Chinese GL

I had a lot of fun with this contemporary (for a given value of contemporary; it's set and written in 2014) food-themed romance, which had great banter between the leads, excellent food writing, and some genuinely touching emotional moments, both romantic and otherwise. It's still one of Ning Yuan's more 'realist' novels, but is overall gentler, sweeter and smoother around the edges than her earlier The Path of Life (生命之路, pinyin: shengming zhi lu) (reviewed here).

Our protagonist is Chen Qianyu, a food critic and writer known for her outspoken style and uncompromising views. She meets love interest Zhang Jingxin when her friends drag her to the latter's new restaurant, which features an interesting gimmick: every day, the most beautiful woman who patronises Zhang Jingxin's establishment will be presented with a special, off-menu dish cooked by Zhang Jingxin herself (her two apprentices are responsible for the most of the general cooking). Chen Qianyu learns this, then confidently strides up to Zhang Jingxin, putting on her sweetest, most sajiao manner and asking to be given the special dish of the day. She's flabbergasted when Zhang Jingxin tells her bluntly, 'No.' Thus begins their screwball courtship. The novel starts out somewhat slapstick-y (there's a priceless early scene where Chen Qianyu dreams of herself striking a seductive pose at Zhang Jingxin while submerged in a bowl of tofu), but gradually deepens and becomes more serious as we get to know the characters better.

Chen Qianyu and Zhang Jingxin are sort of an opposites-attract pairing. Chen Qianyu is brash, loud, never minces her words, loyal to her friends, has a tendency to screech angrily at the smallest mishap — but, it turns out, can also be cool, patient and rational when true disaster strikes. Zhang Jingxin is calm, composed, and efficient — but has a subtly wicked tongue, which Chen Qianyu feels the full force of repeatedly (yes, the innuendo is intentional). There's also a ten-centimetre height difference between them (with Zhang Jingxin being the taller), for the height difference aficionados among you. Their personalities come across vividly, and they have great banter, generally taking the form of Chen Qianyu screeching dramatically at Zhang Jingxin for some perceived slight, and Zhang Jingxin leaving her tongue-tied with a single devastating unexpected statement, though the author is careful to maintain the balance between them by having Chen Qianyu be the one to win their verbal battle at key points.

It is clear, too, why they make sense as a couple. Chen Qianyu suffers a series of career mishaps (starting with her offending the producer of a cookery program by being too honest; he then proceeds to have her accused of plagiarism, leaving her with her reputation and finances in shreds) over the course of the book, which are mostly not her fault, and Zhang Jingxin proves to be a calm, understanding source of support for her throughout. In her turn, Chen Qianyu provides Zhang Jingxin with the chaotic energy and joie de vivre the latter needs to give colour and interest to what would otherwise be a too-well-regulated existence. They also communicate very well, and this makes their relationship more interesting rather than dull. There are lots of very subtly real moments in the depiction of their relationship. E.g. at one point, Chen Qianyu wants to meet with her business partner and erstwhile semi-crush Gao Youwei (of which more below) alone. She tells Zhang Jingxin, and she both wants Zhang Jingxin to be a bit jealous but also doesn't want Zhang Jingxin to get all weird and possessive about the whole thing. Zhang Jingxin then calmly lays out why it would be wrong for her to restrict Chen Qianyu's autonomy by forbidding her to meet a friend alone (this sounds like therapy speak, but is actually delivered in a much more normal, everyday way). Chen Qianyu is torn between 'yes, I'm glad my girlfriend is understanding about this, the way I expected' and 'but why isn't she just a little bit jealous??' And then Zhang Jingxin admits that she is a little bit jealous (which gratifies Chen Qianyu), but this is not going to affect what Chen Qianyu can and can't do.

Food, and love and appreciation of food, is wound closely throughout the book as a theme, underpinning and informing the development of their relationship, from their first meeting to the meals they share to the food tours they end up going on to the dishes Zhang Jingxin cooks (each with their own meaning) for Chen Qianyu and the attempts Chen Qianyu makes at cooking for Zhang Jingxin. Ingredients, food traditions and culinary techniques are lovingly described: this is a novel that is knowledgeable and cares about what makes a particular dish good. The author notes in the final chapter that she got a lot of technical advice on this front from her girlfriend, who is a keen cook.

