Archive for the Baihe Category


Who Knows Girls’ L

March 26th, 2025

Poster for the Chinese series Who Knows Girl’s L, showing the lead characters Cheng Zhijin (left) and Gu Yi (right).Once a rarity, live-action yuri series have now spread throughout East and Southeast Asia, most famously to Thailand but also to Taiwan, South Korea, and Cambodia. One major exception to the trend has been the People’s Republic of China, where the publication of LGBTQ-related works has been discouraged by cultural norms and government policies. Small wonder then that baihe (yuri) works (including many of those scheduled to be published in English) often are set in past times and make considerable use of subtext.

Thus it was a surprise to see Who Knows Girls’ L (谁矄锊意) pop up on YouTube, set in present-day China and proudly billed as “the 1st Chinese gl series . . . for sapphic ppl like you and me!” As one might expect, it was not created and distributed by a mainstream Chinese production company. Instead it’s being produced and released by a group of film students in Shanghai, who have been very forward about promoting the series and raising funds for its production. (Their initial budget was the equivalent of only $2,700 US.)

Who Knows Girls’ L is still ongoing: it’s projected to be 28 relatively short episodes (up to 15 minutes long), with eight episodes available thus far; completion of the series depends on the success of the fundraising efforts. I’m reviewing now to bring it to the attention of fans who might be interested in following it, and also as a hedge in case the series goes on indefinite hiatus for lack of funds or other reasons.

But enough throat-clearing, how does Who Knows Girls’ L stack up against the many other yuri series currently airing or scheduled to be aired? Let’s go to the tape:

The plot is a weak point of the series, combining as it does a noxious trope, an implausible plot turn, and a power-gap romance: Cheng Zhijin, a young film studio project director who’s struggling with problems on her production, drowns her sorrows at an industry party and afterwards encounters an older woman, Gu Yi, busking on a public street. Zhijin meets her again at a bar where Yi works as a singer, drinks some more, then goes home with Yi and proceeds to have a drunken one-night stand. In the office the next day Zhijin is flabbergasted as the previous night’s fling turns out to be the chief shareholder in the studio, who’s now decided to actively involve herself in the company’s operations. The plot proceeds from there, as Zhijin and Yi try to navigate the troubled waters of an employee/employer relationship.

The production values are uneven but improving, marred by occasional lapses: a slightly off camera angle here, a brief mistake in focus pulling there, problems with color grading between some scenes, and some non-idiomatic translations. (There are also several scenes in which the faces of Zhijin and one of her friends at work look unnaturally white; I don’t know if that’s a production problem or reflective of a cosmetics fad among young Chinese women.) However, the series looks significantly better than one might expect of a student production. It makes good use of multiple location shots and has an effective soundtrack, with a banger OP introduced in episode 7.

Working actor Kaiyi portrays Gu Yi, while Cheng Zhijin is played by law student Qianyue. Kaiyi gives a solid performance, while Qianyue reminds me of Yoko Apasra Lertprasert of Blank: The Series—not so much in the characters they play (Aneung’s teasing and flirtation is 180 degrees away from Zhijin’s sullen passive-aggressiveness), but in seeing a striking debut from an unexpected source. As for the scenes between Yi and Zhijin, the director and actors have clearly closely studied GAP and its successors and strove to emulate their steamier aspects; if the results don’t quite come up to Freen and Becky at their finest, it’s not for lack of trying.

Ratings:

Story — 5
Characters — 8
Production — 6
Service — 5
Yuri — 10
Overall — 6

Its status as the self-proclaimed first Chinese yuri series and a crowd-funded student project is the hook, but Who Knows Girls’ L has an appeal beyond that, based on the increasing sophistication of the production and the performances of Kaiyi and Qianyue. It’s definitely worth watching the series, following the saga of its production, and (for those so inclined) financially supporting its creation.

