Author Profile: Ning Yuan
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baihe_mediaIt's difficult to summarise Ning Yuan's writing career in a couple of pithy sentences, in part because it's so long. She's been publishing baihe novels and short stories on JJWXC since at least 2008, and shows no signs of slowing down. Her work covers a broad range of genres, including historical court intrigue, xianxia, sci-fi, urban fantasy, showbiz, contemporary romance, and most recently historical cyberpunk.
Overview
For ease of reference, I mentally divide Ning Yuan's oeuvre into 'works published before 2014' and 'works published since 2014 and later'. A look at her JJWXC author page will make it clear why: the majority of her pre-2014 works have been locked by JJWXC for content reasons, and they mostly consist of a mixture of contemporary realist, contemporary romance, and general historical-set titles. She's filed these particular titles away under the heading 'Ancient History'. Highlights from this early part of her career include the showbiz trilogy Film Star Jianghu (御姐江湖, pinyin: yujie jianghu) and the contemporary realist duology Revolutionary Road (革命之路, pinyin: geming zhi lu; later retitled The Path of Life (生命之路, pinyin: shengming zhi lu)) and its sequel Attraction (吸引力, pinyin: xiyin li). According to deep fandom lore, the Film Star Jianghu trilogy popularised — and possibly even pioneered — the baihe showbiz subgenre. There are some baihe readers who regard these successful early titles as the high point of Ning Yuan's career, and mourn that her writing has become more 'commercial' and less 'authentic' over time. I don't personally agree with them; in my view, Ning Yuan has only become a surer and more confident novelist in the intervening years. I have little time for arguments based on 'authenticity', and the freshness that comes with naivete tends to hold few charms for me. But it is certainly a point of view that has purchase in certain parts of the fandom. Lowlights are her historical titles from this era; it was fandom consensus that she was much better at contemporary settings than historical ones.
From 2014 onwards, Ning Yuan began writing (in my view) more consciously within specific subgenres. These include the food-themed contemporary romance Hunger. Lust (食色, pinyin: shi se) (food-themed stories being a specific subgenre), xianxia novel The Tribulation of thePeach Runaway Blossom (逃花劫, pinyin: tao hua jie), the sci-fi/VR novels Something I Need to Tell You (有件事想告诉你, pinyin: you jian shi xiang gaosu ni), Middle-Aged Love Patch (中年恋爱补丁, pinyin: zhongnian lian'ai buding), Let's Get Married First (可以先结婚, pinyin: keyi xian jiehun) and The Creator's Grace (造物的恩宠, pinyin: zaowu de enchong), historical court intrigue novels At Her Mercy (我为鱼肉, pinyin: wo wei yurou) and The Cultivation of a Prime Minister (养丞, pinyin: yang cheng), urban fantasy novels Things I Didn't Know (我不知道的事, pinyin: wo bu zhidao de shi) and Ravenous (护食, pinyin: hu shi), and most recently the historical cyberpunk novel To Embers We Return (焚情, pinyin: fen qing). At Her Mercy is a particular highlight of this part of her career. It is perhaps the most well-regarded court intrigue novel among present-day baihe readers, and I've often thought that this success must be especially satisfying for her given that her earlier historical titles were not well-received by fans. Her two other super popular titles from this period are Middle-Aged Love Patch and The Creator's Grace.
(As an aside: when I was reading Something I Need to Tell You, I saw a reader comment from 2015. This reader praised Ning Yuan's contemporary novels, but was rather negative about her historical ones. Ning Yuan responded, thanking the reader for complimenting her contemporary novels and promising that her next historical novel would be one worth praising. Two years later, she published At Her Mercy.)
The essential Ning Yuan reader
If I were to assemble a list of 'must read' Ning Yuan starter titles, I would pick the following:
Themes, techniques and style
Pre-existing relationships
One of Ning Yuan's favoured techniques, which she deploys again and again, is to set up a pre-existing relationship between the main couple prior to the start of the story, which isn't necessarily romantic in nature. This is a great trick which I wish more romance authors would adopt (unless it's essential for the story to be about two strangers developing a relationship from scratch), as it gives the characters a clear reason to care about each other and the reader a clear reason to invest in the relationship.
