Chinese GL

Details have been released for the second volume of the Vietnamese edition of Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai) by Min Ran (闵然). This can be found on publisher Meibooks' Facebook page. The special edition of the book comes with a bookmark, a wooden keychain with a chibi design of protagonist Jing Xiu, a pop-up card, and a postcard. The standard edition comes with the bookmark only.

Here's the cover design for the book:



And here are the merch designs:

High school novel Her Mountain, Her Sea (她的山, 她的海, pinyin: ta de shan, ta de hai) by Fu Hua (扶华) and showbiz romance Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai) by Min Ran (闵然) have been licensed for Vietnamese print editions by Meibooks, which also previously licensed the tomb-raiding novel Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔). The official announcements can be read here and here on the publisher's Facebook page. I'll be keeping an eye out for further details about the cover designs, pre-order dates, etc.

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.