Two Ning Yuan Novels: Reviews
Mar. 14th, 2025 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
douqi posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
baihe_mediaHaving put this off for quite long enough, I thought I might as well review Ning Yuan's Something I Need to Tell You (有件事想告诉你, pinyin: you jian shi xiang gaosu ni) and Fateful Encounters (逢场入戏, pinyin: feng chang ru xi), especially since they're both set in the entertainment industry — a shared-universe entertainment industry, it turns out, as the main characters from the former novel make an appearance in the latter.
Chronologically, Something I Need to Tell You is the earlier book, as it started serialising in 2015. It's the story of Ye Xiaojun, an up-and-coming scriptwriter who refuses to compromise on her art, and Lu Jingsheng, the young and ambitious CEO of a media company. The two of them first meet under very unpromising circumstances. Ye Xiaojun has just caught her girlfriend, an actress named Gu Lan, cheating on her with a director. As she flees from the scene, overcome with emotion, she runs into Lu Jingsheng, who makes a snide remark. When Ye Xiaojun returns to work (the setup here is that she's the salaried employee of a media company, rather than being a freelancer), she learns that her company has been taken over by a new CEO — who is, of course, Lu Jingsheng. Ye Xiaojun finds Lu Jingsheng's mercenary, ruthlessly commercial approach completely unpalatable. To her shock, she subsequently receives a mysterious email telling her that she and Lu Jingsheng will soon become romantically involved. She continues to receive more emails from her mysterious correspondents (known only as 'bearxxx'), all predicting her future more or less accurately.
This was basically three different novels stuffed into a trenchcoat: a relatively sober, realist story about how two very different people navigate a relationship; a near-melodrama about the worst excesses of the entertainment industry; and a soft sci-fi tale about how knowledge of the future affects relationships. This was an ambitious combination, though I didn't feel it was executed especially well. In particular, what should have been the high point of the novel — how Ye Xiaojun and Lu Jingsheng resolve the fundamental conflict underlying their relationship — was rather a cop-out. It comes after nearly a whole novel of fights and near-breakups due to their fundamental incompatibility in values. Ye Xiaojun is uncompromising when it comes to her art, whereas Lu Jingsheng is mostly interested in what's commercially profitable. Lu Jingsheng is also prepared to do things like luring in investors by offering them the sexual favours of young actresses who are under contract with her company (granted, she makes a point of only doing this with willing actresses), using underhanded business tactics, and sending gangsters after her rivals (who, granted, are more than prepared to do the same to her) — all things which Ye Xiaojun regards with horror. The resolution comes just after a breakup initiated by Ye Xiaojun. Ye Xiaojun learns that her mysterious email correspondent is in fact Lu Jingsheng from a future parallel universe — one in which Ye Xiaojun herself is dead. This is enough to spur her to reunite with Lu Jingsheng again, and neither the novel nor the characters really deal with the issue of Lu Jingsheng's many, many actual crimes and Ye Xiaojun's abhorrence of them. There's only the implication that, now that Lu Jingsheng has become wildly successful, there's no longer a need for her to employ the same tactics again.
This is not to say there aren't high points. One of them (for me, and it may be very much a me thing) is that Ning Yuan does not shy away from depicting the darkness of the entertainment industry, unlike, say, Min Ran's Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai), a novel I kept comparing this one to. Lu Jingsheng's machinations lead directly and indirectly to careers and lives being ruined (granted, the people whose lives and careers were ruined also did their best to ruin Lu Jingsheng's life and career) — in one case, a woman whose scandalous past she's dredged up literally commits suicide in front of her. We're also introduced to a whole host of Harvey Weinstein-alikes, and it's made extremely clear that this is not about sex, it's about power — or rather, it's about sex as a tool for exerting one's power over another person.
