Chinese GL

Nan Hu Tang has been getting a quite a bit of buzz in Chinese baihe fan circles lately, so I thought I would check out some of her work. The major title of hers that I keep seeing recommended is Taking a Concubine (纳妾, pinyin: naqie), but that's a whopping 966,341 words long, so I decided to try out Home for the Funeral (奔丧, pinyin: bensang), which she wrote right after finishing Taking a Concubine, which I've also seen multiple recommendations for and, more importantly, clocks in at a relatively slim 324,756 words.

Advertised as folk horror, Home for the Funeral begins with protagonist Fang Huaiye, a graduate student living in Shanghai, returning to her mother's home village in rural Hunan (which she's only visited for New Year celebrations) for the funeral of a relative, Fang Juanhuai, who died at the grand old age of 106. Fang Huaiye's presence has been specifically requested because she's one of the very few living people left who is technically from the same generation as the deceased (Fang Huaiye's mother was adopted as a baby by Fang Juanhuai's grandmother when Fang Juanhuai was a full-grown adult), and so having her at the funeral is desirable for various ceremonial reasons. The invitation had originally been for Fang Huaiye's mother (who, being a generation older than the deceased, has even more ceremonial weight), but her mother had insisted that Fang Huaiye go in her place instead.

Fang Huaiye arrives at the village, is introduced to the main members of her vast, vast extended family, and also meets eventual love interest (she doesn't know this yet, but the reader does) Fang Zhicui, an occult practitioner (in an environment where this is actually meaningful) and funeral director. Very soon, eerie things start happening: the deceased's granddaughter seems to be possessed by a spirit of some sort, a chicken and a snake have an ominous fight to the death right in front of Fang Huaiye, a photograph of the deceased starts weeping blood, the works. Fang Huaiye also glimpses a corpse hanging from a tree as she's being driven through some fields at night — but when she returns in the morning, there's no tree there, and definitely no corpse. Distressingly, she soon discovers that she's physically incapable of leaving the village: pain overwhelms her as soon as she sets foot on the main highway leading away from the village. With the aid of Fang Zhicui, Fang Zhicui's formidable teacher Fang Zhe, and a couple of other cousins, she tries to work out what is going on, because she doesn't really have a choice.

( spoilers to mid-book )

( spoilers for the end of the book )

The romance between Fang Huaiye and Fang Zhicui was so underwritten as to be practically non-existent. I'm not sure they even display on-page attraction beyond noting each other's attractiveness at a couple of points (and not even in a sexy way, just a matter-of-fact way). It's developed a tiny bit more in the extras, but not by much — and even then they're still in occult-mystery-solving mode, having stumbled across some mysterious happenings in a Miao village. I didn't find their personalities particularly well-drawn either: we're told what they are like as people a lot more than shown. While the (all-women) secondary cast is pretty large, I didn't find their personalities particularly well-developed either: the older generation (Fang Juanhuai & co) were tough and secretive and formidable, and the younger generation (Fang Huaiye, Fang Zhicui and a couple of distant cousins/friends) were plucky and determined, and that's mostly it. A couple of what should have been big emotional moments fell short for me because of this. The first is where one of Fang Juanhuai's co-conspirators accuses Fang Huaiye of actually being a cunning, highly manipulative person who's using an unwitting Fang Zhicui to carry out her ulterior motives. This would have had weight had I been given any substantial sense of Fang Huaiye's actual personality or any hints that she might be something different from what she seemed. The other is where the reader realises that Fang Huaiye's great love for and trust in her mother has basically saved her from having a full-on identity crisis once she learns the truth about her existence. Again, this would have been moving had the author made any serious prior attempt at building up that mother-child relationship, and given us a sense of what Fang Huaiye's mother was like (beyond generic well-educated professional woman).

While the horror/thriller parts of this novel gave me some nicely spooky moments, I can't say that it's exactly motivated me to tackle Nan Hu Tang's longer work, which is rather a pity.

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC.

Pre-orders have opened for the print editions of three baihe novels. All three are from Taiwanese publishers, so will be in traditional Chinese and uncensored.

The first is Spring Remains the Same (春如旧, pinyin: chun ru jiu) by Ruo Hua Ci Shu (若花辞树), a historical court intrigue novel with a cross-dressing main character. This is coming out from Taiwanese publisher morefate, and has a striking and unusual cover design. The web version of the novel can be read here.

