Chinese GL

The second season of Taiwanese GL drama Fragrance of the First Flower (第一次遇见花香的那刻, pinyin: di yi ci yujian huaxiang de na ke) has started airing on GagaOOLala. The first two episodes are now available here. The drama is also available on Netflix Asia, where the first season (originally consisting of eight episodes of approximately 20 minutes each) has been re-edited into two hour-long episodes.

Here's the trailer which the platform posted ahead of the release:


The second season will have twelve approximately 30-minute long episodes.

Let's start by getting an important point out of the way: there is, to date, no live action adaptation of a baihe novel which has already aired. The authors of the two most popular current-generation baihe novels, Miss Forensics (我亲爱的法医小姐, pinyin: wo qin'ai de fayi xiaojie) and Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan), have indicated that they have been approached about possible live action adaptations, but both have turned down these advances due to concerns about the major plot and relationship changes that would be needed to allow the adaptations to air. However, a live action adaptation of the extra from the contemporary baihe novel Kissing a Gardenia (都什么年代了啊, pinyin: ou shenme niandai le a) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔), author of Reading the Remnants, has been filmed by an independent production team and is currently in post-production. This is projected to be a 30- to 40-minute film, and will air under the title When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation of the title is Fireworks of Yesteryear). The production team's Weibo account can be found here, and a subtitled version of their BTS reel can be viewed here. A live action adaptation of She Is Still Cute Today (今天的她也是如此可爱, pinyin: jintian de ta ye shi ruci ke'ai; also known as She Is Also Cute Today), the high school baihe manhua by Guo Si Te (郭斯特), completed filming in 2022, but at the time of writing, remains unreleased.

Mapping the landscape of GL live action is a complicated task, due to (i) censorship rules precluding mainland Chinese productions from being advertised explicitly as GL or baihe, meaning that the more ambiguous marketing tag of 'double female lead' is used instead; (ii) censorship rules meaning that any such production must rely heavily on subtext and coding instead of explicit displays of romantic affection or sexual interest; and (iii) the overlap between GL live action productions and what I think of as 'serious queer/lesbian cinema'. But I will do my best.

( Full-length dramas )

( Mini-dramas and short series )

( Short films )

Special thanks to superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.