Ning Yuan often likes a setup where the older (or otherwise more senior) one in the couple is in some kind of caretaking or nurturing role relative to the younger (or otherwise more junior) one. In To Embers We Return, for instance, seven-year-old Bian Jin finds Shen Ni seemingly abandoned as a baby on a mountainside, and becomes her primary carer thereafter. In The Creator's Grace, Chi Yu's quasi sister-in-law Ran Jin takes care of the mundane domestic details of their household's everyday life while Chi Yu's much older sister (and Ran Jin's girlfriend) is off running the family conglomerate. Ning Yuan cleverly dispels any qualms the reader might have about unbalanced power dynamics by having the younger half of the couple be the one who is proactive about pursuing a romantic relationship, while the older half is often held back by reservations, guilt, emotional and physical trauma, and in one case, a plot point which that novel shares in common with a Kazuo Ishiguro book.
Sister, sister
It's a cliche by now that every baihe reader wants a hot older jiejie to look after her. No one ever thinks about who looks after the hot older jiejie. As one of nature's jiejies, I'm eternally grateful that Ning Yuan takes it on herself to answer this question in a range of different contexts. The Creator's Grace, Ravenous and To Embers We Return (and I'm sure I can write a whole thematic essay on this once I finish reading all of Ning Yuan's novels) all feature a jiejie figure as one of the main characters. She's strong, she's resilient, if the sky were to fall she could hold it up no problem; she's also incredibly tired and lonely and emotionally fragile, and she would rather die than admit that last fact. The romances are structured in large part around how their love interests recognise their need for care and support and give it to them even when they refuse to accept it, whether by sheer persistence, stubborn cheerful charm, or outright trickery. 'The Care and Feeding of Your Tired Neighbourhood Jiejie': the niche emotional porn I didn't know I needed.
Binders full of lesbians
Some baihe pairings are the only lesbians in the narrative, and in some cases the only women of real importance to the narrative. This is not the case with Ning Yuan. Her main couples are typically surrounded by groups of female friends who are lesbians or bisexual women, and there's often at least one secondary f/f couple in the story, frequently more. Her final boss antagonists are often women as well. Men do turn up, especially in her more realist novels, but they tend to be minor allies, henchpeople or at best secondary antagonists. In Ravenous, the plot required her to describe a man who was an objectively good marriage prospect. The best she could manage was: 'he was still young, and had a full head of hair'.
Prose style
Everyone agrees that Ning Yuan is not one of the genre's foremost prose stylists. Her prose never falls below 'very serviceable', but she's not what you might call the writer's writer. That award, based on what I've read so far, I would give to Liu Yuan Chang Ning (流鸢长凝) for her elegant, unselfconscious historical prose, or Ruo Hua Ci Shu (若花辞树) for her commitment to a near-wenyan register. Other readers will have different preferences, but I don't think any objective reader could seriously consider Ning Yuan one of the best prose stylists in the genre.
However, because of course there are howevers. As a prose writer, Ning Yuan is adaptable in a way that I'm not sure that many webnovelists are: contrast the relatively ornate, stately prose of At Her Mercy with the unadorned, fast-paced thriller-style language of The Creator's Grace to the light-hearted, dramedy stylings of Hunger. Lust. She also has passages of lovely prose that stand out all the more for the relative plainness of the surrounding text. And most of all, she does this trick I'm excited for more of you to experience once more of her work comes out in English. She'll take a perfectly ordinary, everyday sentence — say, 'peaches didn't really taste so bad after all', or 'next time, name me something less rebellious' — and she'll recontextualise it and load it with the weight of all the story that's come before, and she'll stab you right in the heart with it, and it will hurt in the best way imaginable.