The second is Our Happiness (属于我们的幸福, pinyin: shuyu women de xingfu), which collects two (novella-length?) contemporary romances, authored by Li Zi Li (李子李) and Ling Ling Ren (零零人) respectively. Li Zi Li seems to have a profile on Taiwanese webnovel platform Popo, which features a mixture of mostly danmei and yanqing works. I couldn't find much information about Ling Ling Ren on a cursory search. This edition is published by Caiyi Books.

The third is Whispers After the Spotlight (在流量引爆以后, pinyin: zai liuliang yinbao yihou) by Liu Li (琉璃), a contemporary romance between a cafe owner and an ex-YouTube star. This edition is published by Qianyu. Liu Li (author page here) writes across a range of romance and non-romance genres; her romance-focused titles are predominantly baihe, but there is also some danmei and yanqing. She previously published on JJWXC under the name Liu Li Xing Ren (琉璃星人), and has since terminated her relationship with them. However, a couple of her works (including a femslash fic for Jin Yong's The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre (倚天屠龙记, pinyin: yitian tulong ji), can still be read there.

All three titles can be pre-ordered via Feiqin. The latter two can also be pre-ordered via books.com.tw, which also carry the ebook versions.

I've been meaning to post about this for some time, but these days life and most annoyingly work keep getting in the way. Anyway, The Secret of Girls (如果有秘密, pinyin: ruguo you mimi) is a newish baihe live action mini-drama that made it onto GagaOOLala about a month ago, starring He Lei (who plays Ji Qingqing in When We Met). Here's the official synposis:

Xu Jingxi sets out to Dali, Yunnan, to live her final days without regret. Losing her wallet upon arrival, she turns to Wen Shan, a quiet employee at the guesthouse, and works there to repay her debt. As the carefree Jingxi and reserved Wen Shan share daily life under the Dali sky, they gradually open up, finding warmth, healing, and love in each other’s company - a tender story of courage and connection between two women.

A heartfelt and healing Chinese sapphic mini-series, starring He Lei and Sun Cailun as two women who find love and courage in life’s final journey.

The main page for the drama is here. There are 16 episodes in total, of approximately 15 minutes each. The first two episodes are free-to-view.

This drama (and the team behind it) has had a bit of a torrid time. It originally aired in China via the production studio's own WeChat mini-app. Shortly after that, the studio licensed it to Rakuten Japan. That version featured an extended makeout scene that was not present in the version that was available in China (though enterprising Chinese fans soon found it). Shortly after that, the whole drama was taken off WeChat, leading to an absurd scenario in which a Chinese drama produced by a Chinese studio primarily for a Chinese audience was only accessible through a Japanese platform — and all for the crime of daring to include a kissing scene in its overseas version. Luckily, the drama found a home on GagaOOLala a few weeks later, where one hopes it will stay for the foreseeable future.

I know some comm members have been expressing a wish for a more-or-less reliable list of non-MTL baihe translations. true0bIue has helpfully compiled such a list on this carrd. As regards methodology, true0bIue states in the NovelUpdates list that accompanies the carrd that:

I have gone through nearly all the baihe I could find and only included those for which I could verify they were human translated. This list is based off of knowing the translators personally and on translators' words. The latter relies on their faithfulness, I can't 100% guarantee all of them nor translation accuracy except for the ones I know.

They also provide the following list of confirmed MTL groups: Dragontl, elite translations, little panda, baihe tales, Yami translates, FrostyWitchTranslations, kon kafe, hosted novels, knoxt, shanghai fantasy, dragonholic.

Vibes-wise, The Pumpkin Coach and Cinderella (南瓜马车灰姑娘, pinyin: nangua mache huiguniang) was very different from all the baihe novels I've read so far. What it reminded me most of were the vaguely melancholy, literary stories of Taiwanese author and academic Chang Man-chuan (张曼娟) (who I read a lot of because a bunch of her books were in our school library for some reason) and to some extent, the very non-rose-tinted yanqing novels of Hong Kong author Yi Shu (亦舒). This may be partially to do with the fact that the author Mo Bao Fei Bao is primarily a yanqing author; live action adaptations of her yanqing novels include One and Only (周生如故, pinyin: zhou sheng rugu), Forever and Ever (一生一世, pinyin: yisheng yishi) and Love Me, Love My Voice (偷偷藏不住, pinyin: toutou cang buzhu). The Pumpkin Coach and Cinderella is her only baihe work. In many respects, the novel also felt like a throwback to the literary preoccupations and themes of an earlier era, amplified by the fact that it's set in 2007/2008, though it was in fact first published in 2018.

