same anon about the chinese terms; i keep thinking clan = extended family. wwx is adopted right? cause i keep thinking that by how fandom does it and the clan term says that's right to my brain

Nooooo think of this more like a feudal system (I don't know historical fuedal systems well enough dont quote me) or like... idk, Game of Thrones, everyone knows game of thrones now right? I don’t know Game of Thrones either, just imagine a... game of thrones-esque setting

So you have the Clan, right, and the main family of the clan? the uhh what are they, the starks, the lannisters, the whoever else. You have the main family at the center of that. But then you also have all sorts of servants and soldiers and retainers and whatever. In a feudal system you have knights and stuff. They all technically “belong with” the clan/are under the banner of the main family, but are not literally members of the family, are not adopted into the main family tree, etc. A royal companion of a royal heir in real life history, for example, could even be raised alongside the heir, attend the same classes, participate in the same activities, and they could be close as brothers. But the royal companion does not become the literal adopted sibling of the royal heir. It’s like how you might be friends with your boss, and they might consider you like family, but while the boss-employee relationship exists they’re still your boss, and there’s still that power dynamic & positional difference there.

“Traditionally,” or like, in what can be considered established xianxia/wuxia canon, you have cultivation sects that are more like apprenticeship or... guilds I guess? I only know vaguely about historical guilds, so I’m more borrowing their idea than quoting them exactly. You have masters and you have apprentices, and journeymen, etc, and apprentices can hone their still and “go up in rank” so to speak, work their way up to being a full master in the guild. It’s an organizational grouping that creates close bonds but is not necessarily a family in the nuclear family sense or like the family tree or clan sense. But MDZS cultivation families are structured much more like nobility/gentry, even if they came from humble origins, where you have the whole... core family + also the accompanying people who are under the family’s banner and thus “part of the Clan” as far as considering the clan as like, a political organization also goes. But not literal adoption into the family. 

Within wuxia/xianxia, sect-mates are actually considered more marriagable prospects than outsiders, and a lot of the romances in the dramas might be about a shixiong and a shimei or whatever. (If you think about them as a professional collective that does have close personal bonds, like a guild might, then it makes sense; you spend a lot of time around these people so you know them well already, plus if your sect has proprietary techniques you would keep that inside the sect. it’d be like if you had a childhood sweetheart, like in PotC with Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan). 

“Wei Wuxian is adopted” is the absolute Anglophone myth of the century and the bane of my existence lmao, because he’s NOT. People use it to discourse about all sorts of things and justify all sort of other things, but his standing in relation to the Jiang family is much more nuanced and complicated than “he’s adopted.” He’s a cultivator, so he’s not just a normal servant, and he’s also the head disciple, plus he can be considered, at the very least, a sort of “royal companion” to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli even, so he does have an advanced place compared to your average Yunmeng Jiang disciple. But, like how in PotC Will was raised alongside Elizabeth, that doesn’t make them automatically adopted. Even Jiang Yanli declaring Wei Wuxian her did doesn’t mean that he is, or that he is to her, per se. Before anyone throws rocks at me - I’m not saying she doesn’t consider him like a brother, or that they’re not close. But that assertion had a very specific purpose. As mentioned, your sect-mates are actually considered to be very marriagable prospects, and Madam Jin was suggesting it would be improper for Jiang Yanli to be alone with Wei Wuxian, who is considered a potential prospect for her. Jiang Yanli’s assertion that Wei Wuxian is her didi stops the reasoning behind the suggestions of impropriety in its tracks. But that doesn’t mean she considers him literally adopted into her whole family tree, it’s not getting into that territory, it’s an interpersonal declaration between her and WWX. It also doesn’t then automatically mean that JC should see WWX as a brother in a literal adopted sense either, which I’ve seen some people argue lmao.

Plus, if Wei Wuxian were adopted, his name most likely should have changed and he should have the Jiang name; if MXTX had decided that WWX were actually adopted but kept his own name, then MXTX should have made a note about it, like she did with Madam Yu. It’s the kind of thing that’s like, you would expect it to be remarked on at least, like it should be lampshaded if nothing else.

So, yes a clan kind of would be an extended family usually, but I thiiink even in historical terms, the like retainers or generational servants would be considered as “belonging to” the Clan, since a Clan is also kind of a political organization as well socially speaking, especially if we’re talking about nobility or landed gentry, but not literally part of the family tree - main or otherwise.

Add to that, that in MDZS, MXTX plays around with clan & the idea of a cultivation collective/organization, so a clan functions both as a clan (family), clan (political), and clan (cultivation organization organized around the schools of cultivation established the founding families).

Maybe a good example? Think of Gusu Lan. They make very clear the distinction of “inner disciple” and “outer disciple.” They all belong to Gusu Lan, but “inner disciples” - i.e. members of the family tree who can trace their ancestry to Lan An, are differentiated from outer disciples, who are part of the clan, but that doesn’t make them adopted into the family tree. Lan Sizhui, who IS adopted into the family line/tree/lineage, has both the Lan name and the cloud-scroll forehead ribbon.

Wei Wuxian being adopted actually would have made things even more complicated for YMJ imo lmao, and I think YMJ/JC would have had to do more extreme stuff to buy back into being deemed “proper” or pious by society or by like, Confucian(?) standards after WWX went rogue, and also he’d have more social obligation to eradicate WWX and his work in order to like regain honor for the family & sect. If he’d been adopted, then YMJ would have been much more closely tied to WWX, and like WWX “defecting” already is still seen as partly YMJ’s responsibility/fault, either for like... idk not bringing him up right, or for cultivating a snake in their midst, and so it’d be their responsibility to “clean up their mess” so to speak. If WWX had been adopted, he might well have carried YMJ down with him too when he chose to defect, much like how the main branch of Qishan Wen carried the whole extended clan down with them.