Introductions

[douqi]

Comment on this post to tell us a little about yourself! What got you interested in baihe/GL media in the first place, which works or what kinds of media you're most interested in, and your fanfic, fan art, fanvids and fan translations!

Comments

[douqi]

I'm douqi, and I got started in the baihe/Chinese GL translation scene when I subtitled Legend of Yunqian back in 2020 when it was first released. Since then I've subtitled a bunch of GL mini-dramas and short films, and am currently more than 50% of the way through translating the baihe novel Purely by Accident. I set up this community in order to have more sustained and measured discussions with fellow baihe enthusiasts compared to what ephemeral social media platforms are able to provide. I would especially love to see more fan translators (who don't use MTL!) working on creating translations for major baihe novels, and am happy to provide advice and editorial support and general cheerleading in service of this. I'm also happy to beta/edit text-based fan works, and cheer on all other types of fan works!

[halfcactus]

Hi, I love seeing your subtitle posts on Twitter!

I'm really am glad for this comm because baihe has been extra hard to navigate in English-speaking spaces. And I don't really do well with ephemeral social media platforms in terms of recommendations or discussions. :')

[kwirkee76]

Hello there,

Thank you for setting this up, along with everything else that you do :-) I wish I knew how I could show you the appreciation I feel for all the time and effort you put into sharing.

Would you believe I don't remember how I exactly got started reading baihe? *blames Covid brain-fog*
Anyway, I'll try to be succinct because no one likes long-winded explanations. Even though I'm Chinese, all my life, I've never been very interested in anything to do with "Asian-ness". This took a drastic turn about 7 years ago when I got kinda obsessed with learning more about "black hair" stuff *haha I wonder if you understand what I mean by that* I've always loved reading and then ... I stumbled onto Kpop fanfic *gasps* and enjoyed reading it for several years until I just got tired of it. There's definitely some quality writing there but a whole lot of crap, too.

I understand your aversion to MTL but as a non-speaker/reader, beggars can't be choosers. I do have concerns that I'm dumbing down every time I read a translated novel. The quality ones (like your translations) are few and far between. Also, I might have started my foray into baihe with the novels by Please Don't Laugh (I promise not to speak more about her and her novels). I do love long (the longer, the better) novels but I can understand the attraction to shorter stories.

I'm still a newbie in this regard (by that, I mean reading baihe novels) so I'm hungry for more and am not as picky as I'd like to be. As time goes by, I hope to see more quality translations of great novels. Reading is really a great escape.

I'm happy to know that I can always rely on you for the best when it comes to all things baihe. After all, you did introduce me to A-Qi *wink* ha ha ha

Again, thank you for everything.

[profiterole_reads]

Thanks for your work! I loved Legend of Yunqian, Legend of Yunze and The Vampires. Nü Er Hong will be next, but not yet because my list is very long. I have also seen Couple of Mirrors.

For non-Chinese GL, I loved She Makes My Heart Flutter (Korean) and Wedding Plan (Thai).

[douqi]

Hello! Welcome to the comm :) Would love to know what you think of Nü Er Hong once you've watched it! In some ways it's my favourite of all the Yunqi productions so far.

[aurumcalendula]

Thank you for your translation work and for setting up this community!

iirc the first baihe mini-drama I watched watched was Legend of Yunqian and one of the first baihe novels I read was Chichi's translation of The Beauty's Blade (美人剑) by Feng Ren Zuo Shu (封刃作书). At the moment, my favorite mini-drama is Nv Er Hong and my favorite drama is The Evidence Tells.

Genre-wise, I'm primarily interesting in historical, xianxia and wuxia works. I tend to vid a bunch of femslash in general and I've really enjoying vidding the GL mini-dramas you've subbed.

[douqi]

Great to see you here! I love your vids, and please definitely feel free to link them on here when you have a new one!

