Chinese GL

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.