baihe_media | Entries tagged with authors: ning yuan 宁远

yuerstruly and I came up with this (extremely short, and not all danmei) list for fun. We were seriously hampered in this task by the fact that neither of us reads all that much danmei (and in fact, such danmei I've read consists mainly of the Erha and MDZS sex scenes, at the instigation of friends who wanted to know if they were sexy in the original). There's also the usual problem that there are no non-MTL translations for most of the baihe novels in the list. But ANYWAY.

If you liked Sha Po Lang, you might also like Minister Xie (谢相, pinyin: xie xiang) by Ruo Hua Ci Shu (若花辞树). In Minister Xie, teenage emperor Liu Zao tries to get to grips with ruling an empire while also doing her best to turn her prime minister Xie Yi (who is 14 years older than her, and also her sort-of aunt) into her wife. I have been reliably informed that she is even more Obsessed and Dramatique about the latter task than Changgeng is in relation to Gu Yun. Brief reviews are available here and here.
If you liked Erha, you might also like the first 40% of The Abandoned (弃仙, pinyin: qi xian) by Mu Feng Qing Nian (沐枫轻年). Featuring extreme xianxia shizunfuckery and multiple rebirths, the first chapter of The Abandoned alone has the protagonist masturbating to a painting of her shizun, a curse that's basically the xianxia version of sex pollen, multiple instances of hurt/comfort, stratospheric levels of unhealthy disciple/shizun co-dependence, a double rebirth, the protagonist allowing her shizun to stab her in the shoulder so that she could get close enough to kiss her shizun, and the protagonist stealing her shizun's jade pendant for use as a masturbation aid. I say the first 40% because the remainder of the novel is unfortunately a bit of a drag (though for all I know, the back half of Erha also overstays its welcome). Brief review here.
If you liked SVSSS, you might also like An Incantation for Subduing a Dragon/Dragon Subjugation Incantation (降龙诀, pinyin: xiang long jue) by Shi Wei Yue Shang (时微月上). Protagonist Luo Qingci transmigrates into a xianxia novel and into the body of female lead Ruan Li's evil, conniving shizun. Being genre savvy, Luo Qingci tries her best to avoid the character's canonical grisly fate, only to discover that her disciple might just be falling in love with her. Oh, and Ruan Li is also a dragon. Ongoing fan translation here.
If you liked Qiang Jin Jiu, you might also like At Her Mercy (我为鱼肉, pinyin: wo wei yurou) by Ning Yuan (宁远). Except that everyone in At Her Mercy is evil. An English-language translation of At Her Mercy has been licensed by Rosmei (under the title At the World's Mercy), though the publication date is not yet known.

And now we come to the non-danmei though still danmei-adjacent comps:

If you liked Nirvana in Fire/The Langya List, you might also like At Her Mercy, except that as noted above, everyone in At Her Mercy is evil.
If you liked the Daomu Biji/The Lost Tomb series, you might also like Exploring an Empty Tomb (探虚陵, pinyin: tan xu ling) by Jun Sola (君sola) and Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔). Obviously I don't know anything about the Daomu Biji series except that they're tomb-raiding novels, and both Exploring an Empty Tomb and Reading the Remnants are also tomb-raiding novels, so... close enough, I hope? Exploring an Empty Tomb is also literally millions of words long. A partial fan translation of Exploring an Empty Tomb is available here. A partial fan translation of Reading the Remnants is available here, and a fuller one here.

Comment with your own comps, if you have them! Also, feel free to post a danmei title, say what you liked about it and/or what its most notable qualities are, and people who read more baihe can hopefully find some comps for you!

douqi

Having put this off for quite long enough, I thought I might as well review Ning Yuan's Something I Need to Tell You (有件事想告诉你, pinyin: you jian shi xiang gaosu ni) and Fateful Encounters (逢场入戏, pinyin: feng chang ru xi), especially since they're both set in the entertainment industry — a shared-universe entertainment industry, it turns out, as the main characters from the former novel make an appearance in the latter.

