Chinese GL

The Chinese imperial court was a deeply hierarchical, misogynistic place. The Chinese imperial court of the popular imagination may, in certain respects, be an even more hierarchical, misogynistic place. This presents certain challenges if you're writing a baihe court intrigue novel, because you probably want the main characters to have at least some agency. From my (not that extensive) reading of court intrigue and court intrigue-adjacent novels, here are four approaches you could take.

( very, very mild and vague possible spoilers for the texts under discussion (see tags) )

Let me know if you have any other examples or any other approaches for female characters in historical settings to gain political power! Or whether you see/categorise them differently.

It'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.

( Read more... )

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 Peach Runaway 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)

There's a popular saying that nine out of ten Republican Era stories end in tragedy. Miss Mu and Her Pet Canary (穆小姐与金丝雀, pinyin: mu xiaojie yu jin si que) is that elusive tenth. I went into this novel not quite sure what I would be getting (there's not really a formula for happy Republican Era romances as such), and I'm glad I did, because it's definitely a serious contender for 'best baihe novel I read this year'.

The novel is set in the mid- to late-1920s, in the fictional city of Wenjiang (which has Shanghai vibes). The protagonist is Mu Xing, the titular Miss Mu. Mu Xing comes from a prominent upper-middle-class family, who are fairly progressive for the time. They're also the type of family who are known for philanthropy and good works rather than being absolutely filthy rich (in MDZS terms: think the Lans, rather than the Jins). Her father is a doctor, and both Mu Xing and her older male cousin Mu Yun have just returned from studying abroad in the US, where they both graduated with medical degrees. The path in front of Mu Xing seems clear: she'll marry her fiance Song Youcheng (a childhood friend whom she became engaged to shortly before she went abroad, more because they get on well and are a suitable match age- and status-wise rather than because they're in love), and practise as a doctor at the Mu family's charitable clinic.

An important thing to know about Mu Xing is that she's always been a tomboy, and now that she's grown up, she sees no reason to stop dressing in men's clothes (she does wear women's clothes as well, but does clearly enjoy being out and about in men's clothes). Her friends, old acquaintances and the businesses she patronises regularly know that she's 'that Miss Mu who likes running about in men's clothes'. People who meet her for the first time, however, are likely to mistake her for a man. This sets up her first encounter with her eventual love interest Bai Yan.

Bai Yan is a courtesan indentured to one of the higher-class brothels in the city. At the start of the novel, she's on the prowl for a rich, young, single, credulous man whom she can talk into buying out her indenture, establishing her in a home of her own, and potentially even marrying her. She had been cultivating a suitor called Young Master Cui, but at the start of the novel, she discovers that his father has cut him off from the family funds and arranged for him to marry a young woman from an appropriately wealthy family. Bai Yan decides to break things off with him — but not before she talks him into buying her a load of fancy jewellery as a parting gift (he doesn't know, at the time, that she intends this as a parting gift, being credulous enough to believe that Bai Yan will be wiling to carry on a relationship with him after his marriage). In a masterstroke, she even talks him into buying her farewell gift to him, a pair of cufflinks. Mu Xing, in her young man about town guise, bumps into them at the jeweller's, works out instantly what is going on, and is immediately and deeply impressed by Bai Yan's consummate skill at manipulation.

Mu Xing then makes the acquaintance of a rich young gentleman, a new arrival to Wenjiang, named Tang Yu, who believes her to be a man (Mu Xing doesn't disabuse him of this). The young men of Tang Yu's social circle are a somewhat more hedonistic bunch than Mu Xing is used to, and frequently engage the services of courtesans. It's in this context that she meets Bai Yan again — who, of course, comes to know her as 'Young Master Mu'. It's from here that their relationship unfolds. Mu Xing is initially fascinated by Bai Yan, who's obviously very different from her usual circle of acquaintances. Bai Yan, for her part, decides that the young, earnest, unattached, wealthy 'Young Master Mu' is the perfect target for her.

( some spoilers; mention of suicide )

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC. To my disappointment, the author seems to have stopped writing completely, and this is her only complete full-length baihe novel. I am looking forward to getting stuck into the full-cast audiobook of the novel, especially since they had the good sense to cast Hei Zhi Shao in the role of Mu Xing.

(This isn't strictly about baihe but I'm posting this here anyway since I'll be using a couple of examples from baihe media.)

Let's say you're writing something inspired by or based on a c-novel. And you've come to the exciting part, which is choosing names for your characters. And you find yourself stuck.

Well, not to worry! We have a several-millennia-long tradition of poetry to assist us. All you have to do is this.

Take a line from a Book of Odes poem, or a Tang poem, or really any poem. Then pick out the name-like elements and smoosh them together. Voilà, you've got yourself a name.

