Chinese GL

To celebrate New Year, mainland print publisher has been posting handwritten/voice greetings from some of their published authors over the last week or so (including some pretty well-known danmei authors). One of the greetings they posted was a voice greeting from Chu Dao (初岛), author of well-known baihe showbiz tragedy Burn (烧, pinyin: shao).

The video is available here on Weibo, and I've also uploaded it to Google Drive here.

(how can someone who sounds so innocent have done me so much emotional damage, smh)

The production team for baihe live action adaptation When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation being Fireworks of Yesteryear) have somehow contrived to upload it to Bilibili and, more importantly, contrived to have it stay up. They had made, by my count, five or six prior attempts, and the video was taken down by the platform each time.

As of the time of writing, it's still up, and you can watch it behind the cut (or click through to Bilibili for the high-definition version). The full film is about 34 minutes long, and it definitely hews closer to the realist, arthouse end of the GL spectrum rather than the OTT melodramatic one. There are no English subtitles, for obvious reasons (i.e. this is intended for their primary domestic audience, who do not need them), but the team has indicated (in the comments to this Weibo post) that they plan to upload it to YouTube with subtitles at some future date.

( video behind the cut )

The film stars He Lei as Ji Qingqing and Ni Jia as Peng Yun, and is directed by Xen (who, I gather, also self-funded all the production costs). It is based on an AU extra from 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). The novel can be read here on Changpei. A fan-recorded video of the film's post-screening panel discussion (between Ni Jia, Xen and Qi Xiao Huang Shu) can be viewed here.

( a note about the ending )

I recently rewatched an old (well, 2022) video by the Juzi Niannian (more information here), which made such good use of the 'cards on the doorstep' motif from Love Actually and the theme song from queer Taiwanese film Your Name Engraved Herein that I then spent the next few hours pensively listening to as many different covers of said theme song as I could find. The video originally aired here on Bilibili.


The version of the theme song used in the video is performed by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Waa Wei, whom I first became aware of via the MV for her single 'Ophelia', which has queer themes. The full version of the cover is here. Another cover version of the song I liked is this live performance by Taiwanese singer-songwriters and actresses Jolin Tsai and Hebe Tien.

My experience of reading A Difficult Woman (难缠, pinyin: nan chan) was a perfect demonstration of how very dependent on external factors my enjoyment of a book can be. I read it while recovering from a terrible cold, and while I would have found the slightness of the plot and characters somewhat frustrating had I read it while fully healthy, the non-dense prose and very placid proceedings (that is, some dramatic reveals happened to the characters, but I'd seen them coming miles away so I was not at all surprised) were precisely the soothing brain congee (congee for the brain, that is, not congee made from brains) my mind wanted.

A Difficult Woman begins with our protagonist Lu Zhenqiu suspecting her girlfriend Tang Yingxia, an up-and-coming baihe author, of cheating on her with another baihe author, Yu Wen. She promptly moves out of Tang Yingxia's apartment and becomes flatmates with an even more successful baihe author, Jin Shuilan. Tang Yingxia has designated Jin Shuilan as her professional rival; Jin Shuilan seems to barely notice that Tang Yingxia exists (this is not true, as we find out later, but it's certainly the case that Jin Shuilan doesn't see Tang Yingxia as a worthy professional rival). Jin Shuilan has a reputation within baihe circles for being aloof and very exacting, but Lu Zhenqiu finds her unexpectedly easy to get along with.

Lu Zhenqiu is a professional livestreamer. I was initially puzzled as to what she livestreamed about. I could understand people doing product livestreams, gaming livestreams, education/self-help livestreams etc, but Lu Zhenqiu seemed to be livestreaming about... nothing much. Her livestreams consist of chatting with her audience, singing a few songs (she has a nice singing and speaking voice), and occasionally doing some weird competition with other livestreamers where they compete at singing/dancing/doing squats/etc to see who attracts the most rewards from their audience. Following some research, I realised that being a nice, attractive young woman who functions basically as a parasocial magnet for a predominantly youthful audience is apparently a perfectly valid method of making a living in the livestreaming space; as momijizukamori put it, it's basically camming lite. In that moment, I felt very, very old. Around the time she met and began a relationship with Tang Yingxia, Lu Zhenqiu also had hopes of becoming a baihe voice actress, having accepted a couple of secondary roles. Due to a miscommunication between her and the production teams she was working with, however, further roles were not forthcoming.

( read more; technically spoilers, but this is not really the kind of book where spoilers matter )

I read the uncensored traditional Chinese print edition of the novel. The web version of the novel can be found here on JJWXC.

[ETA: Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm and generosity in volunteering your time and skills! I'll leave this post pinned for a week or so in case there are further expressions of interest, but I think we've got enough people on the team to start work. Since Discord seems to work for everyone, I'll start setting up a project server and hope to get it up and running by the end of the week/early next week, then I'll send everyone invites. Thanks again!]

As discussed here, here and here, Soul Sisters (双兔, pinyin: shuang tu) was released recently on iQiyi with MTL subtitles. Some people expressed interest in having/working on proper English subtitles, so this is a post about that.

I'm happy to organise (unless someone else wants to — if so please let me know!) a comm project for putting together English fan subtitles for the show. If you are interested in having/working on them, please make a comment below to indicate this. I will pin this post and leave it up for a couple of weeks. I have not organised a fandom project like this before so please let me know if I've missed anything out or there's something I haven't thought of.