P.S. Some final trivia: The Chinese title of the series, 谁矄锊意 (ShĂ©i zhÄ« jǐn yĂŹ), contains some untranslatable wordplay that puns on the characters’ names: 谁矄 (ShĂ©i zhÄ«) is “Who knows”, 矄锊 (zhÄ« jǐn) is the given name of one of the characters, and 意 (yĂŹ) is pronounced the same as 濆, the given name of the other lead character. Also, 意 has “intentions,” “thoughts,” and “feelings” among its meanings. So, the title can be read in multiple ways: “Who knows [Zhi]jin/Yi?” or “Who knows [Zhi]jin’s intentions/thoughts/feelings?” (Thanks go to Reddit commenter _fancy_pants for pointing this out.)





Taiwan Travelogue: A Novel, by Yång Shuāngzǐ

December 16th, 2024

Abstract book cover: In the center is a train window, with a porcelain bowl on the sill. The shape of the window is surrounded by increasing large frames of Chinese textile pattern in red and orange, a faded photo of 1930's Taiwan and a pattern or red, orange and yellow flames on a beige cover.It is 1938. Taiwan has been annexed by Japan as part of their colonialist policies. A young, successful novelist named Aoyama Chizuko is brought to Taiwan to write about the island. She rejects the request to support the political aim, but decides to live with “islanders” to learn more about the place. She is assigned a young woman to be her interpreter and guide, a woman whose Japanese name shares a syllable with her own – ƌ Chizuru.

This novel, which begins in a period-appropriate disguise of a rediscovered volume of a lost novel by the famous writer Aoyama Chizuko is so layered, so nuanced and yet so bluntly real, that it is quite possibly the very best book I have ever read.

I am fond of the “third-party, sending the second party a copy of a first-hand document” conceit that we see throughout turn-of-the-20th century British and English literature. It adds a sense of wonder as we read what is meant to be understood as the “real” narrative of an extraordinary occurrence.

In Taiwan Travelogue: A Novel, by YĂĄng Shuāngzǐ, this sense is added to the many layers of language, social and political framing to create what the author refers to, in her final note as ” a piece of amber, one that coagulates both the ‘real’ past and the ‘made-up’ ideals.”

The layers in this novel include the sociopolitical landscape of Taiwan in 1938, but is most deeply reflected in the languages that make up this novel. Meant to be understood as a English translation of a Chinese translation of a Japanese work about Taiwan, the complexities of Taiwanese Mandarin and Hokkien, subsumed by Japanese – and what those all represent to the characters – takes up a lot of real estate in the novel proper. The “translation notes” by YĂĄng who presents herself as the Chinese translator of this Japanese-language novel, a novel she in reality wrote originally in Chinese, and which has been masterfully translated into English by Lin King, whose translator notes sit astride the back of YĂĄng’s “notes,” but are the actual translator’s notes, adds a mind-blowing other layer into the fictional “history” of this novel.

Above all this, is a deep love of food. Food is even more the vehicle by which Aoyama and Chizuru travel the island than the actual transportation they ride. Food, hotels, houses, schools, all evoke a specific place and time and mood here. Seasonal food is a sign of the passing of time as it has been for centuries before refrigeration and overseas shipping changed how we eat.

YĂĄng herself is a popular contemporary BǎihĂ© author, and this is a story about the intense emotional relationship between two women. Is it a love story? I think that question could be asked and answered in several different ways. No..and yes…and no again. There is genuine affection, and a seething cauldron of other emotions to draw from. I’m being very circumspect here so as to not spoil anything because if you cannot yourself understand the emotions here, they will, eventually be explained.The setting also allows for a secondary, more typical girls’ school “S” type story as a subplot that ties into the larger plot in potentially surprising ways. Again, layers within layers.

There are strong echoes of Yoshiya Nobuko in Aoyama Chizuru. And although Aoyama, unlike Yoshiya, rejects becoming part of Japan’s imperial propaganda machine, YĂĄng is careful to note in her Introduction that we need to be mindful at all times that Aoyama is a representative of a colonizing force. Indeed, it was nearly impossible for this reader to not be mindful of this – certainly every Taiwanese reader would have been. This simple fact – and the awareness of this – is the black hole at the center of the story, putting out so much unseen energy, and sucking in all things into it’s gravitational pull.

