Chinese GL

Edit: This watch party has now taken place. Thanks for coming! I'm sorry about the technical issues which meant that we ended up watching Led Astray by Love instead of Nü Er Hong as planned. Apologies to any people who were disappointed. I think I've now sorted the issue so things should work more smoothly next time.

Edit: I've now added a link to a countdown timer for the event to minimise timezone confusion! Thanks to halfcactus for the suggestion! Also, the idea is that webcam and mic will both be disabled for the duration of the watch party, and interactions will be text chat-only, if anyone was concerned about privacy!

Countdown timer to the event

Having reviewed everyone's responses to the interest check post, I'd like to propose a watch party on Thursday 28 December at 1600 GMT. The show we'll be watching is Nü Er Hong. I know someone said it might be too dark for them, and parts of it are dark, but it's dark in a fantastical way compared to A Flower for Three Lifetimes, which is dark in a sort of more realistic way (domestic violence, etc — if 'realistic' even makes sense as a term for describing a xianxia show).

The platform we'll be watching on is twoseven, and I'll generate and post a watch link as an edit to this post about 15 minutes before the start time. Could everyone planning to join the watch party please create a twoseven account prior to the start time, if you don't have one already (though I know an extra account is a bit of a pain).

Please let me know if the time/date works for you! I'm open to tweaking it to accommodate more people.

Asaurumcalendula highlighted in this post, the short films directed by Liu Yun Rui (流云蕊) are one of the fandoms nominated for this year'sfestivids, so I thought it might be helpful, or at least interesting, to have a look at her GL work over time, and in particular how she became known for her series of feminist, sapphic shampoo ads mostly (though not always) starring actresses Sheng Wei (圣微) and Ai Ye (爱野) (known affectionately within Chinese fandom circles as the 'shampoo ship').

( Read more )

Inspired by aurumcalendula, I thought I would re-share this Nü Er Hong vid I made some time ago. BGM is 'A Rose in No Man's Land' (无人区玫瑰) by A Wolf Star (一颗狼星), lyric translations by me.

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.