Baihe Donghua: Resource Post
Sep. 30th, 2023 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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baihe_mediaThis is going to be a very short post. The simple reason for this is that there is, to date, a grand total of one baihe donghua — Soulmate Adventure (风灵玉秀, pinyin: feng ling yu xiu; sometimes given the more literal English title of Spirit Wind Elegance). This is an original donghua, in the sense that it has not been adapted from an existing work. There is, to date, no donghua which has been adapted from a baihe novel.
Soulmate Adventure is a wuxia donghua, and chronicles the adventures of Feng Ling'er, a wandering thief, and Bai Yuxiu, the daughter of a rich merchant who is somehow extremely gifted at martial arts, against the backdrop of a jianghu conspiracy which stretches back at least a generation. The donghua was initially crowdfunded and produced by the small independent studio Sunflowers. As a result, the first four episodes were produced sporadically, being released over three years (between 2017 and 2020) on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili. It was only after Bilibili began the investing in the project in 2021 that episodes began airing with more regularity. The first season of the donghua (12 episodes in total) finished airing in 2021. The second season of the donghua began airing on 2 July 2023. For international audiences, seasons 1 and 2 can be viewed via this playlist (subscription needed for Episode 6 onwards) and this playlist on Bilibili's official YouTube channel (with English subtitles). A fan subtitled version of the 2022 Lunar New Year extra can be viewed here.
There is occasionally some debate about whether Soulmate Adventure is truly a baihe donghua or whether the lead characters are simply very good friends. This is complicated by: (i) the fact that censorship rules preclude it from being advertised explicitly as a baihe donghua, meaning that it is marketed instead under the more ambiguous tag 'double female lead' donghua; and (ii) the fairly plot-heavy nature of the donghua, which leaves limited room for extended, purely 'emotional' scenes (at least to date). However, baihe audiences in mainland China regard it fairly unanimously as a baihe donghua.
Special thanks tosuperborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.
Soulmate Adventure is a wuxia donghua, and chronicles the adventures of Feng Ling'er, a wandering thief, and Bai Yuxiu, the daughter of a rich merchant who is somehow extremely gifted at martial arts, against the backdrop of a jianghu conspiracy which stretches back at least a generation. The donghua was initially crowdfunded and produced by the small independent studio Sunflowers. As a result, the first four episodes were produced sporadically, being released over three years (between 2017 and 2020) on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili. It was only after Bilibili began the investing in the project in 2021 that episodes began airing with more regularity. The first season of the donghua (12 episodes in total) finished airing in 2021. The second season of the donghua began airing on 2 July 2023. For international audiences, seasons 1 and 2 can be viewed via this playlist (subscription needed for Episode 6 onwards) and this playlist on Bilibili's official YouTube channel (with English subtitles). A fan subtitled version of the 2022 Lunar New Year extra can be viewed here.
There is occasionally some debate about whether Soulmate Adventure is truly a baihe donghua or whether the lead characters are simply very good friends. This is complicated by: (i) the fact that censorship rules preclude it from being advertised explicitly as a baihe donghua, meaning that it is marketed instead under the more ambiguous tag 'double female lead' donghua; and (ii) the fairly plot-heavy nature of the donghua, which leaves limited room for extended, purely 'emotional' scenes (at least to date). However, baihe audiences in mainland China regard it fairly unanimously as a baihe donghua.
Special thanks to
superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.
