Chinese GL

Kan Chang Ting Wan is an author I'd been thinking of reading for some time, but kept putting off due to how LONG her two best-known novels (both historicals) are. In the end, I decided to try the novella-length A Broken Bough (折枝, pinyin: zhezhi) as a taster of sorts. I was not quite expecting this to be the unholy love-child of The Collapsing Palace (宫倾, pinyin: gong qing) and Burn (烧, pinyin: shao), with the harem politics of the former and the latter's distinctive first-person voice and strategic use of limited point-of-view. It's worth mentioning though, that A Broken Bough ends on rather more positive note than the two novels I've compared it to here.

A Broken Bough is told from the first-person perspective of Changning, one of many princesses born to a promiscuous emperor. On the day of her birth, the peonies in the palace burst into full bloom, even though it was still winter. The soothsayers declared this to be a sign that the empire would one day have a female sovereign, ala Wu Zetian. To prevent this from coming to pass, Changning has basically been sidelined by her father since childhood. At the start of the story, she doesn't even have any reasonable marriage prospects, due to concerns that this would give her a route to power. Changning's main hope lies in making her younger brother emperor — but he's the sort of dreamy, literary type who would much rather spend time with his books and scrolls rather than scheming over the throne. Interestingly, Changning is expressly described as being plain, at least by the standards of palace women.

The turning point in Changning's life comes when her brother falls seriously ill just before he's due to marry the daughter of a respected, but non-corrupt and therefore somewhat impoverished official. The soothsayers suggest that, since the two siblings' fates might be linked, Changning should also be married, to bring her brother some good luck and positive energy. The emperor agrees to this. Unfortunately, all the noblemen of suitable age are already married, and all the noblemen of unsuitable age are children. So they hit upon a most preposterous plan: Changning should take a wife instead. The noble families are told to send unmarried daughters of a suitable age for Changning to look over: naturally, they send only the daughters born of concubines rather than principal wives, and nieces from cadet branches of the family. Changning ends up being chosen by, rather than actively choosing, the beautiful, sly, ambitious Cheng Qing. What ensues is the development of an obsessive, co-dependent relationship between two women who are also deeply mistrustful of each other, featuring (among other things), power games, apposite allusions to Yang Guifei, the use of a dizi as a sex toy, and aggressive sex in the antechamber of a monastery. 

This largely worked for me, though I could perhaps have done more with some more backstory to explain the origin of Cheng Qing's obsession with Changning. The shorter length worked to the story's advantage, as it allowed the author to maintain the claustrophobic, unsettling mood quite effectively. I did initially find the prose style somewhat jarring — my impression of the author is that she's a something of a specialist in historicals, so I was expecting this to be told in a largely 'proper' historical style, but the first chapter was surprisingly modern-colloquial. The effect of this faded away as I read more of the book, though I'm not sure whether it was because most of the modern bits got smoothed out or because I'd got used to it, or some combination of both. I think the kind of people who call themselves 'toxic yuri enjoyers' would definitely like this.

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC.