Nan Lan (simplified: 南兰, traditional: 南兰, pinyin: Nán Lán, jyutping: naam4 laan4) was the daughter of Nan Rentong (南仁通), an official who had served in Jiangnan. She married Miao Renfeng after he saved her life, and was the mother of Miao Ruolan. She later left them to run away with Tian Guinong, whose second wife she became (SIDE ch. 2; ch. 7).
She appears in Side Story of the Flying Fox (SIDE ch. 1, 2, 20). In Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain she is never seen or named: she is referred to as Ruolan’s mother and Tian Guinong’s second wife, and Ruolan reveals only that her mother’s name, like her own, contains the character lan (ch. 7, 10).
Biography
Marriage to Miao Renfeng
Nan Rentong had taken the Cold Moon Treasured Dao from an outlaw he arrested in Jiangnan, who later died in prison. Posted to the capital, he was travelling north to present it to someone powerful. Five fighters who coveted the dao followed him and, in the snow near Cangzhou, murdered him. Miao Renfeng, who had seen them test the dao at an inn, came to Nan Lan’s rescue. One of the five hit him in the leg with poisoned needles; Miao seized him and sealed his acupoints, then hunted down and killed the other four before the poison felled him. When Miao ordered her to kill the helpless man, she could not bring herself to do it; the dao slipped from her hands and killed him as it fell. Nan Lan sucked the poison from Miao’s leg, and knowing that this made her his, she resolved to follow him. They married (SIDE ch. 2).
Miao loved her deeply, but they were ill-matched. He was a silent fighter from a poor family; she was an official’s daughter who wanted tenderness and refinement, and who hated martial arts because they had killed her father. The rift began at Hu Yidao’s grave near Cangzhou, where Miao, drunk, praised the late Madam Hu for being ready to follow her husband into water or fire. The words touched a sore point: during a fight against the Zhong brothers she had fled a burning inn and left him behind. The birth of their daughter brought them closer for a time (SIDE ch. 2). On that visit Miao also buried the Cold Moon Treasured Dao at the grave, holding that no one but Hu Yidao was worthy of it; the narrative says that the marriage, which began with the dao, began to break with its burial (SIDE ch. 2, 20).
Elopement with Tian Guinong
Tian Guinong came to the Miao home as Miao’s guest. Handsome, courteous and attentive, he taught Nan Lan some martial arts and won her over, and she ran away with him (SIDE ch. 2; ch. 10). Miao pursued them with their three-year-old daughter and found them sheltering from a storm at Shang Family Fort, where Ma Chunhua had just lent the drenched Nan Lan her own clothes. The little girl begged her mother to hold her, and Nan Lan turned her back (SIDE ch. 1, 2; ch. 10). Tian’s real interest lay in Li Zicheng’s treasure, and he saw her as the key to it (SIDE ch. 2).
Later years and death
Tian lived in dread of Miao. In time Nan Lan came to despise him for it, and she saw that he valued his own life above her love and that, after his own life, what he wanted most was wealth and power (SIDE ch. 11). In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Hu Fei finds her standing at his parents’ grave near Cangzhou. She tells him that for years she has thought of Miao and their daughter day and night, that she knows she has not long to live, and she questions him for hours about how they are (SIDE ch. 20). When Tian Guinong and Fuk’anggan’s warriors have Hu Fei surrounded at the grave, she asks to speak to him and whispers where Miao had buried the Cold Moon Treasured Dao. Armed with it, Hu Fei routs his attackers, and she walks away into the night, saying how hard it is to understand another’s heart (SIDE ch. 20).
According to Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, she caught a chill, then refused all medicine and food until she died. She asked that her body be cremated and her ashes scattered on the highway to be trampled. She also had Tian return her phoenix-head pearl hairpin to Miao or his daughter, as a thing that belonged to the Miao family. Tian never knew that the Miao family’s treasure map was hidden inside it (ch. 7, 10).
Miao Renfeng came to Tian to ask how she had died. He opened the hairpin before Tian’s eyes and took away her ashes. That night Tian Guinong killed himself (ch. 7).
Personality
Nan Lan was beautiful and delicate, and scorned martial arts. She longed for tenderness and was drawn to Tian’s charm. She followed her heart at the cost of her husband, her daughter and her good name, and came to regret it (SIDE ch. 2, 11, 20).