Maomao feet

Maomao is the main protagonist of The Apothecary Diaries series. After getting kidnapped and sold, she found herself working as a maid servant (and eventually a lady-in-waiting) in the Imperial Palace of Li. There, she was able to make use of her sense of practicality, keen deductions, and insightful knowledge of herbs and illnesses to solve the mysterious problems within the Inner Court.

Maomao is a young girl who stands relatively short in height and possesses a petite frame. She has dark forest green hair (that's typically tied up and sectioned with a light blue ribbon that holds a portion of her hair back. Whereas two strands of hair can be seen framing her face and are adorned with 2 beads each; the top one being red and the bottom one being sky blue.) and blue eyes.

The bandage wrap seen on her left forearm hides the number of self-inflicted scars from where she had tested upon herself when experimenting with remedies and poisons.

Her main outfit consists of an aoqun hanfu with a light green top and a long, burgundy skirt. The inner robe in her top is white, while the collar of her light green robe is both pale and dark green. She also wears a pair of dark green flats to accompany this outfit. In essence of her usual wear, Maomao prefers to wear more simple and practical garments and will otherwise avoid wearing elaborate outfits and makeup unless the opportunity for her to do so arises, giving those the impression she dresses rather plainly. Despite avoiding makeup, she'd frequently paint freckles using clay around the bridge of her nose.

On the occasions where Maomao would dress up, she is considered to be quite attractive, if less endowed, by many when effort is given. Something that usually leaves most people to fail in recognizing her as the same person entirely.

Despite wearing an impassive expression on her face, she can radiate with heightened excitement whenever she is able to taste and or experiment with poison, rare ingredients, or medicines.

Maomao is a very pragmatic and knowledgeable individual who is well aware of her position in the world as someone with no status and that she could be considered expendable at a moment's notice. While she has an intense curiosity and a sense of justice, she prefers to not get involved with the more dramatic parts of the royal court recognizing that it could easily prove more trouble than it's worth, though she is often dragged in regardless either from her own curiosity or a demand from someone above her station.

She is also an extremely detached individual who avoids making any sort of close connection or deep attachment with the only exception being her adoptive father, Luomen. She refuses to accept that she is highly favored within the Inner Court, or utilize any special treatment those in power are happy to have extend to her for all her accomplishments. She maintains a firm wall between those around her, refusing to reciprocate any attempts of people trying to get close to her. She even appears to prefer having transactional relationships rather than those built on kindness. She has a habit of forcing herself to not notice or acknowledge, as well as withhold information of realizations significant events she has witnessed as a form of self preservation such as Lishu's harassment by her maids, or that Jinshi is not in fact the Emperor's brother, but is in fact his son by Ah-Duo, as she is well aware that her commoner status means that she is easily expendable if it means to protect a noble. She also is aware her words could get people killed, a burden she doesn't want to bear. She is particularly stubborn in her willful denial about people's obvious sincere concern and affection for her be it professional, platonic, or romantic. She most notably is Jinshi's clear romantic affection for her (though it more accurate to say she is aware but doesn't want to acknowledge due to inevitable trouble it will cause) and has even tried to run away at times when she is forced to confront it. She finds the idea of romantic dreams foolish and silly as they are likely to lead to someone's ruin rather than happiness. Her cynicism towards romance is likely due to her time growing up in the red-light district.

Maomao shares her father's side of the family's unique traits of having an astounding intellect in a specific, but odd personality.

A large part of her perspective and hesitancy towards accepting kindness and forming relationships is due to being raised in the red-light district where she never received true unconditional love, as well as the knowledge that someone sincerely loving you doesn't ensure they won't toss away if it's necessary in her world. While she was well-loved by who she considers to be "older sisters" who work in the brothel (known as the Three Princesses of the Verdigris House: Pairin, Meimei, and Joka) nevertheless, she realized she came second to their job. Even the "Madam" or "Granny," as Maomao refers to her as had no qualms about trying to force her into becoming a courtesan despite being incredibly fond of the girl. As a baby, her cries would not be answered until her sisters completed their work for the day, so she eventually stopped crying and asking for help.[6] She herself has stated she does not believe she has the capacity to love somebody or let them get close to her.

Her intense pragmatism is a likely response to the trauma of living in the red light district which she was raised in. While she is fond of the pleasure district and her odd family, the red light district gave her a skewed, though fairly accurate, view of relationships in the world as she spent her life watching courtesans be madly in love with their clients only to cast them aside once they ran out of funds. She would often see courtesans being promised the world by clients only for it to end in lies, people being sold as property, the perverse horror of cheaper brothels, numerous rapes and murder, and how even well liked courtesans that would bring in a fortune and put a brothel on the map would be tossed out back to be a common prostitute the second they lost their value.

Her negative opinion of love and relationships as well as hesitancy to hope for something more lest she be hurt if it fails is heavily influenced by her mother Fengxian; her mother had intentionally conceived Maomao with the patron she was in love with in order to bring her price down to one he could afford. However, he (seemingly) abandoned her and it forced Fengxian to work on the street for the lowest paying patrons, which led to her getting syphilis.[7] As a result she took her anger and frustration out on Maomao, which only got worse as the syphilis ravaged her brain. She even went so far as to cut her pinky off. Maomao came to view her mother as stupid and foolish for her actions. This presented her with the harsh reality of how expendable people can be and how even being loved doesn't guarantee your safety. Maomao was also charged by the Madam for taking care of her, while her mother wasted away in a back room, and this was considered downright saintly behavior of the old lady by pleasure district standards. This likely is what caused Maomao's aloofness-to-a-fault personality and resistance to forming relationships as a defense mechanism to protect herself from the (unfortunately high) possibility that despite being close confidants and friends, the Inner Court would throw her out if not kill her for something as small as being associated with the wrong person.