Chronologically, Something I Need to Tell You is the earlier book, as it started serialising in 2015. It's the story of Ye Xiaojun, an up-and-coming scriptwriter who refuses to compromise on her art, and Lu Jingsheng, the young and ambitious CEO of a media company. The two of them first meet under very unpromising circumstances. Ye Xiaojun has just caught her girlfriend, an actress named Gu Lan, cheating on her with a director. As she flees from the scene, overcome with emotion, she runs into Lu Jingsheng, who makes a snide remark. When Ye Xiaojun returns to work (the setup here is that she's the salaried employee of a media company, rather than being a freelancer), she learns that her company has been taken over by a new CEO — who is, of course, Lu Jingsheng. Ye Xiaojun finds Lu Jingsheng's mercenary, ruthlessly commercial approach completely unpalatable. To her shock, she subsequently receives a mysterious email telling her that she and Lu Jingsheng will soon become romantically involved. She continues to receive more emails from her mysterious correspondents (known only as 'bearxxx'), all predicting her future more or less accurately.

( possible spoilers for Something I Need to Tell You )

Fateful Encounters, first published in 2020, is a much more straightforward, sweeter, lighter story. The main characters are Chen Ge, an actress whose career has stalled after a promising debut, and Luo Jingyi, a top scriptwriter (Ning Yuan does love her scriptwriter characters). Chen Ge is a long-time admirer of Luo Jingyi, and her debut role was coincidentally in a film written by Luo Jingyi when the latter was much younger. The two of them are thrown together in a countryside-themed reality show being directed by one of Luo Jingyi's friends, and their relationship develops from there, with the twist that Luo Jingyi is appearing under an alias, so Chen Ge doesn't know her true identity at first.

Chen Ge is one of Ning Yuan's ingenues, which is to say she's sweet and earnest, but also determined and resilient, and actively kind to people (with a lot of ingenues, it seems the reader is expected simply to accept that they're good, kind people without the text ever showing us this) but not a pushover. Luo Jingyi has some of the characteristics of a classic jiejie (typically aloof, rich, generally composed, highly fashionable) but with quirks that make her much more human and fun, including a very sharp tongue that she has no compunctions about deploying, moments of extreme smugness (that are often punctured by subsequent events) and occasional entertaining bursts of temper. She also has misophobia, which had been an obstacle in getting into any sort of serious relationship (not that she was trying very hard to have one, or particularly desirous of having one) until she met Chen Ge, who cheerfully accommodates her without her even needing to say anything.

( possible spoilers for Fateful Encounters )

While Fateful Encounters was significantly less ambitious than Something I Need to Tell You, it was much better executed throughout. Lu Jingsheng makes a cameo appearance in Fateful Encounters as an investor in one of Luo Jingyi's films, and Ye Xiaojun also appears briefly at the end as 'legendary scriptwriter Ye Xiaojun' (whom Chen Ge also admires deeply, leading to a brief and entertaining fit of jealousy on Luo Jingyi's part).

I read the Chinese original of Something I Need to Tell You here on JJWXC. For Fateful Encounters, I read the uncensored simplified Chinese print edition. The web version of Fateful Encounters can be found here.

douqi

This article by Xueting C. Ni ('Beyond Liu Cixin: 5 New Translated Chinese SFF Books') in the SFF magazine Reactor (formerly Tor.com) mentions Ning Yuan's To Embers We Return towards the end!

Here's the relevant excerpt:

The fan favourite author, Ning Yuan has created an amazing story in her To The Embers We Return, about an imperial machinist trying to fix her lover, an injured and broken warrior who has lost her memory. Another title which I really feel the English reader deserves to get their hands on. Until the Anglophone publishing world starts to spread its net a little wider, we have to rely on the talent and tenacity of fan translators, such as douqi, to keep Embers burning.

I can't swear that this is the very first time baihe has been discussed (if only briefly) in an Anglophone SFF outlet. But I can't swear that it isn't, either. Despite my vicariously complicated feelings about Tor.com, I'm overall quite chuffed by this.

(h/t to

anne, who first posted about it on the

c_ent comm!)

douqi

There is! Fan art! For To Embers We Return! By the amazing

guoldu on Bluesky (aka

skuzzybunny).

Here's Shen Ni welcoming the reader to the empire:

To Embers We Return fan art by guoldu/skuzzybunny

(originally posted here)

And here's Shen Ni from the first chapter, on the way to collect her soon-to-be wife from jail.

