Chinese GL

I read 19 baihe novels and two baihe novellas this year. Here's the full list in order of when I read them, with links to my reviews where available.

( Read more; spoilers have been kept to a minimum )

If I were giving out awards:

Best reads: To Embers We Return, Ravenous, The Little Alpaca.
Compact and compelling: Scrapped, A Broken Bough.
Fun and mostly light: Hunger. Lust.
Biggest letdowns: Above the Fates, The Wayward Disciple.
LET ME EDIT YOU: In Love with a Substitute.

The Favourite (宠爱, pinyin: chong'ai) is chronologically the last of Da Ying's three xuanhuan novels, which I've mentally classified as 'messy supernatural lesbians behaving very, very badly except for the protagonist, who behaves comparatively well'. The other two, which I've also read, are The Puppet Demon (傀儡妖, pinyin: kuilei yao) and Spring on the River (河上春, pinyin: he shang chun).

The Favourite begins on a ship floating on some unnamed part of some unnamed ocean, where our protagonist Qingchan lives with her two jiejie, Xisha and Duanmu (it becomes clear over the course of the novel that they're not blood-related), and their guardian Chen Niang. They survive, basically, on sex work: every month, Chen Niang steers the ship (can you steer a ship? I'm bad at nautical terms. ANYWAY) into a specific part of the ocean, and a few men board it with food and other necessaries, in exchange for sex with the two older girls. It's understood that Qingchan will also do the same work once she reaches the age of sixteen. On her birthday, however, a vast, luxuriously-appointed ship approaches them, and its owner demands Qingchan's company for the night in exchange for frankly ridiculous quantities of high-grade rice, fine fabrics and other provisions. A month later, the ship returns, and its owner, a woman whose name we later discover is Jiang Wuyou, high-handedly buys Qingchan's indenture from Chen Niang and whisks her away. 

( some mid-book reveals; mention of rape, miscarriage/abortion, gore )

Despite the many plot holes, dropped plot threads, inconsistencies and not particularly effective romance, I did still enjoy this novel, in much the same way as I enjoyed the k-drama Boys Over Flowers. Structurally, it was a lot more coherent than Spring on the River, which was basically supernatural lesbians going round and round in never-ending emotional circles — at least things happened in the first half of The Favourite! I find I cut Da Ying a lot of slack, partly because I'm perennially entertained by the fact that she went from writing these books to writing She Belongs to Me (她属于我, pinyin: ta shuyu wo), a novel about two completely human women decorously resolving any relationship issues they might have through the Power of Communication, and partly because, as a very early writer (her three xuanhuan novels were first released in 2008, 2009 and 2013 respectively), it's interesting to see how she manages the affordances of both the platform and the genre (even if this is not an outright success), and to think about where her influences come from (I felt that both this novel and Spring on the River had shoujo reverse harem vibes, for instance). 

I read the Chinese original of the novel through the uncensored Taiwanese print edition published by morefate. The web version of the novel has been locked in its entirety by JJWXC for content reasons.

I read Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai) more out of a sense that this was a book I ought to read — Min Ran's massive popularity as an author; this novel's massive popularity with the fanbase; the popularity of showbiz romance (of which I had only properly read one very atypical example) as a subgenre among baihe readers generally — rather than any feeling that I would actually enjoy it. As it turned out, I was right: I did not enjoy the novel, although I can perhaps see how it might work for readers who don't have my particular preferences.

The plot of Waiting for You is essentially exes-turned-reunited-lovers courtesy of a handy rebirth and time rewind. The main characters are Ji Youyan, a TV actress who'd been toiling in the mines for some time before finally winning a major acting award and achieving acclaim, and Jing Xiu, a legit major movie star. They met during an idol audition programme, and dated for two years after that before breaking up. At the start of the novel, they've been broken up for five years. Jing Xiu is at her own literal wedding ceremony (to a university classmate of hers, a man named Song Wenyan) when she hears the news that Ji Youyan has died from alcohol poisoning. She abandons her wedding and rushes to Ji Youyan's side, but too late. Then Ji Youyan finds herself waking up, reborn at an earlier point in time — just two years after she broke up with Jing Xiu. She's determined to make amends and win her ex-girlfriend back again, starting with taking part in an acting-focused reality show she and Jing Xiu have both been invited to be judges on.

( Read more; I tried to avoid detailed/major spoilers )

( Somewhat more spoilery bit about the reason for Ji Youyan's rebirth )

So, in short, I did not enjoy this novel and it frustrated me in a number of ways. However, I can see how it would appeal to readers who are after a sort of mostly wish-fulfilment, low-conflict story, with generally good (though not remarkable) prose and characters who are mostly likable (Ji Youyan can be quite entertaining, especially when she's teasing Jing Xiu, or bantering with her assistant, wide-eyed, bad-at-getting-innuendos Lin Yue). Readers who are invested in the social media and celebrity/fan interactions aspects of the entertainment industry will also probably get a lot more out of this novel than I did. I still plan to read Min Ran's other massively popular novel, the age gap romance For the Rest of Our Lives (余生为期, pinyin: yusheng weiqi), but I'm in no real hurry.

I read the Chinese original of the novel on JJWXC here. I'm aware of an English fan translation floating around on the internet, but since quite a lot of is MTL, I will not be dignifying it with a link.