Having been raised by the esteemed apothecary Luomen, Maomao is fascinated by poison and herbs that she has a habit of experimenting with them to observe their effects, primarily on her own body. Due to her passionate love of poisons and her enjoyment when consuming them, she is considered strange, creepy, or obsessed by many characters in the series — a trait she shares with many other members of the eccentric and uniquely talented La Clan. This obsession is a major motivation for her actions throughout the series, as Jinshi learns to bait her to solve court mysteries with the promise of giving her rare medicines.

Maomao's approach to life is very practical, focused on learning to survive in whatever way her environment demands her to and avoiding trouble. Being raised in the red-light district led her to develop exceptional street smarts. Calm, mature, and sharp-witted, she is rarely tricked or charmed by others: she is one of the few to be unaffected by Jinshi's beauty and charm. Her mindset has helped her come to terms with matters that many would find concerning or even scarring: she considers her near-rape, and later her kidnapping enraging situations, but also as inevitabilities of living in the red-light district.

As she has learned that her focus on survival and avoidance of trouble requires her to act with caution, she never acts rashly and follows commands without outward protest. In part because of her own self-preserving attitude, she finds people who will help others to their own detriment (e.g. Luomen and later Jinshi) painful to watch. Despite her awareness of the hardships of being low born, she believes that social hierarchy is the inevitable way of things, and that people of lower status should expect to be used and should be used, including herself.

All of this equips Maomao to expertly navigate the inner palace, which she herself notes is more or less the same as the red light district. She knows how to keep her head low, read people and situations, how to placate or intimidate aggressive workers or high ranking consorts without making them direct their ire at her. She knows her place, but also when she should speak up.

Despite her pragmatism, Maomao's insatiable curiosity often leads her to involve herself in the problems of others. It is also implied that she has a strong sense of justice, empathy, and compassion, which makes it hard for her to ignore misdeeds and injustice once she has witnessed them. This has made her wish she could avoid seeing or hearing about certain things.

While Maomao has an incredibly high intellect and ability to master anything with ease, this only applies to things she is interested in. She failed her court lady exam as she found the material boring and couldn't retain it.

Abilities Herbal medicine: Having been taught by Luomen, one of the best pharmacists in the country, Maomao is an excellent user and maker of herbs — so much so that she makes her own unique medicine, which she often tests on herself.

Perception: Having been raised in the red light district, Maomao is very good at dealing with and manipulating others. Along with her experience and knowledge of herbs, she is able to deduce and solve problems more effectively than most. In spite of this, she does not consider herself intelligent by academic standards as the only thing she can bring herself to study is medicine.

Poison resistance: Because she constantly experiments with poisons on her own body, Maomao has developed a mithridatic resistance against drugs and poisons. Whether afflicted by snake bite, aphrodisiac, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. She even once administered rescue breaths on a poisoned victim's drooling mouth. Despite her many resistance to poisons, this does not extend to her buckwheat allergy, which she has given up attempting to overcome.

Alcohol Tolerance: Maomao has an unusually high metabolism for alcohol compared to most people in the setting, including Basen and her own father Lakan.

Maomao is the child of the high-ranking courtesan Fengxian and the military official Lakan; however, due to her parents' situation at the time, she was not raised by them. Instead, Maomao was born and raised in Verdigris House in the red-light district, and was nursed by Pairin, raised by the Three Princesses and the Madam, and adopted by her grand-uncle Luomen. From her adopted father, Maomao learned about herbs and how to handle illnesses, and she was a pharmacist for multiple brothels in the red-light district.

At some point, she was attacked and almost sexually assaulted in the backstreets of the red light district; however, she was able to get away, and did not think much about the incident later.

Later, she was kidnapped again; her kidnappers, passing her off as their daughter, sold her to the Inner Court as a maidservant.

After identifying face powder with lead as the reason Lihua and the Emperor's children were dying, she wrote notes to Lihua and Gyokuyou informing them about the powder. As a result, Jinshi and Gyokuyou promoted her to become Gyokuyou's personal attendant and poison tester.

After the garden party, she used the kanzashi Lihaku gave her in order to visit Verdigris House for a few days. But as a reward, she had to give him a few nights with one of the Verdigris princesses, with Mao Mao taking care of the expenses.

When Fengming turned herself in under the claim that she attempted to poison Lishu, all of the merchants who had dealings with her family were removed from the court; because Maomao's kidnappers, who had claimed that she was their daughter, were among these people, Maomao was fired and sent back to home. But as she owed the madam of the Verdigris House, she had to work for her.

Later, while working as a courtesan part-time, she once again met Jinshi at a large party. When Jinshi offered to buy her, she agreed, and thus she returned to the Outer Court as Jinshi's servant.

During Gyokuyou's second pregnancy, she reprised her role as Gyokuyou's poison taster in the Inner Court.