Now excuse me while I continue gazing dreamily at the art.

douqi

2025 sees me continuing to over-engineer my reading lists. Currently the baihe part of the list is looking like this:

Across the Empire (纵横, pinyin: zongheng) by Lin Cuo (林错). Old-school (this was published in 2005!) court intrigue. Supposed to be extremely clever and plotty.
The Empty Ship (空船, pinyin: kong chuan) by Niu Er Er (牛尔尔). Contemporary realist, which a mainland friend of mine really liked. Sadly, the author for some reason received so much hate and harassment online that she's stopped writing.
That Cultivator Disgusts Me (本座对她感到恶心, pinyin: benzuo dui ta gandao exin) by Shi Lu Ke (食鹿客). A xianxia novel with rebirth. Shi Lu Ke has written three fairly well-received xianxia novels in the last few years so I'm interested in checking out her work.
Fateful Encounters (逢场入戏, pinyin: feng chang ru xi) by Ning Yuan (宁远). Obviously I had to have a Ning Yuan novel in here, and this is one I actually own in print (it came with a postcard with her signature!). This is billed as fluffy showbiz romance. Interested in seeing how that turns out, especially since Ning Yuan's depiction of entertainment industry settings tend towards the dark and seedy, in the novels I've read so far.
Miss Mu and Her Pet Canary (穆小姐与金丝雀, pinyin: mu xiaojie yu jinsi que) by Jin An (靳安). Republican Era romance between the titular Miss Mu, who's just returned from medical school abroad, and a courtesan.
In the Starsriver (月祈, pinyin: yue qi) by Yue Xiao Yi (月小伊). Space opera by a Taiwanese baihe author, and I know literally nothing else about it or her (I need to learn more about Taiwanese baihe, clearly).

Other than Ning Yuan, everyone else on the list is a new-to-me author so I'm pretty excited to get stuck in.

douqi

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.

douqi

I've posted a profile of Ning Yuan over here on the

cnovels comm. Come and observe the depths of my obsession.

yuerstruly

From political intrigue to showbiz, from sci-fi to coming-of-age, Ning Yuan covers just about every subgenre of baihe novels you can find, and it’s no surprise that she’s brought a genre breakthrough with her latest completed novel, To Embers We Return, a historical cyberpunk novel. Wait, historical cyberpunk? How does that work? If you didn’t believe this could exist, well, Ning Yuan did it, and executed it well beyond my expectations, and perhaps surpassed all her readers’ expectations. To Embers We Return is an action-packed yet romantic novel at its core, and if you are interested in a cast of women attempting to navigate a society that welcomes and honors their feats with positions of power but challenges their core beliefs, then this novel is for you. There are also three side couples that play important roles, both their characters and relationships deeply intertwined with the plot. The plot pushes the romance, and the romance pushes the plot.

As I am somehow terrible with summaries (and making it sound better than an existing one for a beautiful translation), I will quote Douqi’s synopsis here:

When Shen Ni, the empire’s foremost machinist, returns home victorious from battle against their long-standing foe, the emperor showers her with rewards, including the hand in marriage of the woman she had loved in her youth — Bian Jin…Shen Ni takes on the onerous task of retrieving Bian Jin’s lost memories and repairing her much-battered cybernetic spine and neural core, but Bian Jin seems to be keeping something back. Can they trust each other? And can they trust the empire?

The novel’s beginning stage starts off mellow, with much of the setting being Chang’an, the empire’s capital. This is, however, nothing to worry about, as the exciting gradual worldbuilding in these chapters make up for what some people might classify as a slow start. This doesn’t mean the first volume isn’t action-packed! The Black Box virus that infiltrates the entire empire and lands beyond is a consistent threat within the city, even with its so-called fortified walls, so we get to see much of the main cast facing it head-on. The setup for the romance subplots take place here, and we get to see four different couples, all bitterly sweet, with different flavors of push-and-pull. The second volume, which takes place outside the city, rides on the setup of the primary conflict, which is the Black Box virus making rounds even in hard-to-detect corners of the world. It also further develops the romance, and every pair contributes to the overall plot.

