Chinese GL

To celebrate New Year, mainland print publisher has been posting handwritten/voice greetings from some of their published authors over the last week or so (including some pretty well-known danmei authors). One of the greetings they posted was a voice greeting from Chu Dao (初岛), author of well-known baihe showbiz tragedy Burn (烧, pinyin: shao).

The video is available here on Weibo, and I've also uploaded it to Google Drive here.

(how can someone who sounds so innocent have done me so much emotional damage, smh)

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.

I read Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai) more out of a sense that this was a book I ought to read — Min Ran's massive popularity as an author; this novel's massive popularity with the fanbase; the popularity of showbiz romance (of which I had only properly read one very atypical example) as a subgenre among baihe readers generally — rather than any feeling that I would actually enjoy it. As it turned out, I was right: I did not enjoy the novel, although I can perhaps see how it might work for readers who don't have my particular preferences.

The plot of Waiting for You is essentially exes-turned-reunited-lovers courtesy of a handy rebirth and time rewind. The main characters are Ji Youyan, a TV actress who'd been toiling in the mines for some time before finally winning a major acting award and achieving acclaim, and Jing Xiu, a legit major movie star. They met during an idol audition programme, and dated for two years after that before breaking up. At the start of the novel, they've been broken up for five years. Jing Xiu is at her own literal wedding ceremony (to a university classmate of hers, a man named Song Wenyan) when she hears the news that Ji Youyan has died from alcohol poisoning. She abandons her wedding and rushes to Ji Youyan's side, but too late. Then Ji Youyan finds herself waking up, reborn at an earlier point in time — just two years after she broke up with Jing Xiu. She's determined to make amends and win her ex-girlfriend back again, starting with taking part in an acting-focused reality show she and Jing Xiu have both been invited to be judges on.

( Read more; I tried to avoid detailed/major spoilers )

( Somewhat more spoilery bit about the reason for Ji Youyan's rebirth )

So, in short, I did not enjoy this novel and it frustrated me in a number of ways. However, I can see how it would appeal to readers who are after a sort of mostly wish-fulfilment, low-conflict story, with generally good (though not remarkable) prose and characters who are mostly likable (Ji Youyan can be quite entertaining, especially when she's teasing Jing Xiu, or bantering with her assistant, wide-eyed, bad-at-getting-innuendos Lin Yue). Readers who are invested in the social media and celebrity/fan interactions aspects of the entertainment industry will also probably get a lot more out of this novel than I did. I still plan to read Min Ran's other massively popular novel, the age gap romance For the Rest of Our Lives (余生为期, pinyin: yusheng weiqi), but I'm in no real hurry.

I read the Chinese original of the novel on JJWXC here. I'm aware of an English fan translation floating around on the internet, but since quite a lot of is MTL, I will not be dignifying it with a link.

Some baihe manhua are adaptations of existing works (generally of baihe novels), while others are original. At the time of writing, the latter significantly outnumber the former. It is only fairly recently that some of the most popular novels have been licensed for adaptation as manhua.

The baihe manhua translation scene is noticeably more active than the baihe novel translation scene. Official translations into English are available in some cases, and fan translations are available for most of the major baihe manhua. In the lists of notable works that follow, I will provide links to official translations where these are available, as well as to relevant fan translations (in the case of the latter, where I can be satisfied on a balance of probabilities that they are not machine translations).

( Baihe manhua and where to find them )

( Notable baihe manhua (adaptations) )

( Notable baihe manhua (originals) )

I would like to thank Lunaa of Zephyr Scans for her valuable insights into the baihe manhua scene, without which this post could not have been written. Check out the Zephyr Scans Discord server here! Special thanks to superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.