Adaptations
A number of Ning Yuan's novels have been licensed for primarily audio drama adaptations. The most notable of these are the adaptations of At Her Mercy, The Creator's Grace and Middle-Aged Love Patch. Middle-Aged Love Patch has, additionally, been adapted as a manhua. Here are links to adaptations of her 2014-and-later novels.
Audio dramas
Manhua
Some of her pre-2014 works have also been adapted as audio dramas, but generally on a non-commercial basis, and their release has been patchy.
Translations
Two of Ning Yuan's novels — At Her Mercy and The Creator's Grace — have been licensed for translation into English by Rosmei, though there is no release date as yet. This has been discussed here, here, here, here and here on the baihe comm. Hunger. Lust has been published in Vietnamese translation by the publisher Amak.
Despite Ning Yuan's longevity and her popularity on the mainland baihe scene, she remains virtually unknown to international readers. There are therefore very few fan translations of her work into English (I understand there are more Vietnamese fan translations, and she's popular with Vietnamese baihe readers). The only one I am aware of is my ongoing translation of To Embers We Return.
There is a (seemingly) ongoing fan translation into English of Perfect Girlfriend Online, the manhua adaptation of Middle-Aged Love Patch, here.
Biographical lore
It's always hard to verify any personal information about webnovelists. However, here's the lore I've gathered on Ning Yuan. She used to work in a major city, likely Beijing, when she was younger, likely in media or entertainment or something adjacent (a main character in Revolutionary Road is a recent university graduate working in magazine publishing in Beijing). Subsequently, she moved to Fujian (presumably her hometown), possibly for a less frenetic lifestyle. My impression is that she still has a day job and does not write full-time. She lives with her longtime girlfriend, whom she was already dating as of 2014. Her girlfriend was previously also a baihe author contracted to JJWXC (though she's no longer actively writing) under the pen name kiliyan, and a keen cook; and Ning Yuan expressly thanks her in the afterword to Hunger. Lust). They have an indeterminate number of cats.
Links and resources
Community reviews of Ning Yuan's novels
(updated version of a piece initially posted on the cnovels comm)
Overview
For ease of reference, I mentally divide Ning Yuan's oeuvre into 'works published before 2014' and 'works published since 2014 and later'. A look at her JJWXC author page will make it clear why: the majority of her pre-2014 works have been locked by JJWXC for content reasons, and they mostly consist of a mixture of contemporary realist, contemporary romance, and general historical-set titles. She's filed these particular titles away under the heading 'Ancient History'. Highlights from this early part of her career include the showbiz trilogy Film Star Jianghu (御姐江湖, pinyin: yujie jianghu) and the contemporary realist duology Revolutionary Road (革命之路, pinyin: geming zhi lu; later retitled The Path of Life (生命之路, pinyin: shengming zhi lu)) and its sequel Attraction (吸引力, pinyin: xiyin li). According to deep fandom lore, the Film Star Jianghu trilogy popularised — and possibly even pioneered — the baihe showbiz subgenre. There are some baihe readers who regard these successful early titles as the high point of Ning Yuan's career, and mourn that her writing has become more 'commercial' and less 'authentic' over time. I don't personally agree with them; in my view, Ning Yuan has only become a surer and more confident novelist in the intervening years. I have little time for arguments based on 'authenticity', and the freshness that comes with naivete tends to hold few charms for me. But it is certainly a point of view that has purchase in certain parts of the fandom. Lowlights are her historical titles from this era; it was fandom consensus that she was much better at contemporary settings than historical ones.
From 2014 onwards, Ning Yuan began writing (in my view) more consciously within specific subgenres. These include the food-themed contemporary romance Hunger. Lust (食色, pinyin: shi se) (food-themed stories being a specific subgenre), xianxia novel The Tribulation of the
(As an aside: when I was reading Something I Need to Tell You, I saw a reader comment from 2015. This reader praised Ning Yuan's contemporary novels, but was rather negative about her historical ones. Ning Yuan responded, thanking the reader for complimenting her contemporary novels and promising that her next historical novel would be one worth praising. Two years later, she published At Her Mercy.)