For baihe, non-magic/non-fantasy historical novels significantly outnumber xianxia anad wuxia ones, especially where the popular authors and novels are concerned. The difficulty is that very few of the major historical novels have been translated so far. Xianxia and wuxia are definitely minority subgenres, but I've got a couple of them lined up to read next, specifically Snow in the Spring Courtyard (春庭雪) and Incantation for Subduing a Dragon (降龙诀). I'll try to post proper reviews once I'm done. I'm also very open to being seduced into a wuxia or xianxia novel as my next translation project! (she says, while only 60% of the way through Purely by Accident...)

[halfcactus]

I'm mostly just a passerby, but the Our Story comics were my gateway, and I'm still looking into reading novels, but I usually have a hard time finding recs that work for me especially when I read so slow. So I fully appreciate the comprehensive list in this comm! With books I generally default to light, modern, and fluffy because they're easier to read, though I've had my eye on Burn (because of the length).

My preferred mediums are fanart, comics, and fancomics, though reading is still a struggle for me. I'm also open to audiodrama (especially for more lighthearted canons), if there are Chinese captions——I know they aren't always available for smaller productions.

[douqi]

Great to see you here! Yeah, the problem with webnovels, especially the popular ones, is that they're generally massively long. Not sure if you wanted recommendations (feel free to ignore if you don't!), but a couple of contemporary baihe novels that are relatively short and overall wholesome (at least insofar as the main couple are concerned) are She Belongs to Me (她属于我) and A Taste of You (食局) (though there's a weird super OTT melodramatic bit towards the end). And we're at a pretty good time for baihe manhua adaptations at the moment, let's hope it continues!

[halfcactus]

Yeah, like I definitely am interested in Miss Forensics but right now it's too long for me haha (and I'm sure still short in webnovel standards). Thank you so much for your recs and the links! She Belongs to Me definitely sounds more my speed!

[yuerstruly]

hi I'm yuer! I got into baihe/cn GL around 2021 where I slide along a weird pipeline from genshin women and their voice actresses to discovering novels from the audio drama adaptations they starred in. I've only properly read ~10 baihe novels in Chinese, but I recently started 食局 (a taste of you)! I'm down for a reading group for those interested (as in, we read a certain amount of chapters then come together to discuss every week or something). I'm someone who leans toward historical and sci-fi works, so if you are also into those, hit me up!

[douqi]

Great to see you here! The reading group sounds like a great idea (though I guess there's the language issue to slightly contend with), feel free to make separate post in the community to gauge interest/promote? I'm waiting for the uncensored print edition of At Her Mercy (我为鱼肉) to come out to start reading it, but if there's a reading group that might compel me to start early. I wish I knew of more proper sci-fi baihe but so far the only ones I can think of are Anthill (蚁群) (old-fashioned sci-fi, but somewhat lacking in the romance department) and The Creator's Grace (造物的恩宠) (more thriller than sci-fi, albeit with solid romance).

[yueliangist]

Hi hi! First of all, Douqi, thank you for setting this up!!

Second, I'd like to introduce myself; I'm Ada, a Chinese learner and also chaos pansexual (but more like questioning lesbian lol). I'm just getting started in the baihe community, would you believe it? Like many I became interested after discovering pdl's novels, though at this point I was already learning Chinese.

I came here because I desperately want to make baihe friends!! I'm also learning to translate, but with my minimal skills I do occasionally need extra help from other sources (pleco is like my number one most used app by now). I'm hoping to help let the baihe community grow by making content more acessible with translations.

I love reading so for now I will stick with webnovels (though I haven't exactly chosen a novel to stick with), but I hope I can eventually branch out to webdramas or audiodramas too.

Oh! I'm also on twitter as yueliangist and bluelilyTL :D before this post get's too long I just want to say that douqi you're really cool lol

[douqi]

Thanks for the kind words, and welcome!

[hazevi]

Hi, I'm hazevi, you can call me astra/haze/hazy/vi, it's whatever.

I'd consider myself an acespec (demi) lesbian? So you know, GL/baihe is naturally interesting to me. I'm bilingual and working on baihe translations right now actually! If anybody would like recs I'm happy to give some out because I have a lot of them!