There is a full cast of fun secondary characters, all women: Gao Youwei, a trust fund kid and Chen Qianyu's business partner of sorts, who it turns out has been nursing a not-quite-unrequited crush on her (Gao Youwei reminded me more than a little of Ding Youlei from The Path of Life, but given a better, kinder ending); Sang Qingya, Zhang Jingxin's best friend, who ends up being Gao Youwei's girlfriend after the latter rescues her from an abusive relationship; Zhang Jingxin's two (female) apprentices at the restaurant, who also end up in a relationship with each other; Zhang Jingxin's cousin Zhang Weitong, who loves being the maître d' at Zhang Jingxin's restaurant because it lets her flirt with all the attractive female customers who go there; Zhang Jingxin's high school not-quite-girlfriend Tang Ning. There were some touching moments with Chen Qianyu's parents, who keep nagging her to return to her hometown, find a good husband and settle down to having children, but when career disaster strikes for Chen Qianyu, they immediately offer their unconditional support. I feel it was almost a pity that they novel didn't give us a full coming out scene between Chen Qianyu and her parents (it ends with her leaving them a note that she's going off on a holiday with her girlfriend), but since Gao Youwei had already had a coming-out storyline with her own overbearing mother (which ended well, all things considering), perhaps the author felt that would be too much.

The actual plot of the book was perhaps not as well-paced as it could have been. Some things require a suspension of belief (e.g. one of the characters trying to sink Chen Qianyu's career ends up in prison after she successfully sues him in what appears to be a civil case for copyright infringement, which does not seem plausible), some things go far too smoothly for our protagonists, and there was a murder and attempted kidnapping in the back third of the book, which was a serious (and to my mind, unnecessary) tonal whiplash. Gao Youwei and Sang Qingya's personalities and relationship could have been developed in more depth — with Gao Youwei in particular, I felt that her transition from being comedy unrequited love interest to cool, ruthless business woman to devoted friend and girlfriend was far too abrupt, and I really did not care for the arc where she decides to try and court Chen Qianyu seriously, in the most exaggerated CEO romance style. These infelicities aside, the incidents of the plot were used to generally good effect in propelling the leads' relationship forward though. Even the tonally jarring murder ultimately gives us a somewhat rushed but emotionally very moving moment between Chen Qianyu and Zhang Jingxin: it turns out that Zhang Jingxin was in a very depressive, possibly suicidal state following the death of her mother when she first came across Chen Qianyu's food writing, and it was Chen Qianyu's writing that brought colour and interest back into her life again (when I first started reading this, I thought it might be a rare Ning Yuan novel that doesn't have a pre-existing relationship of some sort between the leads, and I was wrong).

There were some interesting social observations as well. A partial theme running through the novel deals with young people who have left their hometowns to pursue their ambitions in a big city (in this case, Beijing) and the particular challenges they face. Chen Qianyu is one such young person. Another is the novelist Zhiran, who is a willing participant in the plot to smear Chen Qianyu as a plagiarist. Zhiran is ashamed of her extremely working-class roots, and keeps pushing her parents away lest they contaminate the glamorous literary lifestyle she's trying hard to achieve, yet when her role in the plagiarism plot is finally exposed, the only people she has left to turn to are her parents. Zhiran is not a sympathetic character, but I did find the parental affection part of her arc very moving. Also interesting was the depiction of the social media landscape. Weibo seemed to be the dominant platform, with no real mention of personal blogs or even online forums (though I know for a fact that Tieba existed then). The short-form video platforms that dominate today's social media landscape were of course non-existent then. Legacy media still played a big role — at one point, the main characters scramble to get a television channel to broadcast a big announcement, when these days they would simply have done a livestream on one (or all) of the video platforms.

A small warning that this has some discussion about dieting (specifically, Chen Qianyu panicking about having to lose weight), which I did not really care for. Luckily, this does not go on for very long. Zhang Jingxin also calls Chen Qianyu 'Xiao Pang' ('fatty', but cute and not as mean) at several points, but this is clearly meant as a term of affection and also to needle Chen Qianyu.

Anyway, this has now vaulted into first place in the list of the food-themed baihe novels I've read (not that many), followed in second place by A Taste of You (食局, pinyin: shi ju) by Si Bai Ba Shi Si (四百八十寺) and in a very distant last by Xiao Bao (晓暴)'s The Movie Star Puts On 1.5 Kilos a Week (影后一周胖三斤, pinyin: yinghou yi zhou pang san jin).

I read the Chinese original of the novel here on JJWXC, under the revised title Hunger (or Food; 食, pinyin: shi). Sex scenes have been excised from some of the chapters in the current JJWXC version of the novel, so I had to read them on one of the somewhat less offensive pirate sites, here. At the time of writing the novel, the author also posted an explicit sex scene (meant to fit in Chapter 64) to Lofter. The chapter has since been removed from Lofter, but I've managed to save a copy of it from elsewhere and uploaded it here (I really liked this sex scene, which was both very tender and felt very true to the characters).