Chinese GL

Hot on the heels of the first volume, pre-orders have opened for the second volume of the Miss Forensics manhua (亲爱的法医小姐, pinyin: qin'ai de fayi xiaojie) adapted from the novel by Jiu Nuan Chun Shen (酒暖春深) with art by Shu Nü Sen Te (鼠女森特). Here are some of the online bookshops you can pre-order from:

• Boku
• Huawen Tianxia
• Jinse
• Xinhua Wenxuan
• Xinshijiao

The web version of the novel can be read here on JJWXC and the web version of the manhua can be read here on Kuaikan Manhua (you may need to open links via the Kuaikan Manhua app).

Featured on JJWXC's list of notable recent licences this week is the popular 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), which has been licensed for publication in Thai. As with To Become a Phoenix (为凰, pinyin: wei huang), keen-eyed baihe licensing watchers have known for some time that this novel had been licensed for publication in a non-Chinese Asian language, but not which one. 

Again, if anyone is able to find out any more information about the Thai edition (identity of the publisher, release date, cover art etc), please do post it in the comments or let me know. 

I read 22 baihe novels (and one collection of baihe-adjacent short stories) this year, out of a total of 77 books read (including playtexts and graphic novels). Here's the full list, in order of when I read them.



So looking back, I think I've managed to catch up on some pretty classic and popular novels, mixed in with some more niche titles from subgenres I wouldn't typically be super drawn to. For 2024, I'm especially keen to read more work from Ning Yuan and Liu Yuan Chang Ning, and maybe Ruo Hua Ci Shu (despite her letting me down so terribly with the ending to Minister Xie). In fact, I'm slightly toying with the idea of making my way through as much of Ning Yuan's back catalogue as possible over the coming year, maybe at the rate of one Ning Yuan novel per every three baihe novels I read. I'm also interested in reading at least one more each by Yu Shuang and Qing Tang Shuan Xiang Cai, as I found their books unexpectedly enjoyable.

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.

This post is meant to provide a brief introduction to baihe as a literary genre and a starting point for those seeking to get into it. I consider baihe to be a distinct genre of its own, though I'd be hard-pressed to articulate its precise contours (or even general contours). Certainly I have a sense of baihe as being distinct from what I would classify as 'serious queer/lesbian literature', though here I'm hampered by my lack of knowledge about queer literature written in Chinese. Yan Geling's (严歌苓) novella White Snake might conceivably count as one, but I'm simply too unfamiliar with the genre as a whole to provide any sort of sensible comment. I also have a sense of baihe as being in conversation with its Japanese counterpart yuri, but again I'm woefully ignorant of yuri as a genre.

Baihe often seems to be regarded by international fandom as a sort of distaff counterpart to danmei (m/m romance), but my sense is that mainland baihe readers (and potentially other Sinophone audiences in Asia) do not really see baihe and danmei as having particularly close links beyond the fact that they deal with same-gender romance. In fact, I I've seen more mainland baihe readers say they also read yanqing (f/m romance, whose popularity runs rings around both danmei and baihe) than baihe readers say they also read danmei. There is also limited overlap between baihe and danmei in terms of their authorship. There are more authors who write yanqing+baihe than authors who write danmei+baihe, and I can think of no major danmei author who also writes baihe, or vice versa. To date, the only author I can definitively point to who writes both danmei and baihe (as well as yanqing) is Xiao Wu Jun (小吾君) who, while not unknown, is not exactly a major author. There seems to be limited overlap between baihe and danmei in terms of popular subgenres as well. Again, I'm not very familiar with danmei as a genre, but my sense is that a good number of the popular works are historical novels or xianxia novels, while a significant proportion of popular baihe novels are contemporary romances (which would, I think, be legible to a reader of Western genre romance as such). In terms of sheer audience numbers, baihe is very much regarded as a niche genre relative to danmei (quite popular) and yanqing (massively popular).

Having impressed you with my vibes-based ramblings and multiple admissions of ignorance, let's get down to what I do know about the genre. Under the headings below, you'll find information about where baihe novels are published, a list of major baihe authors (plus a few who specialise in specific niche subgenres), a list of notable works that I think provide a useful foundation for understanding the genre, and information about adaptations of baihe novels. A major caveat is that I'm focusing almost exclusively on works by mainland Chinese authors, both because these make up the greatest proportion of baihe novels and because I'm most familiar with them. There are also baihe novels by authors from elsewhere in the Sinosphere, most notably Taiwan, but I am much less familiar with them, so that will need to be the subject of another post (preferably by someone who knows the field much better than I do!)

( Baihe novels and where to find them )

( On the state of baihe novel translations )

( Top 10 current baihe authors )

( 10+ baihe novels that are helpful for understanding the genre )

( A note about adaptations )

I am grateful to xiaozhu for providing valuable input (and making sure I didn't say anything too obviously wrong) into this post. Read their translation of baihe showbiz tragedy Burn here. Special thanks to superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.