Another high point is Lu Jingsheng's best friend, top actress Tong Youning. Tong Youning is flagrantly bisexual, charmingly amoral, devoted to her friends, and absolutely ruthless when it comes to dealing with her enemies. At one point, another powerful female CEO indicates that she'll only work with Lu Jingsheng if Tong Youning sleeps with her. Tong Youning retaliates by kidnapping her (with Lu Jingsheng's help) and sexually humiliating her. Lu Jingsheng and Tong Youning also deal with an assassin who's been sent after Lu Jingsheng by kidnapping her, waterboarding her, and tricking her into believing that they've chopped off her beloved half-brother's dick (look, I did say it gets melodramatically dark). Tong Youning is easily the most compelling character in the whole novel, and for me she basically outshone both Lu Jingsheng and (especially) Ye Xiaojun.
Fateful Encounters, first published in 2020, is a much more straightforward, sweeter, lighter story. The main characters are Chen Ge, an actress whose career has stalled after a promising debut, and Luo Jingyi, a top scriptwriter (Ning Yuan does love her scriptwriter characters). Chen Ge is a long-time admirer of Luo Jingyi, and her debut role was coincidentally in a film written by Luo Jingyi when the latter was much younger. The two of them are thrown together in a countryside-themed reality show being directed by one of Luo Jingyi's friends, and their relationship develops from there, with the twist that Luo Jingyi is appearing under an alias, so Chen Ge doesn't know her true identity at first.
Chen Ge is one of Ning Yuan's ingenues, which is to say she's sweet and earnest, but also determined and resilient, and actively kind to people (with a lot of ingenues, it seems the reader is expected simply to accept that they're good, kind people without the text ever showing us this) but not a pushover. Luo Jingyi has some of the characteristics of a classic jiejie (typically aloof, rich, generally composed, highly fashionable) but with quirks that make her much more human and fun, including a very sharp tongue that she has no compunctions about deploying, moments of extreme smugness (that are often punctured by subsequent events) and occasional entertaining bursts of temper. She also has misophobia, which had been an obstacle in getting into any sort of serious relationship (not that she was trying very hard to have one, or particularly desirous of having one) until she met Chen Ge, who cheerfully accommodates her without her even needing to say anything.
The misophobia does still get in the way of them actually having sex, and the breakthrough comes — because Ning Yuan will always cave to her pulp instincts even when writing sweet contemporary fluff — when Chen Ge is held hostage by a murderer during a film shoot, and Luo Jingyi has to literally run barefoot through the mud to save her and sound the alarm.
Again, Ning Yuan doesn't shy away from the darker parts of the entertainment industry. We learn eventually that Chen Ge was propositioned by a (female) media CEO shortly after her debut. She refuses, and the CEO takes revenge by subtly preventing any good roles from reaching her. But it doesn't dwell on the darkness in the way Something I Need to Tell You does. When the CEO attempts to cause trouble for Chen Ge again, she's handily defeated through a combination of Luo Jingyi's connections and Chen Ge's own earnestness (plus the friends she made along the way). The novel is also deeply concerned with and respectful of craft, whether it's the writer's or the actors's. Luo Jingyi even repeatedly muses to herself that there's a skill to writing a reality series well, and that it's not something she knows a lot about herself. I also enjoyed both Chen Ge and Luo Jingyi's frankness about their own sexual desires, in particular Chen Ge's quite open acknowledgement that yes, she would like her girlfriend to fuck her please. For whatever reason, characters in baihe novels rarely articulate the desire to be fucked in this way, and sometimes the way sex is discussed makes it seem more like a power game between the partners than a expression of honest desire. Also notable is that Luo Jingyi's mother — a bisexual woman who's currently in a relationship with a younger woman — plays a bigger role in the story than I've come to expect of Ning Yuan's mothers (mostly non-existent; in one case a negative influence).
While Fateful Encounters was significantly less ambitious than Something I Need to Tell You, it was much better executed throughout. Lu Jingsheng makes a cameo appearance in Fateful Encounters as an investor in one of Luo Jingyi's films, and Ye Xiaojun also appears briefly at the end as 'legendary scriptwriter Ye Xiaojun' (whom Chen Ge also admires deeply, leading to a brief and entertaining fit of jealousy on Luo Jingyi's part).