Ning Yuan challenged herself with this novel, and though it sits at 832k words, it is in fact one of her shorter plot-heavy historical novels, with At Her Mercy sitting at 1.24 million words and The Cultivation of a Prime Minister sitting at 1.71 million words. It is also a much more digestable read, and keeps you hooked from the beginning. While I wouldn’t say Ning Yuan is particularly praised as a prose stylist, her writing gets the job done, and she hits all the emotional beats where you want them to be. She has mentioned that To Embers We Return was a challenge for her, as it’s something she has never tried before. I commend her for her efforts.

My only gripe with this novel was the pacing—as I have mentioned earlier, the novel starts out on the mellower end, especially compared to the latter half of the plot development. This was, however, not a problem, compared to the last 7% of the main text, which felt somewhat rushed. I believe she stuck the landing, but the resolution was bordering deus ex machina. When I reached the ~500k mark, I thought that she wouldn’t be finishing the novel at less than one million words, and though the plot took a sharp swerve that allowed a sooner resolution, I think more could have been done. Taking this into account, I would probably rate this a 9.2/10. It’s above a 9 for me, but I’m not sure if it quite hit that 9.5 or 10 mark. Still, I would recommend this to anyone potentially interested in the plot or genre, and Ning Yuan as a writer makes many callbacks sprinkled throughout the text, which will leave you mindblown.

P.S. The aesthetics I imagine in my head are Xianzhou Luofu technology meets Court of Fontaine Underground area.

neuxue

I know the novel has finished serialising and some of you have already finished reading it, but I've been having fun catching up in the comments of the previous chapter-by-chapter discussions so here's another read-along post. Whether you're also planning to binge-read the whole thing now that it's finished, or have already read it and want to relive the fun, or are following via

douqi's translation, come and join me!

Note: I will not be writing detailed chapter summaries because I'd like to finish the novel sometime this decade, but I'll try to give at least brief notes on what happens, to help keep track of where in the story we are. I might also switch to 20 chapters at a time rather than 10 to keep the number of posts manageable but want to get to a nice multiple of 20 first.

Discussion of Chapters 1 to 10 can be found here.

Discussion of Chapters 11 to 20 can be found here.

Discussion of Chapters 21 to 30 can be found here.

The link to the novel on JJWXC is here;

douqi's ongoing translation is here.

douqi

Today Ning Yuan nearly gave me a heart attack by posting on Weibo that she was hoping to wrap up To Embers We Return by the end of the month. Because I have no idea how she's going to pull that off, short of dropping 30k-word chunks of text on us per day. Currently she's giving us 5k to 6k per day, which is generous but still well short of the length she'd need to wrap things up satisfactorily. I've been following the novel as it serialises, and while I feel we're definitely closer to the end than the beginning, I'd have estimated that we're only about 65% of the way in. She's also just introduced a major plot complication (which I love but also am now worried about it not being properly resolved), and one of the secondary couples has just had their first kiss. And there's just so many plot threads that need dealing with, at least some of which — crucially — didn't even need to be in the novel unless she was planning to address them.

I was not alone in panicking over the prospect of a 'rocks fall, everyone dies' hasty ending. A number of other readers responded to the post similarly. Ning Yuan popped in to reassure one reader that 'I'm not rushing; everything that needs to be written will be properly written, if I can't finish it by the end of the month, I'll aim for next month.' But even December seems like a huge stretch, even if she starts posting multiple chapters a day (which to be fair she did previously suggest she might eventually do).

Anyway, we shall see. I haven't read all of Ning Yuan's novels, but she's stuck the landing on every single one I've read so far. Structurally, she's one of the most competent webnovelists I've read. Still, I was not expecting such a rapid reminder that translating a novel that's still serialising is a bad, bad idea. Oh well, I knew that going in, so there's absolutely no one I can blame except myself. I swear, if I'm going to spend the next five years of my life translating this novel, and the five years after that writing fix-it fic, I... well, I'll do it, but that doesn't mean I won't be complaining about it the whole way.

douqi

Very against my better judgment and in breach of all my usual rules (never translate a novel that's still ongoing being the top one), I've started translating Ning Yuan's currently-serialising historical cyberpunk baihe novel To Embers We Return (焚情, pinyin: fen qing). This is primarily for the purpose of making people scream as loudly over Chapters 17 and 18 (and a bunch of other chapters, actually make that most of them) as I did.

