On Jing Yuan's age

[cashew]

I'm seriously questioning the reliability of fans constantly citing Jing Yuan being the youngest out of the Quintent. (Am reading this and had to stop like five sentences in because of the huge leaps of logic that was happening.)

To be fair, I might be missing some kind of obvious clue, but everything I've seen in terms of "analyzing" the age is basically guess work with very little substantive evidence.

First, random stories/songs/poetry/stageplays/RPF excerpts in item descriptions do not constitute a primary resource. Furthermore, given Jing Yuan himself commented that the general populace's story about the Quintet was greatly exaggerated/dramatized/straight up made up, unless we're getting the confirmation from a direct resource (aka, someone who was actually present at the mess, both the Battle of Shuhu and Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae) I'm skeptical at how much we can trust what the game have already deliberately marked as unreliable narrators.

Second, the most reliable statements I can find regarding the Quintet ages are Jing Liu being nearly 1000 years old at the time of the battle (based on personal story description), Blade's memory of Jing Yuan and Bai Heng both include the "youth" descriptor (少年、少女), and the fact that Dan Feng was not associated with "youth". That is literally it in terms of explicit age. Everything else requires deduction and I haven't actually seen a systematic analysis of how fandom decided the ages.

Third, most of the assumption of Jing Yuan's youth seems to come from the fact that he's been the general for 700+ years, ergo he must have been young at the time of sedition, no more than 100 years old in most people's analysis. This is purely based on two facts: a) the assumption that Mara must set in at 800-1000 years and b) if Jing Yuan were to be struck by Mara he must get it at around the 800 year mark, thus he could not have been more than 100 years old at the time of Sedition.

So I have serious problems with these fanon assumptions. Again, I'm open to being corrected if there's reliable information that contradicts my deductions, since I don't have the full picture, but here's what I've been able to piece together as reasonably factual:

1. Jing Liu took on Jing Yuan as a child.

2. Short-lived Yingxing remembers Bai Heng and Jing Yuan as "youths".

3. Long-lived Dan Feng does not remember Jing Yuan as a youth, rather he remembers Jing Yuan by his officer title.

4. Jing Liu met Jing Yuan first, after an undetermined amount of time, the two meet up with Bai Heng, Ying Xing, and Dan Feng in unknown order.

5. Xianzhou Natives (aka, Jing Yuan and Jing Liu) mature at a much slower rate than regular short-lived humans and are blessed/cursed with eternal youth.

6. Xianzhou Natives live to about 800-1000 years before suffering from Mara. Foxians have a median age of 307 with a range of 200-400 year lifespan. The majority of Vidyadhara's cycle length falls somewhere between 500-600 years.

7. Jing Liu was close to 1000-years-old when Shit Went Down.

I doubt that Jing Yuan would've grown noticeably in the time that Ying Xing was with the Quintet, since they lasted less than 100 years (according to descriptions). I would argue that's closer to 60 years, not actually 100 years, since Ying Xing was clearly still physically fit at the time of the sedition.

Most assume Ying Xing met up with Jing Liu in his early teens/late adolescence, due to the description that he gave her a sword while still a youth (少年). Let's say I accept this and put Ying Xing at 12yo in his first meeting with Jing Liu. After 60 years, that would place Ying Xing at 72-years-old, when most fine motor control have noticeably depreciated in regular humans. 60 years is, I would argue, immensely generous and the upper end of how long the Quintet could've been together. So, I doubt the amount of growing Jing Yuan does in 60 years is going to be very noticeable, especially not by a short-lived species.

Therefore, I greatly doubt Blade's impression of Jing Yuan and Bai Heng as "youths" is based on physical appearance. Especially since we have confirmation that Jing Yuan and Bai Heng have both matured into their full adult appearance when Ying Xing was drinking with them. Since her physical age appearance is similar to that of Jing Yuan according to Blade's memories, the most reasonable explanation is that Jing Yuan and Bai Heng behave in a more youthful manner, thus resulting in the "youth" impression.

Now, I will contend that there is the possibility that Jing Yuan's physical appearance might have shifted from that of a late-teen to young adult over the course of 60 years (covering about 5 years worth of "human-scale" physical maturation seems a reasonable extrapolation). But a 15/16-year-old appearance still equals something like 150-to-200-ish years of age in Xianzhou Natives. By pure number of years lived, Ying Xing is easily the youngest of the five.

The other possible math is (assuming linear scaling) using tanithryudo's sidenote data where one semester in the university = 18 years. Let's assume 2 semesters per year (again, trying to be generous to the "young Jing Yuan" hypothesis), that would translate to 1 human year to 36 Xianzhou Native years. For easy math, a 10-year-old appearing Xianzhou Native would have lived the equivalent of 360 human years. This is clearly even worse for the "Young Jing Yuan" argument, so I'll leave it.

As for why Blade's memory of Jing Yuan and Bai Heng is younger than that of Dan Feng, I think there are two potential explanations:

1. Dan Feng acts like an older person because he's in a higher position of political power than Jing Yuan and Bai Heng.

2. Dan Feng's more elevated status means Ying Xing is unlikely to think of him as "youthful" even if he were to behave in such a way, because...status.