I read the Chinese original of Something I Need to Tell You here on JJWXC. For Fateful Encounters, I read the uncensored simplified Chinese print edition. The web version of Fateful Encounters can be found here.
Chronologically, Something I Need to Tell You is the earlier book, as it started serialising in 2015. It's the story of Ye Xiaojun, an up-and-coming scriptwriter who refuses to compromise on her art, and Lu Jingsheng, the young and ambitious CEO of a media company. The two of them first meet under very unpromising circumstances. Ye Xiaojun has just caught her girlfriend, an actress named Gu Lan, cheating on her with a director. As she flees from the scene, overcome with emotion, she runs into Lu Jingsheng, who makes a snide remark. When Ye Xiaojun returns to work (the setup here is that she's the salaried employee of a media company, rather than being a freelancer), she learns that her company has been taken over by a new CEO — who is, of course, Lu Jingsheng. Ye Xiaojun finds Lu Jingsheng's mercenary, ruthlessly commercial approach completely unpalatable. To her shock, she subsequently receives a mysterious email telling her that she and Lu Jingsheng will soon become romantically involved. She continues to receive more emails from her mysterious correspondents (known only as 'bearxxx'), all predicting her future more or less accurately.
This was basically three different novels stuffed into a trenchcoat: a relatively sober, realist story about how two very different people navigate a relationship; a near-melodrama about the worst excesses of the entertainment industry; and a soft sci-fi tale about how knowledge of the future affects relationships. This was an ambitious combination, though I didn't feel it was executed especially well. In particular, what should have been the high point of the novel — how Ye Xiaojun and Lu Jingsheng resolve the fundamental conflict underlying their relationship — was rather a cop-out. It comes after nearly a whole novel of fights and near-breakups due to their fundamental incompatibility in values. Ye Xiaojun is uncompromising when it comes to her art, whereas Lu Jingsheng is mostly interested in what's commercially profitable. Lu Jingsheng is also prepared to do things like luring in investors by offering them the sexual favours of young actresses who are under contract with her company (granted, she makes a point of only doing this with willing actresses), using underhanded business tactics, and sending gangsters after her rivals (who, granted, are more than prepared to do the same to her) — all things which Ye Xiaojun regards with horror. The resolution comes just after a breakup initiated by Ye Xiaojun. Ye Xiaojun learns that her mysterious email correspondent is in fact Lu Jingsheng from a future parallel universe — one in which Ye Xiaojun herself is dead. This is enough to spur her to reunite with Lu Jingsheng again, and neither the novel nor the characters really deal with the issue of Lu Jingsheng's many, many actual crimes and Ye Xiaojun's abhorrence of them. There's only the implication that, now that Lu Jingsheng has become wildly successful, there's no longer a need for her to employ the same tactics again.
This is not to say there aren't high points. One of them (for me, and it may be very much a me thing) is that Ning Yuan does not shy away from depicting the darkness of the entertainment industry, unlike, say, Min Ran's Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai), a novel I kept comparing this one to. Lu Jingsheng's machinations lead directly and indirectly to careers and lives being ruined (granted, the people whose lives and careers were ruined also did their best to ruin Lu Jingsheng's life and career) — in one case, a woman whose scandalous past she's dredged up literally commits suicide in front of her. We're also introduced to a whole host of Harvey Weinstein-alikes, and it's made extremely clear that this is not about sex, it's about power — or rather, it's about sex as a tool for exerting one's power over another person.
Another high point is Lu Jingsheng's best friend, top actress Tong Youning. Tong Youning is flagrantly bisexual, charmingly amoral, devoted to her friends, and absolutely ruthless when it comes to dealing with her enemies. At one point, another powerful female CEO indicates that she'll only work with Lu Jingsheng if Tong Youning sleeps with her. Tong Youning retaliates by kidnapping her (with Lu Jingsheng's help) and sexually humiliating her. Lu Jingsheng and Tong Youning also deal with an assassin who's been sent after Lu Jingsheng by kidnapping her, waterboarding her, and tricking her into believing that they've chopped off her beloved half-brother's dick (look, I did say it gets melodramatically dark). Tong Youning is easily the most compelling character in the whole novel, and for me she basically outshone both Lu Jingsheng and (especially) Ye Xiaojun.
