GL Live Action: Resource Post

[douqi]

Let's start by getting an important point out of the way: there is, to date, no live action adaptation of a baihe novel which has already aired. The authors of the two most popular current-generation baihe novels, Miss Forensics (我亲爱的法医小姐, pinyin: wo qin'ai de fayi xiaojie) and Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan), have indicated that they have been approached about possible live action adaptations, but both have turned down these advances due to concerns about the major plot and relationship changes that would be needed to allow the adaptations to air. However, a live action adaptation of the extra from the contemporary baihe novel Kissing a Gardenia (都什么年代了啊, pinyin: ou shenme niandai le a) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔), author of Reading the Remnants, has been filmed by an independent production team and is currently in post-production. This is projected to be a 30- to 40-minute film, and will air under the title When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation of the title is Fireworks of Yesteryear). The production team's Weibo account can be found here, and a subtitled version of their BTS reel can be viewed here. A live action adaptation of She Is Still Cute Today (今天的她也是如此可爱, pinyin: jintian de ta ye shi ruci ke'ai; also known as She Is Also Cute Today), the high school baihe manhua by Guo Si Te (郭斯特), completed filming in 2022, but at the time of writing, remains unreleased.

Mapping the landscape of GL live action is a complicated task, due to (i) censorship rules precluding mainland Chinese productions from being advertised explicitly as GL or baihe, meaning that the more ambiguous marketing tag of 'double female lead' is used instead; (ii) censorship rules meaning that any such production must rely heavily on subtext and coding instead of explicit displays of romantic affection or sexual interest; and (iii) the overlap between GL live action productions and what I think of as 'serious queer/lesbian cinema'. But I will do my best.

Full-length dramas*

There are, at present, three full-length mainstream mainland Chinese dramas which have been marketed at mainland GL audiences and/or are regarded by mainland GL audiences as GL dramas. These are:

• The 2020 drama The Message (风声, pinyin: fengsheng), a spy thriller set during the Sino-Japanese war. It is adapted from the 2007 novel (a non-baihe thriller) Sound of the Wind (风声, pinyin: feng sheng) by the well-known author Mai Jia (麦家). The central relationship, at least as GL audiences see it, is between the fresh-faced and (relatively) innocent intelligence agent Gu Xiaomeng and codebreaking genius Li Ningyu. The drama is available in its entirety via the official Tencent YouTube account here, though without English subtitles. A fan subtitled version is available here (episodes 1 to 20) and here (episodes 21 to 38). There is also an earlier (2009) film adaptation of the same novel, with a much more high-profile cast, but this has received much less attention from GL audiences. The film can be viewed (though once again without English subtitles) here.
• The 2021 drama Couple of Mirrors (双镜, pinyin: shuang jing), which is set in Republican era Shanghai. The main characters are author and socialite Xu Youyi and photographer/assassin Yan Wei. The drama is available in its entirety (with English subtitles) via the official Huanyu Entertainment YouTube account here. Despite occasional (misinformed) claims to the contrary, this drama was produced from an original script and is not an adaptation of an existing work. It has been adapted into a manhua (available officially here via Kuaikan Manhua (note: due to region-based restrictions, it is possible that you will only be able to open links to Kuaikan Manhua via their app); a fan (text) translation in English is available here) and a novel (available only as a print edition; an English fan translation of the extra from the novel is available here).
• The 2023 drama The Evidence Tells (消失的痕迹, pinyin: xiaoshi de henji), a contemporary police thriller. The main characters are police captain Bai Lu and medical examiner Gu Yu, who end up in an unlikely partnership. The drama is available in its entirety (with MTL English subtitles) on the iQiyi platform here, though at the time of writing, a subscription is needed to view the later episodes.

Apart from these, there are several Taiwanese productions that somewhat straddle the line between 'GL' and 'serious lesbian/queer cinema'. Examples include Fragrance of the First Flower (第一次遇见花香的那刻, pinyin: di yi ci yujian huaxiang de na ke), which can be viewed (with English subtitles) here on GagaOOLala, a Taiwanese streaming platform specialising in LGBTQ+ media, and Handsome Stewardess (帅T空姐, pinyin: shuai t kongjie), which can be viewed (with English subtitles) here on GagaOOLala. The latter is the work of Taiwanese lesbian director Zero Chou (周美玲, pinyin: zhou meiling); this is, to my mind, the lightest and most 'GL' of her creations, and I would classify most of her other films as 'serious lesbian/queer cinema'.