With all these layers, if you take to heart YĂĄng’s caution in the Introduction, the rest of the book is not a puzzle to be solved, however. It is simply a beautifully written love story to food, a sad tale of two women, and a coldly furious polemic against colonization. In the end, this is truly one of the finest works I have ever read in my entire bibliomaniac life. I sincerely hope that every reader of Okazu gives this book a try.

Ratings:

Overall 10/10

It is an outstanding bit of writing by YĂĄng Shuāngzǐ and an extraordinary work of translation by Lin King. Absolutely deserving of the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Work. 

Taiwan Travelogue is available now from Graywolf Press.





Girls’ Love: The Development History of Lily Fan Culture in Taiwan’s ACG Industry 2023 Revised Edition (ć°‘ć„łäč‹æ„›ïŒšć°çŁACGç•Œç™Ÿćˆèż·æ–‡ćŒ–ç™Œć±•ćČ 2023汞俼版)

May 5th, 2024

On a dark pink background, two light pink girls are shown intimately close. One with long black hair has her eyes closed as she presses close to a light-haired girl, who looks out at us. Large white letter superimposed upon them read ć°‘ć„łäč‹æ„› Girls' Love.Girls’ Love: The Development History of Lily Fan Culture in Taiwan’s ACG Industry 2023 Revised Edition (ć°‘ć„łäč‹æ„›ïŒšć°çŁACGç•Œç™Ÿćˆèż·æ–‡ćŒ–ç™Œć±•ćČ 2023汞俼版) is, as far as I know, only the second book on Yuri fan culture that exists in the world, so of course, I wanted to read it. Thanks to James Welker, who was in Taiwan and picked up a copy for me, I am able to tell you all about it today.

This book is by the popular pseudononymous Baihe novelist æ„Šé›™ć­ YĂĄng Shuāngzǐ (a name that means “The  YĂĄng twins”). This is the nom de plume of author æ„Šè‹„æ…ˆ YĂĄng RuĂČcuÄ« and her late twin sister, fan studies scholar and historian,  æ„Šè‹„æš‰é›ą YĂĄng RuĂČhuÄ«. YĂĄng RuĂČcuÄ«, using the shared pseudonym, has written several popular Baihe books and, in 2022, ran a successful crowdfunding campaign for Kitanhana Monogatari (ç¶ș譚花物èȘž) a Taiwanese historical, supernatural Yuri manga to be translated into Japanese. I’m reading that now, and will review when I am done, of course, but I had set it aside to read this book first.

Before I begin, I have a few notes: For the purposes of this review I will be referring to fan culture as “Lily culture” as opposed to Baihe or Yuri, so I don’t keep bouncing back and forth between terms, as my translation tool did. ^_^ I do not read Chinese, and know very little of fan culture in Taiwan, only what I understand from this book, so If I make any substantive mistakes, I apologize up front.

This book is the fourth iteration of itself, and includes the initial article on Taiwanese Lily Culture and the revised version as appendices. The graduate thesis YĂĄng RuĂČhuÄ« wrote is not included, but I imagine it is available in Chinese-language thesis sources, as we have English-language ones. This, then is the fourth iteration of that work, with new research completed after YĂĄng RuĂČhuÄ«’s death in 2015 from cancer.

Where my book, By Your Side: The First 100 Year of Yuri Anime and Manga (which gets one line of a mention here, as YĂĄng notes that there is one Lily history book, in English) aims to tell the story of Yuri history in Japan and how it spread globally, YĂĄng’s book is very focused on Taiwanese Lily culture. So for the purposes of this book, Lily culture began in Taiwan in late 2003, into 2004. Although there was lesbian literature before that, when Maria-sama ga Miteru fandom began to form a Lily Forum online, was the functional beginning of Taiwanese Lily Culture. Much of this book is analysis of the Lily Forum’s activities in translation and dissemination, discussion of nomenclature  – which continues to be a thriving topic of conversation among Lily fans everywhere!