The first chapter is now up, together with the timeline and dramatis personae (to be updated as new events and characters are revealed). You can read it here.

Based on my current work rate, a new chapter should be posted every ten days or so. I don't plan on making myself work faster, as it would both undermine the quality of the translation and negatively impact my enjoyment of the process (and I am enjoying it, at least so far, though I did spend much of the morning trying and failing to figure out the difference between two shades of red mentioned in the novel).

For people who find these things useful, there's also a NovelUpdates page and a carrd.

There's an official summary for the novel on its JJWXC page, which I translated here. Here's a slightly more Anglo-publishing-style synopsis that I wrote for the translation's landing page and the carrd:

'How I fixed my wife: I opened her up and put my heart into her body.'

It's the Tang Dynasty, but not as you know it. Hovercars criss-cross the sky; drones whisk back and forth; and the commander of the city guard's favoured weapon is a Gatling gun. The rich augment themselves with a wide array of cybernetic implants, while the poor have to scrimp and save for even the most basic prosthetics. The empire's machinists make a lucrative living crafting, installing and maintaining implants and neural modules.

When Shen Ni, the empire’s foremost machinist, returns home victorious from battle against their long-standing foe, the emperor showers her with rewards, including the hand in marriage of the woman she had loved in her youth — Bian Jin.

Bian Jin had once been the empire’s sharpest blade: a weapon in human form whose very name made their enemies cower. After a string of near-fatal battlefield injuries, however, she’s battered, broken, and stands accused of high treason, though she claims to have no memory of what transpired. Shen Ni takes on the onerous task of retrieving Bian Jin's lost memories and repairing her much-battered cybernetic spine and neural core, but Bian Jin seems to be keeping something back. Can they trust each other? And can they trust the empire?

Veteran baihe author Ning Yuan’s most ambitious work yet, this historical cyberpunk novel tells the story of a group of determined women whose lives become ever more intertwined as they seek to uncover secrets both past and future, and make a place for themselves in a turbulent world.

My current estimate is that it's going to take me upwards of five years to finish translating this (if she ends it at the length I think she's going to end it at — she could surprise me, it's happened before!), so I'm going to take this opportunity to wish myself continued good health. May I not regret this very ill-advised life choice.

douqi

It took me three tries to get into this crime thriller, mainly due to work stress, not helped by the fact that I was simultaneously following the serialisation of To Embers We Return (焚情, pinyin: fen qing) by Ning Yuan (宁远) (which is so much more my thing). It was... fine, I guess? Maybe because I wasn't in the right frame of mind to engage with it, but I found both the plot and the romance (especially the romance) rather unsatisfying.

An Endless Story (有终, pinyin: you zhong) (fun fact: An Endless Story was the publisher's chosen English title for the print edition of the novel, but the literal translation of the Chinese title means 'there is an ending') features the central pairing of police captain Shen Zhuoyan and her 'shijie', data analyst Huang Zhen — so-called because Huang Zhen was a couple of years ahead of Shen Zhuoyan at the police academy. Shen Zhuoyan is the reserved one with the androgynous-to-masc presentation; she can often be warm in manner to subordinates, witnesses, members of the public, etc, but that's quite a surface thing and she never shares anything deep with them. Huang Zhen is the fashionable, femme bombshell, but also more than capable of handling herself in a physical altercation. It's clear from the beginning of the novel that they both know each other well and have a fraught relationship. Over the course of the book, it's revealed that this is linked back to an incident which took place when they were teenagers, and left its mark on them. The incident, it turns out, is also linked to the series of crimes which they solve in the novel.

( Read more; major spoilers )

The novel has an interesting serialisation and publication history. It was initially serialised on the author's Weibo account (now deleted). Before the Weibo serialisation was complete, it was licensed for print publication, and the publisher promoted it quite heavily. The author then began to serialise it on JJWXC, and it now appears to be complete (even if it isn't marked 'complete'). I read the web version of the novel on JJWXC, and also read the print-only exclusive post-ending extra, which came as a little booklet with the mainland Chinese print edition of the novel.

douqi

Rosmei has revealed the covers for all planned eight volumes of Ning Yuan's court intrigue baihe novel At Her Mercy/At the World's Merch (我为鱼肉, pinyin: wo wei yurou). Per previous practice, they did not provide any further information about the novel in their cover reveal tweet, so once again I resigned myself to doing some free marketing and promotional work for a commercial entity. The cover designs are as follows:

douqi

Fanjiao, the specialist platform for baihe audio content, celebrated its sixth anniversary a couple of weeks ago with a video featuring congratulatory messages from 49 baihe voice actresses. As I did with last year's video, here's a quick rundown of the voice actresses and their notable roles (I'll link back to the post about the fifth anniversary video for those voice actresses who were also featured in that).

