[Belken]

In Gu Long's the Eleventh son, the main baddie(the one who planned to release "killer" grasshoppers) and his sister belonged to the Rou Ruan race who sometimes remembered their old life in Sai Weik. Sai Weik is a cantonese dialect word. Sai obviously means westerng but I don't know what Weik means. Perhaps someone knows the the mandarin word for Weik?

It is TVB's version which I am not sure if the novel has any Rou Ran people in it or not. The Eleventh son was obviously set in the Sung or Ming dynasty. But what is interesting here is that the Rou Ruan never existed as a nation anymore after 600 AD after the Gokturks defeated them long before that year.

Is there anything in chinese history that I could have missed out on?Did the Rou Ruan country still in the 11th or 14th centuries?

[Yun]

The Rouran no longer appear in Chinese sources after the destruction of their Khaganate by the Gokturks in 555. The last Rouran kaghan fled to the Western Wei (based in Chang'an), but under Gokturk pressure he and his 3,000 followers were handed over to the Gokturk envoy and slaughtered at the gates of Chang'an.

There is a longstanding theory that remnants of the Rouran fled to Eastern Europe and became the Avars in 558.

Jin Yong's 'Tian Long Ba Bu' has a descendant of the Murong Xianbei still trying to restore their kingdom in the Northern Song, 500 years after the last Murong state was conquered. I would say that the idea of a Rouran descendant still preserving his identity in the Song dynasty would be just as fanciful.

[tongyan]

Belken, on Jul 14 2006, 12:00 PM, said:

In Gu Long's the Eleventh son, the main baddie(the one who planned to release "killer" grasshoppers) and his sister belonged to the Rou Ruan race who sometimes remembered their old life in Sai Weik. Sai Weik is a cantonese dialect word. Sai obviously means westerng but I don't know what Weik means. Perhaps someone knows the the mandarin word for Weik?

It's Wik6 and it means territory or region. The area you are referring was called the "Western Regions" Sai Wik. In Mandarin, it is Xiyu.

[Yun]

'Xi Yu' was what I guessed too. But I thought the Mandarin sound 'Yu' comes out as 'Yoke' in Cantonese?

Note, though, that the Rouran never historically controlled the 'Western Regions' (i.e. Tarim Basin). Their influence was limited to the steppe.

[Yongwoni GOD]

Yun, on Jul 15 2006, 01:47 AM, said:

'Xi Yu' was what I guessed too. But I thought the Mandarin sound 'Yu' comes out as 'Yoke' in Cantonese?

Ye it typically does such as the word for jade is 'yu' in Mandarin and 'yok' in Cantonese. Maybe the initial mutated in one of them...

[qrasy]

tongyan, on Jul 15 2006, 07:17 AM, said:

It's Wik6 and it means territory or region.

域?

Yun, on Jul 15 2006, 03:47 PM, said:

'Xi Yu' was what I guessed too. But I thought the Mandarin sound 'Yu' comes out as 'Yoke' in Cantonese?

Numerous different mergers of sound happened, so there's no one-to-one correspondence.
Mandarin Yu -> Cantonese usually Yu and Yuk

Yongwoni GOD, on Jul 15 2006, 04:04 PM, said:

Ye it typically does such as the word for jade is 'yu' in Mandarin and 'yok' in Cantonese. Maybe the initial mutated in one of them...

If you find a "win" in Yuan dynasty Chinese, you're going to get a modern "yun".