I'm also a writer as well (ah, the joys of fanfic) but I think I'm getting a little burnt out so I'm turning to reading and translation right now. Currently working on a couple modern baihe novels from Ruo Hua Ci Shu and Yi Zhan Ye Deng~

I actually don't quite remember when I started my gay awakening/getting into baihe arc but it was sometime after I realized ao3 was a thing (2020). Probably was sometime during 2021 when I first started reading Her Mountain, Her Sea (like no joke I credit this novel with most of my awakening). And then it just went downhill from there. So yeah! Really happy to have found my people and I'm more excited to work on my translations now so that you peeps can read and scream with me.

Other than baihe specifically, I play genshin/other gacha rpgs, rhythm games, and watch cdramas sometimes.

[douqi]

Hello, and welcome to the comm! Exciting to see someone working on translations of novels by two well-known and well-regarded authors. Please feel free to post details/updates/thoughts/questions here! If you'd like a beta reader or editor for your translations, do ask — I'm sure people here would be keen to support your work.

[meikuree]

I recently found this community and am glad it exists! Thanks for your hard work with translations too. watched bits of Legend of Yunze via 云起志’s channel and would love to dip my toes into Nv Er Hong sometime and other webnovels.

I don’t remember a clear moment I got into 百合 media, but I started watching/reading yuri at an impressionable age, so baihe felt like a natural jump due to occasional fandom overlaps. That aside I’ve enjoyed Qiu Miaojin/邱妙津’s books (I own the original Chinese text for Notes of A Crocodile) and have done occasional Chinese -> English translations, largely for fic. I’d love to do more, I’m unfortunately just kneecapped by time and Life.

My tastes tend towards “dark”, edgier femslash, including stuff that falls under the dirtybadwrong umbrella, but I’m also very omnivorous. 90% of the fic I write is f/f, haha. I’m very intrigued by your review of Dynasty of Beasts!

[douqi]

Hello and welcome to the community! Fic translations are very cool and valuable (and I think often overlooked by the community). There's definitely a subgenre of baihe authors who specialise in the dark stuff. If you'd like to post a review here of any baihe you've read, please feel absolutely free to do so. Dynasty of Beasts was... an interesting experience. Would recommend if you'd like to just wallow in depravity and amorality and angst.

I'd also at some point be interested in knowing what you think are the overlaps between yuri and baihe, as a watcher/reader of both. I've had very little exposure to yuri personally, but I have a definite sense that the two genres are in conversation with each other to some degree, so it would be great to learn more.

[llonkrebboj]

Hey! I'm yjtc who just hopped in for Baihe recs! Currently reading 病弱美人的钩妻技巧, which being a a master/disciple xianxia, has a trope + genre combination that is familiar and dear to me. Having started in yanqing, buried in danmei for nearly 8 years and now dipping toes in baihe, I'm finding that ladies are lovely too xD. The specific 病弱 need of mine keeps me hungry whatever the genre, so I really appreciate every suggestion! It's a preference that can only be sustained through word of mouth xD

My preferred medium is webnovel and with the occasional audiodrama for the stories I like if available (visual mediums are a bit tiring for me, and my attention wanders easily >.<).

I'm mainly a reader of webnovels and a hobbyist translator of Chinese songs and poetry at fwoopersongs on tumblr. Also! Event motivated writer of fic once per year only (around Oct-Dec).

[douqi]

Hello yj! Thanks for popping in. Wishing you all the 病弱 content your heart desires, will pass on any recs as I come across them!

[bluedreaming]

I'm mostly casually interested, as someone who just reads a lot of everything (and prefers reading to watching), coming here via a friend sharing a link to the Ravenous (护食) by Ning Yuan (宁远): Review post. I don't speak/read Chinese, so I depend on translators or mtl (but human translation much preferred; it's very much an art!) and will see how far I make it with 护食! (The review was very intriguing.)

I'd love to buy English novel translations but it's a little confusing, so perhaps I'll figure it out in the future! (I did manage to figure out how to buy 护食 so that's my mini success of the day.)

