace of the highborn.

华雍 is a serene, imperial name — splendor and dignity — and that's the joke of the character. He plays the frail, sickly prince while concealing a razor mind. The stately name is part of the disguise; nobody expects a threat from 华雍. When such a character finally shows his hand, the idiom for it is 一鸣惊人 (yī míng jīng rén) — "one cry that astonishes everyone," the bird silent for years that stuns the court with a single call.

His office comes with its own terms:

• 太子 (tàizǐ) — the Crown Prince, the designated heir.
• 储君 (chǔjūn) — a more formal synonym: "the reserve sovereign," the ruler-in-waiting.
• 东宫 (dōnggōng) — literally "the Eastern Palace," the Crown Prince's residence, used as a metonym for the Crown Prince himself. When characters say "东宫," they often mean him.

Court and genre vocabulary

These are the words that show up in the marketing and the reviews — learn them and you can read Chinese discussion of the show:

• 权谋 (quánmóu) — "power + scheming": political intrigue, the machinery of court plotting. The genre tag is 古装权谋 (gǔzhuāng quánmóu), costume political-intrigue.
• 大女主 (dà nǚzhǔ) — "big female lead," the genre of a story driven entirely by a powerful heroine rather than a romance. This is the label critics and fans keep applying to the show.
• 政治联姻 (zhèngzhì liányīn) — a "political marriage," a marriage as statecraft. It's the reason she's summoned to the capital.
• 重生 (chóngshēng) — "rebirth," the reborn/second-life premise common in these dramas. (Sources phrase the heroine's return as somewhere between a literal rebirth and a re-emergence under a new identity — worth watching how the show frames it.)
• 架空 (jiàkōng) — "suspended in air," i.e. a fictional, deliberately un-dated setting that borrows a dynasty's look without claiming to be it. Blossoms of Power is 架空; that's why you shouldn't try to pin it to a real reign.
• 本宫 (běngōng) — "this palace," the haughty first-person pronoun a high-ranking palace woman uses for herself, roughly "I, who outrank you." Listen for it; it signals status in every line it appears in.

The fragrance lexicon — the heroine's real weapon

This is the vocabulary that makes Blossoms of Power distinct, and it's genuinely useful language:

• 调香 (tiáoxiāng) — to blend/compound fragrance; 调香圣手 (tiáoxiāng shèngshǒu), a "master perfumer," is the heroine's epithet.
• 香道 (xiāngdào) — "the way of incense," the refined art of appreciating and composing fragrance (parallel in form to 茶道 chádào, the way of tea).
• 制香 (zhìxiāng) — to make/craft incense.
• 以香为刃 (yǐ xiāng wéi rèn) — "to use fragrance as a blade." Note 以…为… (yǐ…wéi…), a classical frame meaning "to take X as / treat X as Y" — a pattern worth memorizing on its own.
• 香刃 (xiāngrèn) — the compressed, coined form: "scent-blade."
• 凝香成毒 (níng xiāng chéng dú) — "to condense fragrance into poison." 凝 (níng) is to congeal or condense; 成 (chéng) is "to become."
• 以香识谎 (yǐ xiāng shí huǎng) — "to identify lies through scent." Same 以… frame; 识 (shí) is to recognize/discern, 谎 (huǎng) is a lie.

For the culture behind all of this — agarwood, incense seals, scent in court and medicine — see the incense-culture piece. One elegant bonus phrase to know is 暗香浮动 (àn xiāng fú dòng), "a faint fragrance drifts" — a famous line from a Song plum-blossom poem, and the register the show reaches for whenever scent turns from weapon back into beauty.

Two early lines fans are quoting

A couple of the heroine's lines went viral from the opening episodes. Treat these as early circulating clips — wording may differ slightly from the final subtitled cut — but they're excellent for the grammar:

"情爱填不饱肚子，也挡不住刀。" Qíng'ài tián bù bǎo dùzi, yě dǎng bù zhù dāo. "Love won't fill your belly, and it won't stop a blade."

• 填不饱 (tián bù bǎo) — "can't fill up," the potential-complement pattern verb + 不 + result (fill / not / to-fullness). 挡不住 (dǎng bù zhù) is the same shape: "can't block / hold off." Learn the pair and you can build dozens of these.

"本宫要的是分内，不是偏爱。" Běngōng yào de shì fèn nèi, bùshì piān'ài. "What I want is what is rightfully mine — not favoritism."

• There's 本宫 again (status pronoun). 分内 (fèn nèi) is "within one's proper share / duty" — what is rightfully yours; 偏爱 (piān'ài) is "to favor / play favorites." The line is a thesis for the whole 大女主 genre: she wants entitlement, not affection.

Watch for how often the show stages this exact opposition — earned right versus granted favor. It's the argument the title has been making in four characters all along.

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Round out the cluster: the Tang poem behind the title, the real incense tradition behind "scent as a weapon", and the 12 chengyu every fan should know.