Chinese GL

An initial version of this review was originally posted on my personal journal. I thought I might as well clean it up and cross-post it here.

Reading the Remnantsis one of the most popular baihe novels of the last few years (at least in mainland China, and likely among other Sinophone baihe audiences). It has spawned an audio drama adaptation (starring a solid A-list of baihe audio drama voice-acting royalty, not to mention Zhang Zhe (张喆), famed among baihe audiences for dubbing lead character Li Ningyu in the read-as-queer Republican Era spy drama The Message (风声)), a full-length fan film by one of the most respected fanvidders working in the field (also starring a solid A-list of baihe audio drama voice-acting royalty) and an audiobook (starring a slightly less grand but still solid list of baihe voice actresses).

Set during the Republican Era (the first chapter begins with the time-stamp: Winter, 1924), Reading the Remnants bills itself as a tomb-raiding novel, but potentially sits more comfortably within the Chinese 'ghost story' tradition. To my mind, it also contains xuanhuan elements which become more pronounced towards the end. Structurally, the first half of the book consists of a series of episodic arcs, each one dealing with a different (though not completely unrelated) tomb-raiding adventure. The second half is rather looser, and focuses much more on the backstories of the four main characters and their relationships. I found the first half more effective than the second. This is not to say that all of the arcs in the first half are successful as individual episodic adventures. The best of the arcs are the shorter, almost throwaway ones — the matchmaker who unwittingly becomes the bride of a fox spirit; the woman who burns lamp oil made from the fat of a merman (which produces a supernaturally bright flame) in the hopes that her lost lover will see it, unaware (in a lovely horror twist) that her lost lover is in fact the merman in a different form. The longer arcs tend to be rather anticlimactic, as the author has a tendency to end them with an extended exposition from the restless spirit/ghost of the episode. I also rather disliked the Mulan arc, where the mystery of the arc is solved by 'why would Mulan, a warrior, know anything about fibre/textile arts?', completely disregarding the fact that the Ballad of Mulan begins with Mulan sighing as she weaves. Their individual merits aside, however, the episodic arcs provide a backbone on which the author is able to layer character development and backstory exposition effectively, and gives the narrative a sense of forward momentum. The second half pales in comparison, not only because it loses this structural framework, but because of the author's frustrating refusal to engage sufficiently deeply with the emotional stakes that are inherent in the premises and relationships that she had set up.

The first of the main characters we encounter is Li Shiyi (李十一), who is introduced to us as a seasoned tomb raider. She is pale, cool, inscrutable and hyper-competent. She's a practitioner of the Northern branch of necromancy, 'reading the remnants' (title drop alert), which allows her to ask three questions of the spiritual remnants within the coffins she encounters, and receive true answers to them. The first two question must follow a specific formula — where do you come from? where are you going? — while the third can be anything she wishes. The second main character we meet is Song Shijiu (宋十九), who is birthed from a corpse Li Shiyi comes across in her first adventure in the novel. In true creepy child fashion, Song Shijiu grows from babyhood to young womanhood in a matter of weeks. The third main character is A-Yin (阿音), Li Shiyi's childhood friend, and a sex worker at the time we meet her. She is a practitioner of the Southern branch of necromancy, 'divining the bones', which allows her to determine whether a being is human, ghost or neither by touching them. The fourth main character is A-Luo (阿罗), the Overseer of Hell (in the Chinese underworld sense). She, too, is pale, cool, inscrutable and hyper-competent. There is also an important secondary character by the name of Tu Laoyao (涂老幺), the token cis straight man of the group, a small-time hustler and occasional dabbler in tomb-raiding.

By far the most interesting relationship within this mix of characters is the one between Li Shiyi and A-Yin. They were raised alongside each other by Li Shiyi's necromancy shifu (following the untimely death of A-Yin's own shifu). Li Shiyi's shifu died when they were sixteen, leaving them with no one to turn to or rely on but each other. Once, Li Shiyi agrees to take on a tomb-raiding job, but falls ill and is unable to go through with it. A-Yin does the job in her place, but encounters a powerful snake demon (螣蛇, pinyin: teng she) within the tomb. The snake demon attacks A-Yin, leaving a part of its essence within her. This causes A-Yin to physically require regular infusions of yang (read: male) essence, which in turn leads her to take up sex work (yeah I don't love this plot point either). She never tells Li Shiyi the true reason why she has turned to sex work, and glosses over the question with a laugh or throwaway joke every time it is raised. This is partly out of shame and partly so that Li Shiyi won't have to feel guilt or a sense of obligation towards her. Li Shiyi finds out anyway, but doesn't tell A-Yin, precisely because she's racked with guilt. She spends much of her time following up leads about tombs that potentially contain powerful secrets/demons/treasure, in the hopes of finding a cure for A-Yin. When it comes to tomb-raiding and ghost-trapping, they work exceptionally well together as a team: each knows what the other is doing without more than a look or a word passing between them.

