Chinese GL

Having put this off for quite long enough, I thought I might as well review Ning Yuan's Something I Need to Tell You (有件事想告诉你, pinyin: you jian shi xiang gaosu ni) and Fateful Encounters (逢场入戏, pinyin: feng chang ru xi), especially since they're both set in the entertainment industry — a shared-universe entertainment industry, it turns out, as the main characters from the former novel make an appearance in the latter.

Chronologically, Something I Need to Tell You is the earlier book, as it started serialising in 2015. It's the story of Ye Xiaojun, an up-and-coming scriptwriter who refuses to compromise on her art, and Lu Jingsheng, the young and ambitious CEO of a media company. The two of them first meet under very unpromising circumstances. Ye Xiaojun has just caught her girlfriend, an actress named Gu Lan, cheating on her with a director. As she flees from the scene, overcome with emotion, she runs into Lu Jingsheng, who makes a snide remark. When Ye Xiaojun returns to work (the setup here is that she's the salaried employee of a media company, rather than being a freelancer), she learns that her company has been taken over by a new CEO — who is, of course, Lu Jingsheng. Ye Xiaojun finds Lu Jingsheng's mercenary, ruthlessly commercial approach completely unpalatable. To her shock, she subsequently receives a mysterious email telling her that she and Lu Jingsheng will soon become romantically involved. She continues to receive more emails from her mysterious correspondents (known only as 'bearxxx'), all predicting her future more or less accurately.

( possible spoilers for Something I Need to Tell You )

Fateful Encounters, first published in 2020, is a much more straightforward, sweeter, lighter story. The main characters are Chen Ge, an actress whose career has stalled after a promising debut, and Luo Jingyi, a top scriptwriter (Ning Yuan does love her scriptwriter characters). Chen Ge is a long-time admirer of Luo Jingyi, and her debut role was coincidentally in a film written by Luo Jingyi when the latter was much younger. The two of them are thrown together in a countryside-themed reality show being directed by one of Luo Jingyi's friends, and their relationship develops from there, with the twist that Luo Jingyi is appearing under an alias, so Chen Ge doesn't know her true identity at first.

Chen Ge is one of Ning Yuan's ingenues, which is to say she's sweet and earnest, but also determined and resilient, and actively kind to people (with a lot of ingenues, it seems the reader is expected simply to accept that they're good, kind people without the text ever showing us this) but not a pushover. Luo Jingyi has some of the characteristics of a classic jiejie (typically aloof, rich, generally composed, highly fashionable) but with quirks that make her much more human and fun, including a very sharp tongue that she has no compunctions about deploying, moments of extreme smugness (that are often punctured by subsequent events) and occasional entertaining bursts of temper. She also has misophobia, which had been an obstacle in getting into any sort of serious relationship (not that she was trying very hard to have one, or particularly desirous of having one) until she met Chen Ge, who cheerfully accommodates her without her even needing to say anything.

( possible spoilers for Fateful Encounters )

While Fateful Encounters was significantly less ambitious than Something I Need to Tell You, it was much better executed throughout. Lu Jingsheng makes a cameo appearance in Fateful Encounters as an investor in one of Luo Jingyi's films, and Ye Xiaojun also appears briefly at the end as 'legendary scriptwriter Ye Xiaojun' (whom Chen Ge also admires deeply, leading to a brief and entertaining fit of jealousy on Luo Jingyi's part).

I read the Chinese original of Something I Need to Tell You here on JJWXC. For Fateful Encounters, I read the uncensored simplified Chinese print edition. The web version of Fateful Encounters can be found here.

My experience of reading A Difficult Woman (难缠, pinyin: nan chan) was a perfect demonstration of how very dependent on external factors my enjoyment of a book can be. I read it while recovering from a terrible cold, and while I would have found the slightness of the plot and characters somewhat frustrating had I read it while fully healthy, the non-dense prose and very placid proceedings (that is, some dramatic reveals happened to the characters, but I'd seen them coming miles away so I was not at all surprised) were precisely the soothing brain congee (congee for the brain, that is, not congee made from brains) my mind wanted.