Fateful Encounters, first published in 2020, is a much more straightforward, sweeter, lighter story. The main characters are Chen Ge, an actress whose career has stalled after a promising debut, and Luo Jingyi, a top scriptwriter (Ning Yuan does love her scriptwriter characters). Chen Ge is a long-time admirer of Luo Jingyi, and her debut role was coincidentally in a film written by Luo Jingyi when the latter was much younger. The two of them are thrown together in a countryside-themed reality show being directed by one of Luo Jingyi's friends, and their relationship develops from there, with the twist that Luo Jingyi is appearing under an alias, so Chen Ge doesn't know her true identity at first.
Chen Ge is one of Ning Yuan's ingenues, which is to say she's sweet and earnest, but also determined and resilient, and actively kind to people (with a lot of ingenues, it seems the reader is expected simply to accept that they're good, kind people without the text ever showing us this) but not a pushover. Luo Jingyi has some of the characteristics of a classic jiejie (typically aloof, rich, generally composed, highly fashionable) but with quirks that make her much more human and fun, including a very sharp tongue that she has no compunctions about deploying, moments of extreme smugness (that are often punctured by subsequent events) and occasional entertaining bursts of temper. She also has misophobia, which had been an obstacle in getting into any sort of serious relationship (not that she was trying very hard to have one, or particularly desirous of having one) until she met Chen Ge, who cheerfully accommodates her without her even needing to say anything.
The misophobia does still get in the way of them actually having sex, and the breakthrough comes — because Ning Yuan will always cave to her pulp instincts even when writing sweet contemporary fluff — when Chen Ge is held hostage by a murderer during a film shoot, and Luo Jingyi has to literally run barefoot through the mud to save her and sound the alarm.
Again, Ning Yuan doesn't shy away from the darker parts of the entertainment industry. We learn eventually that Chen Ge was propositioned by a (female) media CEO shortly after her debut. She refuses, and the CEO takes revenge by subtly preventing any good roles from reaching her. But it doesn't dwell on the darkness in the way Something I Need to Tell You does. When the CEO attempts to cause trouble for Chen Ge again, she's handily defeated through a combination of Luo Jingyi's connections and Chen Ge's own earnestness (plus the friends she made along the way). The novel is also deeply concerned with and respectful of craft, whether it's the writer's or the actors's. Luo Jingyi even repeatedly muses to herself that there's a skill to writing a reality series well, and that it's not something she knows a lot about herself. I also enjoyed both Chen Ge and Luo Jingyi's frankness about their own sexual desires, in particular Chen Ge's quite open acknowledgement that yes, she would like her girlfriend to fuck her please. For whatever reason, characters in baihe novels rarely articulate the desire to be fucked in this way, and sometimes the way sex is discussed makes it seem more like a power game between the partners than a expression of honest desire. Also notable is that Luo Jingyi's mother — a bisexual woman who's currently in a relationship with a younger woman — plays a bigger role in the story than I've come to expect of Ning Yuan's mothers (mostly non-existent; in one case a negative influence).
While Fateful Encounters was significantly less ambitious than Something I Need to Tell You, it was much better executed throughout. Lu Jingsheng makes a cameo appearance in Fateful Encounters as an investor in one of Luo Jingyi's films, and Ye Xiaojun also appears briefly at the end as 'legendary scriptwriter Ye Xiaojun' (whom Chen Ge also admires deeply, leading to a brief and entertaining fit of jealousy on Luo Jingyi's part).
I read the Chinese original of Something I Need to Tell You here on JJWXC. For Fateful Encounters, I read the uncensored simplified Chinese print edition. The web version of Fateful Encounters can be found here.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-16 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-17 10:16 pm (UTC)