[douqi]

Welcome to the comm! And well done on successfully buying the novel (honestly JJWXC is a nightmare to navigate especially if you don't read Chinese).

I really hope we'll eventually get more people interested in producing good translations, especially the most popular/best-known ones (though my attempts at pspsps-ing people into translating THE most popular one have up to now been in vain).

[neuxue]

Thanks for setting this up! Still figuring out dreamwidth, but I’m having a great time scrolling through.

My introduction to baihe was via 双镜/Couple of Mirrors, which was delightful. Meanwhile I came to webnovels through the danmei pipeline, but I really want more f/f fiction (and stories about ladies generally) in my life, so I’m looking forward to starting in on some of the novels recommended here!

Generally speaking I enjoy intricate plots, politics and scheming, complex character dynamics (especially those that that are unhinged, unhealthy, etc., with bonus points for betrayal), and exhaustion/endurance tropes. I’m often in the ‘reads the content warnings as an incentives list’ camp, and I love a good putting-the-book-down-to-stare-at-the-wall-and-whisper-‘what-the-fuck’ moment.

I’m also enjoying the translation discussions here; I’ve dabbled in translation and periodically toy with the idea of doing more, though the unceasing flow of linear time is something of an obstacle, as is the sense that my standards exceed my abilities. But maybe!

[douqi]

Hello and welcome to the comm! Good to see you again :) Let me know if you'd like some recs because I can think of a few titles that might fit most of those criteria.

I always plan to post more translation stuff, but am constantly derailed by the unceasing flow of linear time.

If you ever need a confidence boost re your translation abilities, well... I've personally found that a quick skim through some of the officially published c-novel translations does wonders for mine ;)

[beancurd]

Thanks for setting up this community!

I started reading yuri manga and watching yuri anime back when I was a a teenager. Then I discovered JJWXC, probably through a Chinese forum called Yamibo. I don't remember which was my first baihe novel, but Ming Ye's She Who Is Willing Will Take the Bait (愿者上钩) and The Collapsing Palace (宫倾) were definitely among them. My first GL manhua was SQ / Their Story.

I enjoy translating as a hobby sometimes, and subtitled The Message after watching it in 2021 and loving the subtext between the 2 female leads. There's another older drama I'd like to subtitle, Love's Lone Flower (孤恋花) from 2005, mainly because of how much it affected me the first time I watched it. I'll get around to it one of these days!

[douqi]

Thank you so much for subtitling The Message! I know loads of people are excited to finally be able to watch it while understanding what's going on. There's a ton of dialogue too so that's lots of work!

Please feel free to post reviews of anything baihe/Chinese GL-related if you'd like! Also, please feel free to ask for help here once you get round to subtitling Love's Lone Flower (Yuen Wing Yee and Lee Sinje?? Takes me back!), if you need support on timing, QC-ing, etc.

[riverofspring]

hello all, i'm auspice

during the pandemic, i realized lots of things about myself and gained many new interests, but first and foremost among them was chinese media, and specifically among them baihe because what can i say? i love women.

---

i will voraciously devour novels if given the chance, but i try to practice self-restraint and not read 1 million characters during finals week. i only sometimes succeed. i'm particularly partial to historical/wuxia themes, but anything will do, really.

i had a great time with 如果给你寄一本书 / If I Could Mail You a Book as well as 她的山,她的海 / Her Mountain, Her Sea, which both left deep impressions on me. In recent memory, I loved 千秋梦 / Dream of Ten Thousand Autumns

on my tbr is 玩家请就位 / Players, Please Be on Standby

anyway, you can think of me as hazevi 's partner in crime --- we have a surprise coming up tomorrow :p

[hazevi]

eyooo look who finally decided to throw off her shadow cloak :3

[swoown]

Hi! I have been lurking around on this site for a little while now and am so amazed by the vast amounts of information and activity going around.