And yet the central romance is not between them.

Instead, Li Shiyi is paired with Song Shijiu, who for much of the novel is a cute young thing with an occasional habit of making statements wise beyond her years. From the very beginning (i.e. from the moment she's delivered from her corpse-mother's womb), she's besotted with Li Shiyi, and this only becomes more apparent as she grows older. She's written in a way that (to me) veers uncomfortably close to Born Sexy Yesterday territory. After she and Li Shiyi have sex for the first time, she — Oliver Twist-style — asks for more. Li Shiyi comments, 'Have you no shame?' and Song Shijiu, wide-eyed and with all sincerity, asks, 'Oh, should I be feeling ashamed?' Her youth and innocence are highlighted frequently, and she is often described as nestling or nuzzling against Li Shiyi like a little beast (more on the beast part later). I found the romance very lightweight, especially in comparison to what could have been. It's not entirely clear why Li Shiyi, having determinedly turned down Song Shijiu repeatedly in the beginning, eventually succumbs, other than narrative inevitability. There's no obvious psychological moment which marks a possible turning point in her relationship towards Song Shijiu. The author could have chosen to lean on the potentially darker aspects of the relationship — Song Shijiu's imprinting on and having high level of dependence on Li Shiyi; Li Shiyi, who loves being in control, enjoying the fact that she's basically raised a girlfriend to be exactly what she wants — but this did not happen.

A-Yin, meanwhile, has been in love with Li Shiyi for a very long time, but has never told the latter so, due to the aforementioned shame. This comes to a head when Song Shijiu is attacked by the same snake demon who changed the course of A-Yin's life forever. Li Shiyi immediately rushes to offer Song Shijiu 'any relief you need', which she's perfectly aware will be fruitless due to her conspicuous lack of yang essence. Through this, A-Yin discovers that Li Shiyi has known about A-Yin's own condition all along. She's bitter and broken-hearted that Li Shiyi never even attempted to offer her what she's offering Song Shijiu now, despite the bond between them. The confrontation between her and Li Shiyi on this score is the most emotionally resonant scene in the whole novel, given real heft by the complicated web of long friendship and co-dependence and mutual concealment and obligation and debt between them. it is, once again, a huge huge pity that the author chose not to pair them up.

(Incidentally, Song Shijiu does not suffer the same aftereffects of the snake demon attack that A-Yin does. The Watsonian reason is because she's not actually human (see below). The Doylist reason, I suspect, is that our ingenue love interest has to remain 'pure'. This is sadly an occasional preoccupation within baihe audiences.)

Instead, A-Yin ends up with A-Luo, who is essentially a cut-price version of Li Shiyi. It's like watching Rose end up with Tentoo all over again, only this time instead of also-mourning, Ten is simply relieved that he has now rid himself of his longtime burden and can go off and canoodle with River Song Shijiu with a clear conscience.

We (and Li Shiyi) learn later that she isn't really a human: she's Ling Heng (令蘅), the King of Hell and A-Luo's boss. A-Luo, meanwhile, originally grew out of the accumulated trace amounts of spirit energy left behind by the dead as they walked across the Bridge of Forgetfulness. A-Luo spent hundreds if not thousands of years watching Li Shiyi as the latter went about her business of governing Hell, and essentially took Li Shiyi as a role model. She was even given her final physical form by Li Shiyi, who pinched her face into its current shape (i.e. it resembles Li Shiyi's own face to a not insignificant degree, though not exactly). A-Luo is in love with A-Yin because... in a past life, which A-Yin doesn't even remember, A-Yin saw A-Luo and declared that A-Luo was handsome and she wanted to marry A-Luo. Of such trifles is the Overseer of Hell's emotional life made up, apparently.

We also learn later that Song Shijiu isn't really a human either, but is actually Zhu Jiu Yin (烛九阴), the solar dragon-god of mythology, with the power of manipulating time. Towards the end of the book, we start receiving hints that Ling Heng (aka Li Shiyi's King of Hell persona) entered the cycle of reincarnation 'because of Zhu Jiu Yin'. We're eventually told that in their past lives, Zhu Jiu Yin tussled with Ling Heng over the reincarnation of one of Zhu Jiu Yin's minions (and also because Ling Heng had once said that she'd quite like to adopt Zhu Jiu Yin as a 'little pet'), and in the struggle, Zhu Jiu Yin... accidentally pushed Ling Heng into the tunnel of reincarnation. I have no idea what the author was trying to do with this. A hate-love relationship in a past life might have been an understandable attempt to salvage this rather weightless romance, even if it came too late in the novel to make a difference — but instead, we get... whatever this is.

