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!

[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).

[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.

[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]

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.

[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...)

[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!

[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. :')

[aurumcalendula]

Thank you <3 Would it be okay if I post about the vids I've made previously?

Ooh! I'm looking forward to hearing about those!

[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]

Yes, by all means! Go for it!

[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).

[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.

[douqi]

Heyyyy you made it here! *waves*

Believe me, I'm also frustrated at the lack of human translations of baihe novels, if only because I can't shove stuff at people while yelling 'READ THIS NOW'. Part of the idea behind the comm is to draw attention to novels I think ought to be translated but which I would/could never do myself. Haha, we're going to have to amicably differ on 'the longer, the better', I think. My experience of reading webnovels shows that, as they approach the 400k-word mark, the risk of them collapsing in on themselves rises exponentially.

[kwirkee76]

*waves enthusiastically* Hi Douqi

I should have paid more attention when I used to go to Chinese school so I could both enjoy all these stories and also help translate so others could get in on the action. Ahh, too bad.

Do you know of (m)any others who are working on translations? Of your caliber, I mean. You’ve spread yourself rather thin … I can’t imagine anyone else as hard working.

I should clarify my position on the word length thing. I agree that it’s difficult to retain one’s interest if the story becomes too long. There’s the risk of repetition or simply writing words for the sake of writing words. It’s just that, when I enjoy a good story, I never want it to end. One of the best things about a good story is knowing when to end it.
I’m looking forward to reading Burn since it seemed to have such an effect on you. I want to be affected, too

[douqi]

Re: other people working on translations, I actually... don't read that many translations (which I really should do more of, to get a sense of what other people are doing and how they do it). Of the ones I have read, I really rate the translator for Exploring an Empty Tomb, and really hope they come back and pick it up again soon!

I'm glad someone is translating Burn, as the book deserves a translation for so many reasons. I'm also glad I'm not the one who has to do it, because I'd basically have to read myself into writing in a style that very much does not come easily or naturally to me. Hoping new chapters of the translation get released soon!

[kwirkee76]

Hahaha! That is a funny notion and something that never really crossed my mind. Of course you’d never actually have the need to read the translations because duh, you can read the original! lol I could have worded the question better; I meant, do you have friends/acquaintances/colleagues whose work you would recommend and who isn’t as visible. Something like that. Anyway. The rec you gave is really really long, isn’t it??? And probably would never get fully translated.

I won’t ask you to expand on why you can’t see yourself translating Burn but what you said is interesting. I never knew translating could be so complex. I thought as long as one knew both languages, it’d be easy-peasy.

[douqi]

That comment about translation is interesting! Maybe I should write a couple of posts about translation at some point.

[kwirkee76]

Please do consider it. It would be highly informative, I think.

Oh, I wanted to ask something unrelated: is it worth watching The Evidence Tells? 32 episodes is a lot to watch for measly crumbs and/or that I would have to base on my own creative and far-reaching imagination. lol

[douqi]

I'd say it's worth watching. The episodes are very short, about 20 minutes each, and they're pretty fast-paced. The gay quotient is lower than Couple of Mirrors but significantly higher than the start of The Message. You might want to check out this recommendation post by aurumcalendula if you haven't already!

[kwirkee76]

Thanks. I'll watch it seeing as I managed to get through The Message (with the help of the ladies being beautiful lol) which was sparse in its barely-there subtext so if this has an itty bitty bit more, then it should be worthwhile.
I wonder if we'll ever get S2 of CoM.

[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.