Chinese GL

Interview with Xen Wu/Wu Chuanxin

I posted here that Xen Wu/Wu Chuanxin, the director of baihe live action adaptation When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo), was scheduled to appear on a livestream hosted by Wu Yanling of the Juzi Niannian team. An official recording of the whole session is available on Bilibili (under the cut, because it autoplays), and makes for interesting viewing. There are no English subtitles available at the moment, but if any comm members are interested in trying their hand at subtitling, I think this would be a nice-sized project.

( Read more... )

Won't Let You Go Again (错过十八岁) round-up

I initially posted about this mini-drama featuring Han Jiale and Jiang Shuting of girl group SNH48 here. For ease of reference, here's the official synopsis again:

thirty-year-old Lin Huaide (played by Han Jiale) travels back in time to secondary school, and tries to save her then-best friend Ji Nian (played by Jiang Shuting) from committing suicide. In the process, she ends up changing their lives and those of their classmates.

I've now watched the whole thing and it's definitely about as much of a GL as Douyin will let you get away with. Neither the acting, writing nor production value is particularly great (even relative to other mini-dramas I've seen), and one of the episodes is basically a (I think unintentionally) hilarious adaptation of, all things, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, so calibrate your expectations accordingly. It also has an open ending, if you mind that sort of thing.

The original episodes can be viewed via this playlist on the show's official Douyin channel. There is also a multi-language (including English) subtitled version available on one of the YouTube channels that licenses and aggregates mini-dramas from the various Chinese short video platforms. Since the subtitles are almost certainly MTL, I'm not going to link specifically to that here, but you should be able to find it by plugging the show's Chinese name into YouTube.

Baihe live action adaptation When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation being Fireworks of Yesteryear) has been officially released on YouTube with English subtitles.


Very thoughtfully, they've also uploaded a separate version of the film without any hardsubs, which should be handy for edits and the like.

I've already posted this information previously but thought I might as well repeat it to get all the information in one post: The film stars He Lei as Ji Qingqing and Ni Jia as Peng Yun, and is directed by Xen (who, I gather, also self-funded all the production costs). It is based on an AU extra from Kissing a Gardenia (都什么年代了啊, pinyin: ou shenme niandai le a) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔). The novel can be read here on Changpei. A fan-recorded video of the film's post-screening panel discussion (between Ni Jia, Xen and Qi Xiao Huang Shu) can be viewed here.

( a note about the ending )

As indicated in the trailer, the short film When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation being Fireworks of Yesteryear) is scheduled to air on 19 January.

Earlier today, the production team stated on Weibo that it would premiere via a livestream (presumably on the basis that the real-time nature of livestreams makes them slightly less susceptible to censorship) on RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu), and that the film would be uploaded to Bilibili after the premiere. Subsequently, however, when I popped into a test livestream that the director of the film was running on Weibo, she mentioned that RedNote wasn't allowing the full film through, even on a livestream (I assume they'd tested livestreaming it on RedNote), so they'd decided to switch to streaming it on the QQ platform instead. This seems to be the QQ channel they plan on using. It's currently locked to members/subscribers only (and getting a QQ account seems pretty much impossible these days without a Chinese mobile number), so I'm hoping they open it up to unlogged-in guests at some point.

[ETA: As of two hours before the screening, it's still locked to members/subscribers only, so it looks like only people with QQ accounts will be able to access it.]

The production team also said in the same post that, after the screening of the film, there will be a livestreamed discussion between Ni Jia (who plays Peng Yun, one of the leads), Xen (the director) and Qi Xiao Huang Shu (author of the baihe novel Kissing a Gardenia (都什么年代了啊, pinyin: ou shenme niandai le a), on which the film is based).

[ETA: It's been confirmed that this panel discussion will be livestreamed via the production team's Weibo account]

If anyone is able to access the channel once they start streaming the film, could you please screen-record as much of it as you're able to/comfortable with, especially the parts most susceptible to being edited out to comply with platform content rules (e.g. there's at least one kissing scene in the film — the production team posted a video of He Lei, who plays Ji Qingqing, the other lead, reacting to it). I'm planning to do the same myself, but have no idea whether I'll actually even be able to view the film.

Let's start by getting an important point out of the way: there is, to date, no live action adaptation of a baihe novel which has already aired. The authors of the two most popular current-generation baihe novels, Miss Forensics (我亲爱的法医小姐, pinyin: wo qin'ai de fayi xiaojie) and Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan), have indicated that they have been approached about possible live action adaptations, but both have turned down these advances due to concerns about the major plot and relationship changes that would be needed to allow the adaptations to air. However, a live action adaptation of the extra from the contemporary baihe novel Kissing a Gardenia (都什么年代了啊, pinyin: ou shenme niandai le a) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔), author of Reading the Remnants, has been filmed by an independent production team and is currently in post-production. This is projected to be a 30- to 40-minute film, and will air under the title When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation of the title is Fireworks of Yesteryear). The production team's Weibo account can be found here, and a subtitled version of their BTS reel can be viewed here. A live action adaptation of She Is Still Cute Today (今天的她也是如此可爱, pinyin: jintian de ta ye shi ruci ke'ai; also known as She Is Also Cute Today), the high school baihe manhua by Guo Si Te (郭斯特), completed filming in 2022, but at the time of writing, remains unreleased.

Mapping the landscape of GL live action is a complicated task, due to (i) censorship rules precluding mainland Chinese productions from being advertised explicitly as GL or baihe, meaning that the more ambiguous marketing tag of 'double female lead' is used instead; (ii) censorship rules meaning that any such production must rely heavily on subtext and coding instead of explicit displays of romantic affection or sexual interest; and (iii) the overlap between GL live action productions and what I think of as 'serious queer/lesbian cinema'. But I will do my best.

( Full-length dramas )

( Mini-dramas and short series )

( Short films )

Special thanks to superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.