Throughout, the author frustratingly rejects every possible opportunity — which she sets up herself! — to complicate Li Shiyi and Song Shijiu's relationship and emotional life in interesting ways. Neither of them has a any real sort of emotional reaction to learning about their own pasts, when 'Oh, I'm the King of Hell' or 'Oh, I'm a dragon god from the dawn of time' should have been revelation enough to floor anyone. The last part of the novel features not one but two third-act breakups. The first happens when Song Shijiu's memories are finally restored. She realises that Li Shiyi has been secretly taking precautions to incapacitate her in the event that she commences a reign of terror after regaining her memories. Hurt by this mistrust, Song Shijiu disappears into the night — only to reappear without much fanfare a few chapters later to basically say, 'Hello. I'm back. We're still good. You shouldn't have mistrusted me, but whatever. Let's have sex.' This was another wasted opportunity, especially since we're given hints throughout the novel that Zhu Jiu Yin was a capricious and sometimes downright sociopathic creature — yet at what should have been the climax, this was not followed through at all. The second breakup happens when the characters encounter a little girl who has been transported a decade ahead of her own time — thus allowing her to avoid all the terrors that would have befallen her had she remained in her own time, including the Nanjing Massacre. Li Shiyi insists on sending her back; Song Shijiu insists on keeping her with them. Song Shijiu then runs off with the little girl in tow, leaving Li Shiyi to chase after them. This, again, was a potentially promising setup — a difference of philosophy and principle between the characters! (at the risk of another nuWho reference — Fires of Pompeii anyone?) And yet, this somehow gets turned into 'Song Shijiu doesn't feel secure enough in Li Shiyi's love because Li Shiyi doesn't express it enough' — and the matter is resolved when they work together to defeat a final boss (the Queen Mother of the West, or Xi Wangmu (西王母)) who seemingly emerges out of nowhere and has not been foreshadowed at all. Post-battle, the little girl bravely decides that she wants to return to her own time, for the greater good, and the novel ends on that final cop-out.

Instead, it's A-Yin who the most interesting psychological development, though the author doesn't really follow through with much of this either. It's clear from quite early on that she has huge, complicated feelings of shame about the profession she's been compelled to take up, although she puts a brave face on things. When the snake demon's essence is finally removed from her, she goes through a very human and compelling set of conflicting emotions: relief, fear at confronting her past, dread at having to rebuild her life without the core dictating factor that, for good or ill (mostly ill) has always been there, basically 'what am I, without this?' However, the novel's third-act focus on Li Shiyi and Song Shijiu's relationship means that there was a lack of page time for exploring A-Yin's emotions. Shortly after the snake demon's essence is removed from her, she tries to have sex with A-Luo in their usual way, but is viscerally repulsed by the act. A-Luo, trying to be understanding, tells her, 'If you can't receive, you might want to try just giving.' This, in turn, could have opened up an interesting avenue for exploring alternative modalities of sexuality and satisfaction — but again, the author simply has A-Yin brush this aside with, 'I'm tired,' and it's not taken up again.

Despite being set in the Republican Era, the author is mostly uninterested in engaging with its setting — it could have been set in any pre-modern era without any significant changes to the plot or characters. It's only in the final chapters that events such as the Nanjing Massacre and historical figures such as Chiang Kai-shek are mentioned, making their absence from the earlier chapters even more conspicuous. Likewise, having invented some interesting-sounding forms of necromancy, the author then proceeds to make surprisingly little use of them. There's no climactic puzzle to be solved or obstacle to be overcome with a clever use of either technique, for instance.

This is not to say that the novel is without its merits. The prose is stylish without seeming too worked-over. At its best, it's highly evocative, and the author has a good line in unexpected yet completely fitting metaphors (although occasionally that goes too far, such as when A-Yin compares A-Luo's eyelashes to the little sticks you use to hold candied hawthorns and her eyes to balls of sugared shaved ice) as well as the casual-seeming line that hits you right in the chest. A number of scenes have great visual appeal. While the author is, as mentioned above, mostly uninterested in the Republican Era as a setting, she does make good use of its aesthetics, particularly in a striking scene where the main characters enter a sophisticated nightclub dressed in their very best finery, and end up trapping a ghost. A-Yin is a memorable character, full of vulnerability and bravado and courage, with astonishing moments of grace and heroism leavened by equally effective moments of very human pettiness. The author is generous with her sex scenes: these are written in a rather literary style that I suspect might come across as coy and purple in English (there are references to snowy crimson-topped peaks and secret gushing streams, for instance), but fits in quite well with the overall tenor of the novel in Chinese (I am also unsure how much of this is an attempt at avoiding censorship). They would, of course, have worked better if I had been more invested in the relationships the author chose to put the characters into rather than the one she ought to have put them into. The author also draws on elements of mythology that I'm less familiar with, and I appreciated gaining a deeper understanding of those. This is what makes the novel particularly frustrating: I can see what the author is capable of, and am therefore doubly disappointed in those aspects where she falls short.

I read the Chinese original of this novel on Changpei. There are currently two partial English fan translations of the novel available, at least the later of which appears to be ongoing. These can be found here and here.