I've uploaded the video to YouTube for ease of embedding; the original video can be viewed here on Weibo. Again, there are currently no English subtitles, but if anyone is interested in subtitling it, I'm happy to provide support!

Watch on YouTube

( Read more... )

douqi

My baihe TBR for the next couple of months or so is looking like this:

Something I Need to Tell You (有件事想告诉你, pinyin: you jian shi xiang gaosu ni) by Ning Yuan (宁远), which is tagged as sci-fi and seems to be a time-travel/time loop/parallel universes situation.
A Difficult Woman (难缠, pinyin: nan chan) by Yu Shuang (鱼霜), a contemporary romance in which a woman moves out of the house she shares with her girlfriend after discovering that the latter has been cheating on her, only to move into a house owned by her girlfriend's arch-rival. The premise doesn't sound particularly gripping (understatement of the year), but I do own the uncensored print edition, so it seems a shame not to read it, and I did like a novel I previously read by the same author, so.
Serenade of Tranquility (清平乐, pinyin: qingping yue) by Ruo Hua Ci Shu (若花辞树), a historical novel with (I believe) a tragic ending. I like this author's historical writing and I liked the first 60% of her best-known novel Minister Xie (谢相, pinyin: xie xiang), and I've been meaning to read more work by her.
An Endless Story (有终, pinyin: you zhong) by Xiao Xie Chun Feng (小谢春风), a crime thriller. Picked it mainly because I wanted something modern but genre (as opposed to contemporary romance), and also it's significantly shorter than everything else on this list. Plus, the publisher of the print edition had the temerity to release a 'special Christmas edition' mere months after releasing the standard edition, so I wanted to see if it was worth all that hyping up.
In Love with a Substitute (和替身谈恋爱, pinyin: he tishen tan lian'ai) by Xiao Tan Luan (小檀栾), a quick transmigration novel. Artbaited (which I rarely am) into putting this on my TBR by the audio drama adaptation, which seems to be aiming to create a new poster for each 'world'.
The Little Alpaca (小羊驼, pinyin: xiao yangtuo) by Wu Liao Dao Di (无聊到底), where the protagonist transmigrates into a historical novel... and into the body of the villainess' pet alpaca (could technically be her pet vicuña instead, I guess. Someone previously asked me how on earth an alpaca/vicuña got to historical China, and all I could do was shrug and say, the same way potatoes and chili peppers got to historical China in The Untamed).

Feel free to point at, laugh at or otherwise judge my reading decisions, and tell me which one you think I should read first (although it's probably going to be the alpaca one, since several people have already expressed curiosity about it).

douqi

I had a lot of fun with this contemporary (for a given value of contemporary; it's set and written in 2014) food-themed romance, which had great banter between the leads, excellent food writing, and some genuinely touching emotional moments, both romantic and otherwise. It's still one of Ning Yuan's more 'realist' novels, but is overall gentler, sweeter and smoother around the edges than her earlier The Path of Life (生命之路, pinyin: shengming zhi lu) (reviewed here ).

( read more; mild spoilers )

Anyway, this has now vaulted into first place in the list of the food-themed baihe novels I've read (not that many), followed in second place by A Taste of You (食局, pinyin: shi ju) by Si Bai Ba Shi Si (四百八十寺) and in a very distant last by Xiao Bao (晓暴)'s The Movie Star Puts On 1.5 Kilos a Week (影后一周胖三斤, pinyin: yinghou yi zhou pang san jin).