Note: I'm using 'full-length' in a rather loose sense here to differentiate these dramas (episode lengths of between 30 to 45 minutes, with at least five episodes in total), from the mini-dramas (episode lengths of under five minutes) and short series (fewer than five episodes in total) discussed below.

Mini-dramas and short series

In addition to full-length dramas, there are also a number of GL mini-dramas, generally consisting of episodes that are under 5 minutes in length, which are somewhat more overt in terms of their romantic content. My hypothesis is that the platforms on which these were originally aired tend to be subject to less restrictive content regulations compared to full-length dramas.

A major contributor to the GL mini-drama scene is the Yunqi (云起) production team, led by director and scriptwriter Zhang Zhiwei (张之微). The team has produced GL mini-dramas across a wide range of genres, including xianxia (Legend of Yunqian (云芊传, pinyin: yun qian zhuan), Legend of Yunze (云泽传, pinyin: yun ze zhuan), A Flower for Three Lifetimes (三生花, pinyin: san sheng hua)), wuxia plus a touch of space opera (Nü Er Hong (女儿红, pinyin: nü er hong)), family melodrama (Ye-Mu 1 (叶穆 1, pinyin: ye mu 1) and Ye-Mu 2 (叶穆 2, pinyin: ye mu 2)), and university romance (The Lost World (夏夜知道风的甜, pinyin: xiaye zhidao feng de tian)). Some of these originally aired on the user-content-generated-focused video platforms Bilibili and Douyin, while some were part-funded by and therefore aired exclusively on the short video platform Kuaishou. Details about these mini-dramas and where to watch them (including with English subtitles) can be found here. It should be noted that The Lost World, which originally aired on Kuaishou, has been removed from the platform for content reasons, but can still be viewed (very unofficially) via the previous link.

Also of note is another Kuaishou exclusive mini-drama, Led Astray by Love (相思误, pinyin: xiangsi wu), featuring a barely-plausibly-deniable romance between a transmigrator and the ruler of the fictional historical Chinese city she ends up in. This mini-drama was removed from the platform about three-quarters of the way through its initial airing, and later reinstated with a significant amount of the romantic content removed. Links to both the original version (with English subtitles) and the edited version can be found here.

Mention should also be made of Dear Uranus (亲爱的天王星, pinyin: qin'ai de tianwangxing), a three-episode high school GL short series produced by Rabbit & Wolf (兔女狼, pinyin: tu nü lang), a Taiwanese lesbian couple who mainly create videos focusing on their domestic life. The show (with English subtitles), together with cast and producer interviews and BTS clips, can be viewed via Rabbit & Wolf's YouTube channel here.

Short films

Another important part of the GL live action landscape are short films (mostly under five minutes long, though a few are longer), created mostly by small, independent production teams, generally set in some fantasy/romanticised version of historical China, most of which are hosted on the user-content-generated-focused video platforms Bilibili and Douyin. A number of these have been created as advertisements for products as diverse as cosmetics, hanfu, food and videogames; the rest, as far as I can tell, seem to have been created for the hell of it. An extensive list (with links to English fan subtitled versions where subtitles are needed) can be found here, sorted by actor and then by genre. Notable directors include Zhi Zhu (知竹), who has now directed several more mainstream productions, and Liu Yun Rui (流云蕊), whose lipstick commercial for Chinese cosmetics brand Florasis went viral a few years ago.

Also worth mentioning is The Girls on Rela (热拉物语, pinyin: rela wuyu), a series of contemporary short films produced by the company behind the Chinese lesbian dating app The L (formerly known as 'Rela'), which can be viewed on their official YouTube channel here.

Special thanks to superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.

Comments

[aurumcalendula]

I think the link to The Girls on Rela's playlist has an extra 4 at the end of the URL.

I swear I heard rumors that there was a planned season 2 and 3 of Couple of Mirrors - any idea if that's still a possibility?

[douqi]

Thanks, fixed the link!

On Couple of Mirrors, Yu Zheng (the showrunner) definitely seemed keen for asecond season and made a few Weibo posts giving some indication that early preparations for that were underway, but I don't know anything for sure. In any case, my attitude towards c-dramas has historically been: it doesn't exist until an airing date is announced, and post-Justice in the Dark, I've updated that to: it doesn't exist until it has aired in its entirety.

[aurumcalendula]

In any case, my attitude towards c-dramas has historically been: it doesn't exist until an airing date is announced, and post-Justice in the Dark, I've updated that to: it doesn't exist until it has aired in its entirety.

That's definitely the most sensible approach!