The essential Ning Yuan reader
If I were to assemble a list of 'must read' Ning Yuan starter titles, I would pick the following:
- The Film Star Jianghu trilogy
- The Revolutionary Road duology
- At Her Mercy
- Middle-Aged Love Patch
- The Creator's Grace
- To Embers We Return
Themes, techniques and style
Pre-existing relationships
One of Ning Yuan's favoured techniques, which she deploys again and again, is to set up a pre-existing relationship between the main couple prior to the start of the story, which isn't necessarily romantic in nature. This is a great trick which I wish more romance authors would adopt (unless it's essential for the story to be about two strangers developing a relationship from scratch), as it gives the characters a clear reason to care about each other and the reader a clear reason to invest in the relationship.
Ning Yuan often likes a setup where the older (or otherwise more senior) one in the couple is in some kind of caretaking or nurturing role relative to the younger (or otherwise more junior) one. In To Embers We Return, for instance, seven-year-old Bian Jin finds Shen Ni seemingly abandoned as a baby on a mountainside, and becomes her primary carer thereafter. In The Creator's Grace, Chi Yu's quasi sister-in-law Ran Jin takes care of the mundane domestic details of their household's everyday life while Chi Yu's much older sister (and Ran Jin's girlfriend) is off running the family conglomerate. Ning Yuan cleverly dispels any qualms the reader might have about unbalanced power dynamics by having the younger half of the couple be the one who is proactive about pursuing a romantic relationship, while the older half is often held back by reservations, guilt, emotional and physical trauma, and in one case, a plot point which that novel shares in common with a Kazuo Ishiguro book.
Sister, sister
It's a cliche by now that every baihe reader wants a hot older jiejie to look after her. No one ever thinks about who looks after the hot older jiejie. As one of nature's jiejies, I'm eternally grateful that Ning Yuan takes it on herself to answer this question in a range of different contexts. The Creator's Grace, Ravenous and To Embers We Return (and I'm sure I can write a whole thematic essay on this once I finish reading all of Ning Yuan's novels) all feature a jiejie figure as one of the main characters. She's strong, she's resilient, if the sky were to fall she could hold it up no problem; she's also incredibly tired and lonely and emotionally fragile, and she would rather die than admit that last fact. The romances are structured in large part around how their love interests recognise their need for care and support and give it to them even when they refuse to accept it, whether by sheer persistence, stubborn cheerful charm, or outright trickery. 'The Care and Feeding of Your Tired Neighbourhood Jiejie': the niche emotional porn I didn't know I needed.
Binders full of lesbians
Some baihe pairings are the only lesbians in the narrative, and in some cases the only women of real importance to the narrative. This is not the case with Ning Yuan. Her main couples are typically surrounded by groups of female friends who are lesbians or bisexual women, and there's often at least one secondary f/f couple in the story, frequently more. Her final boss antagonists are often women as well. Men do turn up, especially in her more realist novels, but they tend to be minor allies, henchpeople or at best secondary antagonists. In Ravenous, the plot required her to describe a man who was an objectively good marriage prospect. The best she could manage was: 'he was still young, and had a full head of hair'.
Prose style
Everyone agrees that Ning Yuan is not one of the genre's foremost prose stylists. Her prose never falls below 'very serviceable', but she's not what you might call the writer's writer. That award, based on what I've read so far, I would give to Liu Yuan Chang Ning (流鸢长凝) for her elegant, unselfconscious historical prose, or Ruo Hua Ci Shu (若花辞树) for her commitment to a near-wenyan register. Other readers will have different preferences, but I don't think any objective reader could seriously consider Ning Yuan one of the best prose stylists in the genre.
However, because of course there are howevers. As a prose writer, Ning Yuan is adaptable in a way that I'm not sure that many webnovelists are: contrast the relatively ornate, stately prose of At Her Mercy with the unadorned, fast-paced thriller-style language of The Creator's Grace to the light-hearted, dramedy stylings of Hunger. Lust. She also has passages of lovely prose that stand out all the more for the relative plainness of the surrounding text. And most of all, she does this trick I'm excited for more of you to experience once more of her work comes out in English. She'll take a perfectly ordinary, everyday sentence — say, 'peaches didn't really taste so bad after all', or 'next time, name me something less rebellious' — and she'll recontextualise it and load it with the weight of all the story that's come before, and she'll stab you right in the heart with it, and it will hurt in the best way imaginable.