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC, under the revised title Hunger (or Food; 食, pinyin: shi). Sex scenes have been excised from some of the chapters in the current JJWXC version of the novel, so I had to read them on one of the somewhat less offensive pirate sites, here. At the time of writing the novel, the author also posted an explicit sex scene (meant to fit in Chapter 64) to Lofter. The chapter has since been removed from Lofter, but I've managed to save a copy of it from elsewhere and uploaded it here (I really liked this sex scene, which was both very tender and felt very true to the characters).

douqi

My brain being too fried for anything heavily words-based this week, I thought I would put together a collection of baihe audio drama art by the artist Nongmin Shanquan (农民山泉), whose distinctive and instantly recognisable art style sets her work apart from what the cookie-cutter prettiness that dominates much of the genre.

( pictures under the cut )

Check out the artist's Weibo here for sketches, fan art, private commissions, and general updates.

Note: The artist's handle is almost certainly a riff on Nongfu Spring (农夫山泉, pinyin: nongfun shanquan), China's most popular bottled water brand. If I had ten pence for each time someone associated with Chinese GL decided to name herself after a well-known domestic beverage brand, I would have twenty pence, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice (the other namer-of-self-after-popular-beverage-brand being, of course, the actress/cosplayer formerly known as Wang Laoji, star of an absurd number of GL mini-dramas, who these days is officially credited as Wang Xuexi (王学习) and known to her fans as Jiji (吉吉)).

douqi

Discussion of Chapters 1 to 10 can be found here.

Discussion of Chapters 11 to 20 can be found here.

The link to the novel on JJWXC is here.

douqi

It's the 21st anniversary of JJWXC's founding, so the platform released four videos of its various (I assume sufficiently big name) authors delivering congratulatory messages. The sole, solitary baihe author featured was Ning Yuan (sandwiched between big name danmei authors Musuli and priest). You can see her bit of the video here.

The full video is available here on Weibo as well as here on Google Drive.

douqi

Pre-orders open on 29 June for the uncensored, traditional Chinese print edition of action thriller Miss Forensics (我亲爱的法医小姐, pinyin: wo qin'ai de fayi xiaojie) by Jiu Nuan Chun Shen (酒暖春深), the closest thing baihe has to a megahit novel. It features a push-pull relationship between Lin Yan, a forensic pathologist on a one-woman crusade of vengeance and justice with a self-destructive streak a mile wide and Song Yuhang, a police detective whose stubbornness is at least a match for hers The pre-order period runs until 29 July, and details of the book design and publisher-provided pre-order merchandise can be found on publisher morefate's website here. You can read the web version of the novel on JJWXC here.

Personally, this is the first morefate title where I felt they dropped the ball completely on the cover design. I really like their design for Ning Yuan's Middle-Aged Love Patch (中年恋爱补丁, pinyin: zhongnian lian'ai buding) as well as their designs for Da Ying's trio of xuanhuan novels. They'd better get their act back together for the other titles they've licensed.

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April 2025

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douqi - If You Liked This Danmei, You Might Like That Baihe
douqi - Two Ning Yuan Novels: Reviews
douqi - Ning Yuan Mentioned in Reactor Magazine
douqi - Fan Art for To Embers We Return (焚情)
douqi - Judge My Upcoming Baihe TBR! January 2025 Edition
douqi - 2024 Baihe Reading Round-Up
douqi - Ning Yuan Author Profile
yuerstruly - Cyberpunk in the Tang Dynasty: A Review on To Embers We Return by Ning Yuan
neuxue - To Embers We Return (焚情) Read Along: Chapters 31-40
douqi - Ning Yuan Better Not Be Making Me Write Fix-It Fic
douqi - To Embers We Return (焚情): New Translation Project
douqi - An Endless Story (有终) by Xiao Xie Chun Feng (小谢春风)
douqi - Cover Reveal for At Her Mercy/At the World's Mercy (我为鱼肉)
douqi - Fanjiao's Sixth Anniversary
douqi - Judge My Upcoming Baihe TBR!
douqi - Hunger. Lust (食色) by Ning Yuan (宁远): Review
douqi - Baihe Audio Drama Art by Nongmin Shanquan
douqi - To Embers We Return (焚情) Read Along: Chapters 21 to 30
douqi - JJWXC 21st Anniversary Video ft. Ning Yuan
douqi - Miss Forensics (我亲爱的法医小姐): Pre-Orders Opening

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