The plot is extremely simple. Chengcheng, a very competent young adult who is drifting through life for a variety of psychological reasons, goes to a friend's lesbian bar, where she meets university student Miyi (neither of them is using their real name at this stage, due to the need to be cautious about such things due to societal homophobia). Neither of them identifies as queer at this stage: they both self-describe as straight women who are just there to hang out with their lesbian friends. Over time, however, they become drawn to each other and have to come to terms with their queerness (Miyi finds this easier than Chengcheng) while also evaluating the possibility of making a life with each other. On this front, Miyi is much readier to take the plunge than the emotionally avoidant, risk-averse Chengcheng is.

( major ending spoiler )

The overall tone of the book is lightly detached and full of repressed melancholy. Chengcheng and Miyi's interactions are rather oblique — they never speak directly about their feelings or about the possibility of a future together, or what challenges they might face as a same-sex couple if they decided to get together. Much more rides on what they don't say than what they do say. A lot is also made about the transience of life and relationships generally: for instance, towards the end of the novel, both Chengcheng and Miyi are no longer in regular contact with the respective groups of friends they used to frequent the lesbian bar with.

I read the uncensored Taiwanese print edition of the novel published by morefate. The Chinese web version can be read here on JJWXC (free-to-read in its entirety).

Friend-of-the-comm bobbutls recently posted a review of the demo version of baihe visual novel Citrus Summer (橘香仲夏, pinyin: ju xiang zhongxia). The tl;dr summary: Great sprite art, pity about literally everything else, and also why was it built in UNREAL ENGINE??? Did they even playtest the English version????

The general premise seems to be that the protagonist receives a mysterious perfume from a talking plushie that... basically turns her gay? As the reviewer notes, this is highly questionable. Full review embedded below the cut for people who aren't or don't want to be on Twitter.

( Read more... )

If anyone has thoughts on this or other baihe games, feel free to make a post! For instance, I know some people were interested in Love Curse, another baihe visual novel which was released a few months ago, so it would be great to have your thoughts on that if you've played it!

Republican Era drama Be Her Resilience (以她之韧, pinyin: yi ta zhi ren) started airing on 10 September. As of the time of writing, all episodes (24 in total, each approximately 15 minutes long) are available on iQiyi international, with MTL subtitles (I spotted a couple of objective mistranslations already in the time it took me to turn them off) and with the first five episodes being free-to-view. The show page can be viewed here on iQiyi.

The synopsis on iQiyi international refers to the two main characters as 'sisters', but this doesn't give the full picture. While they're very technically adopted sisters, they IMO do not relate to each other as sisters at all, plus the official adoption takes place during a time one of them is temporarily missing, and they are separated as children and reunite as adults. Of course, that's my interpretation and YMMV, obviously.

( Read more... )

Pre-orders have opened for: the second (and presumably final) volume of I Wish I Knew How to Quit You* (总有老师要请家长, pinyin: zong you laoshi yao qing jiazhang) by Jing Wu (璟梧), a contemporary romance between a teacher and the mother of one of her students, which develops following a one-night stand; the contemporary romance As She Wished (如她所愿, pinyin: ru ta suo yuan) by Qin Si (秦寺); and the contemporary romance If I Could Mail You a Book (如果给你寄一本书, pinyin: ruguo gei ni ji yi ben shu) by Yi Zhan Ye Deng (一盏夜灯). All three are mainland editions, so will be in simplified Chinese and censored.

Pre-orders for the second volume of I Wish I Knew How to Quit You can be made via the following bookshops:

• Xiaomeihao (the publisher)
  
• Boku
  
• Bowenxuan
  
• Xiangxue

Pre-orders for As She Wished can be made via the following bookshops:

• Xinxin Xiang'ai (the publisher)
  
• Bowenxuan
  
• Wangou
  
• Xinshijiao

Pre-orders for If I Could Mail You a Book can be made via the following bookshops:

• Xiaomeihao (the publisher)
  
• Bowenxuan
  
• Kuaile
  
• Wangou
  
• Xiangxue

*A note on the title translation: I Wish I Knew How to Quit You is the 'official' English title given in the uncensored print edition of the novel by Hong Kong publisher Wutong. My own preferred title translation is Last Night at the PTA Conference. The manhua fan translation has elected to go with the painfully literal There Are Always Teachers Who Want to Ask out Parents.