Adaptations
A number of Ning Yuan's novels have been licensed for primarily audio drama adaptations. The most notable of these are the adaptations of At Her Mercy, The Creator's Grace and Middle-Aged Love Patch. Middle-Aged Love Patch has, additionally, been adapted as a manhua. Here are links to adaptations of her 2014-and-later novels.
Audio dramas
- At Her Mercy (season one, season two and season three)
- The Creator's Grace (season one and season two)
- Middle-Aged Love Patch (season one, season two and season three)
- The Cultivation of a Prime Minister
- Fateful Encounters
- Let's Get Married First
Manhua
- Middle-Aged Love Patch (under the title Perfect Girlfriend Online)
Some of her pre-2014 works have also been adapted as audio dramas, but generally on a non-commercial basis, and their release has been patchy.
Translations
Two of Ning Yuan's novels — At Her Mercy and The Creator's Grace — have been licensed for translation into English by Rosmei, though there is no release date as yet. This has been discussed here, here, here, here and here on the baihe comm. Hunger. Lust has been published in Vietnamese translation by the publisher Amak.
Despite Ning Yuan's longevity and her popularity on the mainland baihe scene, she remains virtually unknown to international readers. There are therefore very few fan translations of her work into English (I understand there are more Vietnamese fan translations, and she's popular with Vietnamese baihe readers). The only one I am aware of is my ongoing translation of To Embers We Return.
There is a (seemingly) ongoing fan translation into English of Perfect Girlfriend Online, the manhua adaptation of Middle-Aged Love Patch, here.
Biographical lore
It's always hard to verify any personal information about webnovelists. However, here's the lore I've gathered on Ning Yuan. She used to work in a major city, likely Beijing, when she was younger, likely in media or entertainment or something adjacent (a main character in Revolutionary Road is a recent university graduate working in magazine publishing in Beijing). Subsequently, she moved to Fujian (presumably her hometown), possibly for a less frenetic lifestyle. My impression is that she still has a day job and does not write full-time. She lives with her longtime girlfriend, whom she was already dating as of 2014. Her girlfriend was previously also a baihe author contracted to JJWXC (though she's no longer actively writing) under the pen name kiliyan, and a keen cook; and Ning Yuan expressly thanks her in the afterword to Hunger. Lust). They have an indeterminate number of cats.
Links and resources
- General Ning Yuan information carrd
- Carrd (and DW post) for At Her Mercy
- Carrd for To Embers We Return
Community reviews of Ning Yuan's novels
- The Tribulation of the
PeachRunaway Blossom (brief review) - The Creator's Grace (brief review)
- Revolutionary Road aka The Path of Life
- Ravenous
- Hunger. Lust
- To Embers We Return
- Something I Need to Tell You
- Fateful Encounters
(updated version of a piece initially posted on the cnovels comm)
Tags:
- authors: liu yuan chang ning 流鸢长凝,
- authors: ning yuan 宁远,
- authors: ruo hua ci shu 若花辞树,
- novels: at her mercy 我为鱼肉,
- novels: film star jianghu 御姐江湖,
- novels: hunger lust 食色,
- novels: let's get married first 可以先结婚,
- novels: middle-aged love patch 中年恋爱补丁,
- novels: ravenous 护食,
- novels: revolutionary road 革命之路,
- novels: something i need to tell you 有件事,
- novels: the creator's grace 造物的恩宠,
- novels: the cultivation of a prime minis,
- novels: the path of life 生命之路,
- novels: the tribulation of the peach run,
- novels: things i didn't know 我不知道的事,
- novels: to embers we return 焚情
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Date: 2025-04-30 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-02 08:41 pm (UTC)