Wooden bowls drained of bitter wine, fingers greased with deer fat deftly picked at bones.
I tore into a lamb leg and called for more fire; he feasted on insect soup, his spirits soaring.
Tribal lads sang, Han men cheered, laughing and stamping in dance, sleeves flying wild.
True words laid bare our hearts for each to see; brotherhood weighed on our breasts like mountains!
"Brother, not to criticize, but you really can't hold your wine! How little have you drunk, to be switching to Mountain Berry Juice already? Among our Barbarian Tribes, Mountain Berry Juice is for women!"
The Young Chieftain immediately called out in the Barbarian Language, and an attendant stepped forward to carry away the jar of mountain fruit juice.
(The word "Man," or "barbarian," was the southern tribes' name for themselves, originally meaning "people." Transliterated into Chinese, it was written 䜌, the original bronze-script form of 蛮; only in seal script was the insect radical added, producing 蛮. The Records of Land and Water of Linhai stated: "The mountain tribes call themselves Milin." "Milin" was simply an expanded pronunciation of the ancient sound of 闽, Min-that is, a split-syllable pronunciation. In Old Chinese, both Min and Man belonged to the ming initial group, as they also did in Middle Chinese; their yuan and wen rhyme groups were interchangeable. They were variants of the same sound and shared the same meaning. As Suoyin's commentary on "The Hereditary House of Taibo of Wu" in the Records of the Grand Historian stated: "Man means Min." Although Central Plains culture gradually attached derogatory meanings to characters such as Man and Min, this did not affect the Barbarian Tribe's use of the name for themselves, nor did they consider it rude when others called them Man.)
Seeing the "Mountain Berry