Because YĂĄng says she has little experience with Japanese Lily culture directly, the focus of the work is, instead on the activities of Lily fans in Taiwan (translation, doujinshi events, forum discussion) and the influences into Lily culture from China, from ACG (Anime, Comics, Game) culture and industry at large and from the consumed media. There is an essay about why Magical Girl anime is so synonymous with Lily, to the point that non-Lily magical girl anime, like many of the obviously heterosexual PreCure are still so popular with Lily fans.  There were a few points in that essay I’d like to revisit and maybe expand upon one day.

One of my favorite takeaways is  a discussion of what YĂĄng calls “Lily-reading.” Of course our fandom is hypersensitive to subtext – arguably, seeing where it is not, but YĂĄng talks about this as an active trait of fans, the lilyfying, if you will, of non-subtextual text. By engaging in Lily reading, Lily culture fans take characters who may even be overtly in a non-same-sex relationship in the text, and turn that character and another female character into a couple. To use Sailor Moon as an example, Usagi is explicitly paired with a male counterpart and yet, fan artists and writers have no qualms about pairing her romantically or sexually with her Senshi in story or art. This is what YĂĄng refers to as “Lily reading.” I like that and will use it going forward.

A large part of all the essays is a discussion of the assumption that “Lily is for men,” an assumption that historically underpins fandom discourse. From the very first essay, YĂĄng sees that this has never been true in Chinese fandom, any more than it is in any other fandom. Our Okazu Global Yuri Fandom Survey turned up slightly less than a quarter of Yuri fandom identifies as men. YĂĄng found approximately a 1:6 ratio of men to women in Taiwanese fandom.

Another interesting learning was the source of the relatively recent argument that GL means “real women in relationships,” where “Yuri” is a term about fantasy lesbianism.  When it popped up a few years ago, I had no idea where it had come from. And the fandom proposing it was so angry for some reason that they twisted the history of GL and Yuri up, so they were claiming Yuri was a publisher term and GL the fan term – which is the opposite of the truth. To respond I wrote Why We Call It “Yuri” for Anime Feminist. It was odd, because that interpretation had popped up so suddenly and with such virulence that I could not understand where it came from. (TBH, I kind of just mentally assumed Tumblr, because fandom there is weirdly angry and judgy ALL THE TIME.)

It turns out that source of that naming may well be Chinese fandom. YĂĄng talks about the shifting interpretations of GL, lesbian and Lily and how the arguments about what they *mean* became heated, as humans are always looking for definitive and fixed meanings for words that, by their very nature, have none. In part, YĂĄng attributes this to both social and legal taboo of discussing homosexuality when the Lily Club Forum began. Any discussion of lesbianism as such was shut down, for fear of censorship. That may well have lingered long past the need, as fandom everywhere tends to be conservative by nature.

In the conclusion, YĂĄng proposes these three simplified “definitions,” for the terms “lesbian,” “GL” and “Baihe/Yuri/Lily” works of popular culture.

“Lesbian” would refer to stories of real life people and their real-life issues. This might be same-sex marriage (which Taiwan became the first East Asian country to make legal in 2019, thus removing that from the list of “issues.”)

“GL” is pop culture (ACG)-related materials that focus on romance, for entertainment. I.e, there might be overlap with lesbian media, but that is not the main goal.

“Baihe/Yuri/Lily” works are any  works (even overlapping with the above two categories) that does not include awareness or mention of lesbian identity. In, other words, YĂĄng is saying what I have always said here, “lesbian content without lesbian identity.” ^_^

YĂĄng ends the book with a repeated appeal that Taiwan has, up through the publication of this book, not had a strong native Lily creative industry. Most of the work is translated from Japanese or imported from Japan, China, Korea. With the relaxing of that taboo, YĂĄng hopes to see more native Lily flourish. And, of course, so do I.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

Anyone researching Yuri will want to get a copy of this book for sure. It was a fantastic look at a part of fandom I had not really looked at before.