A Difficult Woman begins with our protagonist Lu Zhenqiu suspecting her girlfriend Tang Yingxia, an up-and-coming baihe author, of cheating on her with another baihe author, Yu Wen. She promptly moves out of Tang Yingxia's apartment and becomes flatmates with an even more successful baihe author, Jin Shuilan. Tang Yingxia has designated Jin Shuilan as her professional rival; Jin Shuilan seems to barely notice that Tang Yingxia exists (this is not true, as we find out later, but it's certainly the case that Jin Shuilan doesn't see Tang Yingxia as a worthy professional rival). Jin Shuilan has a reputation within baihe circles for being aloof and very exacting, but Lu Zhenqiu finds her unexpectedly easy to get along with.

Lu Zhenqiu is a professional livestreamer. I was initially puzzled as to what she livestreamed about. I could understand people doing product livestreams, gaming livestreams, education/self-help livestreams etc, but Lu Zhenqiu seemed to be livestreaming about... nothing much. Her livestreams consist of chatting with her audience, singing a few songs (she has a nice singing and speaking voice), and occasionally doing some weird competition with other livestreamers where they compete at singing/dancing/doing squats/etc to see who attracts the most rewards from their audience. Following some research, I realised that being a nice, attractive young woman who functions basically as a parasocial magnet for a predominantly youthful audience is apparently a perfectly valid method of making a living in the livestreaming space; as momijizukamori put it, it's basically camming lite. In that moment, I felt very, very old. Around the time she met and began a relationship with Tang Yingxia, Lu Zhenqiu also had hopes of becoming a baihe voice actress, having accepted a couple of secondary roles. Due to a miscommunication between her and the production teams she was working with, however, further roles were not forthcoming.

( read more; technically spoilers, but this is not really the kind of book where spoilers matter )

I read the uncensored traditional Chinese print edition of the novel. The web version of the novel can be found here on JJWXC.

Pre-orders have opened for volume one of showbiz baihe manhua Waiting for You (余情可待, pinyin: yuqing kedai), based on the novel of the same title by Min Ran (闵然) (reviewed here, with art by AirRabbitYan and script by Qubing Xiancao Dong (去冰仙草冻).

Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:

• Xiaomeihao (the publisher)
  
• Jinse
  
• Xinshijiao

A fan translation of the manhua can be read here under the title Long-Awaited Feelings.

I should perhaps note that news of this publication was received with some derision by baihe fans on Weibo, many of whom have criticised the art as being sub-par, especially for such a well-known and beloved novel (I don't have a view myself, not having followed the manhua and being lukewarm on the novel itself).

Ravenous (护食, pinyin: hu shi), which I would classify as urban fantasy, was a perfect antidote to the disappointment that was The Wayward Disciple (孽徒, pinyin: nie tu), reviewed here. In her author's note to the final chapter of the main novel, Ning Yuan states that she had huge fun writing it, and I definitely believe her: it's a gloriously pulpy trope-laden adventure, with high drama, high stakes and heightened emotions.

The novel begins from the point of view of Lu Jin, a hard-working, up-and-coming actress who's just been nominated for a slate of prestigious best actress awards. At an awards show, she's politely fending off the attentions of the male actor sitting next to her when movie-star-turned-producer Zhao Ci marches up to them and sends the actor packing in short order. Lu Jin is surprised by this, because there's always been a sort of unspoken antipathy between herself and Zhao Ci — the two of them have always taken pains to avoid each other. Just as you think this is going to be a showbiz rivals-to-lovers story, however, things take a turn for the much weirder. Unseen by anyone else, Zhao Ci quietly snarls 'you're mine' to Lu Jin and bites her on the ear, leaving a mark that looks much more like a bite mark from a carnivorous animal than anything human teeth are capable of.

( some discussion of early-book reveals )

( discussion of mid-book reveals )

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC. The title translation is the product of a joint brainstorming session between me, x_los, superborb and momijizukamori (we spent at least 50% of the time groaning 'why is this so HARD' and at least another 40% looking up animal facts).

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.