I have for many years been in the general BL sphere (Thai, Korean, Japanese) and Danmei, but after reading some snippets of Baihe novels I decided to try and fully get into the waters of the genre:) I am personally a big hurt/comfort person, but have a equally big love of slice-of-life and mystery/adventure stories. As long as there is good character development and an intriguing relationship to invest myself in, I'm mostly open to anything (although I have a very very difficult relationship with tragedies and sad endings...)

Besides my personal interest in the genre, I am at the moment about to start writing my BA project, which will be about Baihe novels. I am not Chinese (I'm from the cold, sad Scandinavia), but I'm a 6. semester Chinastudies student, and recently realised that it is incredibly difficult to find literature about the genre, so I hope to learn more about the genre, its "canon" works and the general themes before fully starting the work:) Of course I don't mean to bring in unrelated topics to this community, but simply to learn from other fans and enjoy the works! Any recommendations or advice on "starter" works is greatly welcomed, and I hope to be able to appreciate the genre even more soon!

[douqi]

Hello and welcome to the comm! You could check out the baihe novels resource post here for an introduction to the genre, and my best stab at what I think are key works and authors (not authoritative, of course). We're also doing a read-along of Ning Yuan's ongoing historical cyberpunk novel (starting here), which may hit some of your hurt/comfort buttons). And of course feel free to look around and post any thoughts, reviews or meta you may have!

[wizardgf]

Hello! I've also been lurking around this comm for a little bit, but I figured I should properly introduce myself!

My name is Ashura and I'm a new baihe fan! I've known about danmei and baihe for a couple of years, but to be honest it's taken me awhile to consume these types of media. My first introductions to baihe were 她們的故事/Their Story and 雙鏡/Couple of Mirrors, and I'm currently working through the 她的山、她的海/Her Mountain, Her Ocean audio drama. 涇渭情殤/Clear and Muddy Loss of Life is also on my TBR list. I'm really partial towards slice of life, historical settings, complex character dynamics and omegaverse, so I'm curious to explore more baihe media that fall under these tropes :3

Finally, I study Sinology in university and am interested in entering the fan translation space, so if anyone has any resources or tips I'd love to hear them! See y'all around~

[douqi]

Welcome Ashura! And thanks for introducing yourself :)

For recommendations, there are lots of options available if you're comfortable reading in Chinese. For English-language fan translations, hazevi has just finished translating a slice-of-life contemporary romance and I've recently finished translating a historical romcom. Both are linked in the top pinned post.

For resources, there was a very active discussion about translation on the cnovels comm some time ago which might be a good starting point. You're also welcome to post specific questions you have on this comm :)

[ein_myria]

Hi, I just joined, new to Baihe, but not to femslash (I have a bunch of femslash recs bookmarked in my DW). I did finish reading "Female General Eldest Princess by Please Don’t Laugh" and "Clear and Muddy Loss of Love by Please Don’t Laugh" and came across Douqi's english subtitles on youtube. :) If you don't mind, I'll add your community to DW F/F Community links.

[douqi]

Welcome to the comm! Do make yourself comfortable and have a look around. Yes, it would be great for the comm to be on there! I'll also add a link to DW F/F Community links to the pinned post

[bobbu]

Howdy, do any of y'all like CEOs?

I'm here from Twitter. I like CEO baihe. I am the self-proclaimed #1 CEO baihe enjoyer. It doesn't necessarily have to be CEO, just 主受+御姐+近代现代 (it just so happens that a lot of CEO baihe hits that criterion).

Beyond that, I'm a big manhua guy. I mostly stick to stuff on Bilibili, but once in a blue moon I'll hop onto Kuaikan and see what's going on there. You name it, I've likely read it (or skimmed through 2-3 chapters before being like "mehhh").

Nice to meet y'all!

[douqi]

Hello and welcome to the comm! Feel free to have a look around, and feel free to post about CEO baihe/baihe manhua/anything baihe-related that takes your fancy!

[anne]

Hello! I'm aegtx everywhere but DW. I'm new to baihe but not f/f. My reading list is as long as my arm, and I'm excited about diving in!

[douqi]

Welcome to the comm! Have a look round, hope you can find something you like. What are the current f/f stories or ships that you're into?