Thus, from the Book of Odes the line 蒹葭苍苍, 白露为霜 (pinyin: jianjia cangcang, bailu wei shuang) (Legge's translation: 'The reeds and rushes are deeply green / And the white dew is turned into hoarfrost) gives us Bai Jianjia, which is suitable for either a refined young lady or a courtesan of the high-class, scholarly sort. Also from the Book of Odes, the line 昔我往矣，杨柳依依 (pinyin: xi wo wang yi, yangliu yiyi) (Legge's translation: At first, when we set out / The willows were fresh and green) gives us Liu Yiyi, also a good courtesan or high-class maidservant name (IMO the Book of Odes link might just about make it learned enough to be a young gentlewoman's name, but I don't usually like repeated-syllable names for upper-class or scholarly women, unless it's a nickname).

This trick is pretty commonly used in popular media. The drama version of The Message has a character named (or rather, re-named) He Jianzhu (何剪烛). This is clearly taken from the line 何当共剪西窗烛 (pinyin: he dang gong jian xichuang zhu) from Li Shangyin's poem 'Sending a Letter North on a Rainy Night'(夜雨寄北). The love interest from The Beauty's Blade is called Yu Shengyan (玉生烟), and so is a secondary character from the danmei novel Thousand Autumns, courtesy of the line 蓝田日暖玉生烟 (pinyin: lantian ri nuan yu sheng yan) from another Li Shangyin poem, 'The Brocade Zither' (錦瑟).

'But, douqi,' I hear you cry, 'what if I don't know any Chinese poetry or enough Chinese to know what are appropriate name elements to pick out of verses?'

Ah. Then I'm afraid this post will be of no help at all. Sorry.

Across the Empire (纵横, pinyin: zongheng) is, by webnovel standards, an ancient relic. First published on JJWXC in 2005 (for reference, JJWXC itself was founded in 2003), it's one of the earliest court intrigue novels in the baihe genre. It was actually planned as a trilogy of novels chronicling the life and death of protagonist Lin Zong, but only the first volume was fully written. The author started the second volume, but discontinued it after eighteen chapters. In an addendum to the second volume, she provides an outline of how her planned story would have gone.

The protagonist Lin Zong is an interesting twist on the popular cross-dressing lead. She is, at the start of the novel, the only living child of Prince Chu, one of the emperor's brothers. We're told that, being a very sickly child, she was brought up as a boy in order to ensure her good health (this is a superstition/folk belief/tradition that's still extant in some communities; the idea seems to be that, if you raise a child as the 'opposite' gender, you confuse the malevolent forces responsible for their poor health).* So from a very young age, Lin Zong has been treated (and dresses as) a boy, and her father has even designated her his heir, but everyone knows that she was born a girl. This creates interesting tensions down the line.

*This was also the premise of the 2015 Taiwanese drama Bromance, the most accidentally(?) queer cross-dressing drama I've ever watched. Seriously, the protagonist is easily readable as non-binary up to the very last frame of the drama.

Prince Chu is one of those extremely competent, charismatic, loyalty-inspiring princes who are the bane of their emperor brothers' existences. The emperor therefore devises a loyalty test: he arranges for Lin Zong to be married to a high-ranking young noblewoman named Chu Yanran, to see how Prince Chu will respond. Prince Chu and Lin Zong don't really have a choice but to accept the match (the other option is to kick off and basically start a rebellion), and so we end up with the rather surreal scenario of a lesbian marriage sanctioned, nay compelled, by an otherwise institutionally homophobic state.

( some mild spoilers )

I read the Chinese original of both volumes here and here on JJWXC.

Pre-orders are currently open for the second (and final) volume of university novel Leap into Summer (跃入夏天, pinyin: yue ru xiatian) by Jin Ke (今轲), originally serialised online as I Jump Up and Kiss You (跳起来亲你, pinyin: tiao qilai qin ni). Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:

• Bowenxuan
  
• Kuaile
  
• Wangou

The web version of the novel can be read here on JJWXC.

Pre-orders are also open for the print edition of Republican Era tragedy Memories of a Shanghai Summer (沪夏往事, pinyin: hu xia wangshi) by Shi Ci (是辞). First published online in 2023, this novel has been making a bit of a splash in baihe circles recently, having also been licensed for an full-cast audiobook and an audio drama. This is even more notable given that the author isn't currently under contract with JJWXC. Pre-orders for the print edition can be made via the following bookshops:

• Fengrusong
  
• Hanlin
  
• Kuaile
  
• Manyu
  
• Xinshijiao

The web version of the novel can be read here on JJWXC.

These are both mainland print editions, so will be in simplified Chinese and subject to censorship.

I had vaguely assumed that the Vietnamese edition of Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedia) by Min Ran (闵然) was going to be in two volumes, since that's how many volumes the mainland print edition is in. But no, it turns out the Vietnamese edition is actually three volumes! Details can be found here on publisher Meibooks' Facebook page.

Here's the cover design:



And here are the merch designs:



Order links can be found on this Meibooks post.