Subtitling tasks

We will need people to do the following jobs:

• Translator: This role involves translating the subtitles from Chinese to English I'm happy to do the bulk of this and to do it by myself if necessary, but it would be helpful to have another person on this task if possible. You would obviously need to be comfortable with quasi-historical Chinese and English.
  
• Editor: This role involves reviewing the subtitles for flow and (if possible accuracy). Ideally I would like two editors, one of whom is comfortable enough with Chinese to check for accuracy and potentially suggest alternative interpretations. However, this is not essential and we could make do with one editor who is comfortable reading just English.
  
• Timer: This role involves creating the subtitle script containing the timings for each line. Familiarity with Chinese is obviously helpful, but I'm not sure it's 100% essential given that the raw videos have Chinese hardsubs that provide reasonably clear indications as to the beginning and end of most lines. It would be helpful to have up to two people doing this task. The timer may also be asked to do some minor typesetting for translations of text that appears on screen but not in dialogue (we can have a discussion as a team about how to best present this text).
  
• Encoder: This role involves combining the subtitle files with the raw video files, if we go for a hardsub release option (see below). One person should be sufficient.
  
• Quality control: The role involves watching through the videos with the subtitles to make sure all is as it should be and to catch typos, errors, etc. One to two people should be sufficient.

If you would like to take on more than one task, you are welcome to do so, and please feel free to say so in the comments.

Raw videos

I have the raw videos for all the episodes in reasonable albeit not best quality. I think these should be sufficient to work from. If anyone is able to get hold of the best-quality versions, please let me know.

Communication

I'm happy to set up a separate comm for project-related communications, or a Discord server if people are comfortable using that. Please also feel free to suggest other communication methods.

Output

We can have a discussion about whether people prefer hardsubbed videos, soft subs, whether to limit it to comm members and our friends, etc. There is also a question about where to host the files (YouTube is probably a no go, due to their copyright strike system). There is a browser extension that I use which will let us overlay soft subs onto iQiyi videos directly, and viewers will be able to access this if they have a subscription to the videos on iQiyi and are prepared to install the browser extension. This is another possible option. I'm vaguely aware that iQiyi has some sort of functionality that allows viewers to submit user-generated subtitles, but one of my red lines is that I don't do free labour for large corporations who cannot be bothered to do it properly themselves.

What to do if you're interested

Comment on this post indicating which task(s) you'd like to take on, any limits on time availability/commitment, and your preferred method(s) of project-related communication.

If you are interested in having subtitles, but don't have the time/capacity to commit to a task, please could you also comment on the post to indicate this, and also indicate your preferred format(s) for viewing the subtitles in. Seeing evidence of enthusiasm is always really encouraging!

The team behind the short film When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation of the title is Fireworks of Yesteryear) has released a trailer, which promises a release date of 19 January. This is a live action adaptation of an AU 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). In a previous social media post, the team indicated that the film was 26 minutes long. It's not known yet what platform it will air on.


Earlier today, Qi Xiao Huang Shu sought her fans' views on whether they would welcome more 'commercial' live action adaptations of her novels (When We Met is not one such, being an independent film self-funded by the director). In the process, she revealed a number of things that might be of interest. Briefly:

• She was approached by a fairly large production company about adapting her first hit novel Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan) as a live action drama. Negotiations had reached a quite advanced stage (to the point that she actually quit her day job) when she got cold feet and pulled out.
  
• Since then, she has had several discussions with producers of mini-dramas about the possibility of adapting Reading the Remnants in that format, but these were ultimately inconclusive. The author was not sure that the story would suit the mini-drama format (due, among other things, to the quite complex special effects work that would be needed) and was also concerned about censorship requirements.
  
• She has also been approached about a possible live action adaptation based on her trilogy of novels set in the baihe voice acting industry (which includes Kissing a Gardenia), but these also came to nothing. She notes that fans she spoke to at the time were quite resistant to having the novels realised on screen, as they did not like the idea of their beloved characters being embodied by flesh-and-blood actors who would never be able to live up to the characters in their imagination.
  
• In the second half of 2024, she was approached by a team who was interested in adapting Kissing a Gardenia. The team intended to distribute it outside China, which would allow them to preserve the romantic storyline explicitly. However, the team also felt that the overall story was not particularly dramatic plot-wise, so wanted to add several more tropey elements to the script. The author was resistant to this, so negotiations did not proceed further.

I've posted a profile of Ning Yuan over here on the cnovels comm. Come and observe the depths of my obsession.

Pre-orders have opened for the second volume of showbiz romance Jiang Yu (江鱼, originally serialised as Those Long Divided Must Soon be United (分久必合, pinyin: fen jiu bi he)) by Yu Shuang (鱼霜). Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:

• Xiaomeihao (the publisher)
  
• Bowenxuan

Also open for pre-order is the second volume of high school baihe manhua Her Mountain, Her Sea (她的山她的海, pinyin: ta de shan, ta de hai) based on the novel of the same title by Fu Hua (扶华), with art by Huo He Zi (火禾子). Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:

• Bowenxuan
  
• Jinse
  
• Lianjin
  
• Shengshi
  
• Xinshijiao
  
• Xiangxue

The novel Her Mountain, Her Sea is currently being translated by comm member riverofspring here.