Neither of this is reason to believe Dan Feng is necessarily older than Jing Yuan.

As for the argument that Dan Feng was 600-years-old at the time of the sedition, again, this comes from a completely unreliable folk song and is only one potential reading of the very vague line (which is in archaic Chinese that is notorious for being exaggerated and metaphorical). In contrast, what we do have is Dan Heng's memories of Jing Yuan talking and joking with him like an equal. This suggests that even if Dan Feng was older, it was not significantly older, since Jing Yuan would have observed the appropriate honorifics. We know Jing Yuan's most reflexive address for Dan Feng is by name without honorifics, thus it is unlikely that their age difference was more than a long-lived species' equivalent of one human year.

(I would like to point out that using age-appropriate honorifics is very important, even in modern China, let alone in pseudo-Ancient China. If Jing Yuan really were significantly younger than Dan Feng, his reflexive response ought to be "丹枫兄" or "丹枫哥". Yet we never hear him use those honorifics, suggesting he was most likely of equal age to Dan Feng.)

So, all of this is me explaining why I think:

1. Jing Yuan and Dan Feng were probably of the same age.

2. Ying Xing was probably the youngest of the five.

3. Bai Heng was most likely also around the same age as Jing Yuan and Dan Feng.

Furthermore, it's likely that Jing Yuan is closer to 1000 years old than 800, since Jing Yuan would likely have grown into his mid- to late-teen appearance at the youngest before the Quintet formed, a process that should, based on growth timescale conversions hypothesized previously, take something like 100-200 years. Plus the 60-ish years of Quintet era, and another 721 years from Sedition to Now (this is the only concrete number we have), that puts Jing Yuan between 900-1000 years old. Again, these are low end estimates.

And if Jing Yuan is actually closer to 1000 than 900, then that makes sense why Fu Xuan is anxious about pushing Jing Yuan to retire. No one knows how much time he has left. And given his decision to take on a disciple, much like Jing Liu did, it's another hint that Jing Yuan is probably close to the same age that Jing Liu was at the time of her fall.

---

Edit to add: Also, I would like to point out that it is erroneous to use modern Chinese to interpret some of the descriptions in HSR because so much of the language is pulling on the original Classical Chinese meanings.

In classical Chinese (up to the last dynasty, which ended in 1911), 少年 can refer to people as old as 30-35 years old.

And even if I give you the modern Chinese interpretation, according to modern standards, 少年 refers to anyone between the age of 12-17. So...the point is Jing Yuan of Blade's memory probably looked more like:

...and less like

Comments

[tanithryudo]

Jingliu's age is calculated based on the fact that she's from the Xianzhou Changcheng, and that ship was destroyed in year ~6300, so that's the minimum of when she'd be born. The sedition of IL took place in 7379, which is about 1000 year later. It's also possible she's older than 1000 at the time, depending on whether she left the Changcheng as an adult before it's destruction.

Trying to nail down Xianzhou age without being given definite numbers is an exercise in futility. Just try searching for Sushang's age and you'll see what I mean.

Or here, where you have a Xianzhou native minor who is still in school, but is also older than Guinaifen (who is a young lady and short lived species).

Or Qingque saying she's around 200 but still has room to grow, thus indicating she hasn't reached physical peak yet. Though admittedly, we're not sure how serious she was being on that.

IIRC as well, the Xianzhou "coming of age" is determined by exam rather than specific age. So some "big babies" could be over 200+ years old, and as long as they didn't pass that test they're still a minor. So who knows if Yingxing's "少年/少女" was talking about that or not.

[cashew]

Qingque saying she's around 200 but still has room to grow, thus indicating she hasn't reached physical peak yet

Good to have confirmation that at the very minimum, by 7379, Jing Yuan has to reach 200+ years of age given the physical appearance.

Though admittedly, we're not sure how serious she was being on that.

Do we have reason to believe she's not being serious?

the Xianzhou "coming of age" is determined by exam

That's canon? That's not some fanon thing? Oooookay.

Well, regardless of if "came of age", the physical development of Xianzhou natives isn't dependent on an exam, so presumably if Jing Yuan looks like 20yo, he's likely have at least lived 200 years.

[tanithryudo]

> Do we have reason to believe she's not being serious?

The context was that she was being questioned by Pepeshi (midget sized race), belonging to a short people club. They were calling her naturally short, and it's natural to be defensive about one's height, so it's not quite certain if how serious she was about still being able to grow.

> That's canon? That's not some fanon thing? Oooookay.

Yes, that's how you get the NPC "minor" who's actually a lot older than Guinaifen.

[cashew]

be defensive about one's height

...only known to short people. Anyway, given the grander context, I feel like even if she's being defensive, the idea is that she's not fully physically at her peak might not be a lie (even if Qingque herself might've stopped growing). After all, physical maturation is more than just height.

All this just further convinces me that Jing Yuan was probably ~200yo by the time of the sedition. Which makes him closer to 1000yo at the current time.