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Just went to a workshop about learning Mandarin, and a guy there said that he thinks the Chinese writing system is just too hard to learn and too different from other writing systems, so the Chinese government should probably do something - like simplify the Chinese writing system or come up with an alternative system - so China could be more connected to the rest of the world. And I'm like dude hasn't English colonised enough parts of the world? And I don't think the writing system is the real reason China isn't more connected to the world...I think it's dangerous that there're still people who believe in earnest that homogenising the world's languages is a good idea, because I don't think he said it with any ill intentions and he genuinely thinks that if the Chinese writing system is closer to the Roman alphabet, the language and the country might be more accessible to outsiders

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(analysis below contains spoilers of the novel I'm translating)

Consensus among Chinese readers seems to be that Pei Jun isn't a very good judge of character - he tends to pick the wrong people which eventually bite him in the ass, whether it's chooing his lover, student, or friend. Personally I think it's probably because Pei Jun has a bit of a saviour complex - he gravitates towards choosing people in disadvantaged and victimised positions then trying to save them. But who's the person he's really trying to save here? His poor father perhaps, who was oblivious and slow on the uptake and died for nothing in battle...After all, Pei Jun's life wasn't shaped by the presence of his father, but the absence of his father.

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took this quiz earlier and got Mo Xi, then I forced my partner to take it and he got Xie Qingcheng which is so unlike him, so I forced him to take it again and he got Chu Wanning, and I was like lol ok...But honestly I think my partner doesn't belong in a Meatbun novel and he's most like Xie Lian

We both agreed thay my results were pretty accurate (except maybe the cleanliness part):

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ramblings about Ne Zha 2

Just came back from watching Ne Zha 2, really loved it for the dark fairy tale it is. My worry was that it's gonna be a rehash of all the old jokes, old settings and old characters from the first one, but the film actually introduced some truly interesting new characters and elements. Post-apocalyptic ruins of the dragon palace was really cool, Shen Gongbao's little brother was super cute, and the Yu Xu Palace, which is arguably the centerpiece of this film, is a classic and universal trope of centralised and homogenous power that's utilised well and depicted with nuance.

The Yu Xu Palace masquerades its supreme power as supreme righteouness, dictating what's good and what's evil, who's noble and who's base. Of course, later it's revealed that the cultivation pills from which the Wuliang Immortal derives his power are literally made from burning people alive inside a furnace - this theme of cannibalism, standing for ruthless social oppression, has a long history in modern Chinese literature, most notably seen in Lu Xun's seminal text Diary of a Madman, where the supposed madman sees cannibalism written all across historical records about "benevolence and righteousness". Ne Zha, being brutally honest, was duly unimpressed by the palace, commenting that it's "white, so white, very white." That's the one fundemental characteristic of the palace - its whiteness - white not in the sense that it's pure as white jade that symbolises virtue in Chinese culture, but white in the sense that it's sterile like a surgical environment that can't tolerate anything it finds alien and heterogenous. Ne Zha also questions where they get all this money to build the Yu Xu palace entirely in jade? And what does the Xu in the name of the palace stand for? Is it "with a guilty conscience"心虛 or "spiritual emptiness" 空虛? (Because that's what they are).

Because there's so much action in this film, I always appreciate when there're moments of silence and stillness: first instance I remember is Ne Zha and Ao Bing standing together facing the vast starry sky and thinking about their hopes for the future; second instance is when Ne Zha successfully threw the dragon king into the cauldron and looked back at the silent and gloomy sea, he must've felt so lost and empty in that moment, because even though he completed his revenge, he could never bring his parents back. Also I get why people are shipping Ne Zha and Ao Bing so hard now, truly the most shippable not-supposed-to-be-romantic-at-all socialist brotherhood ever.

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antes de que te vayas dame un besooo

sabes que soñaré con tu regresooooo

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Nosed around the bookshop and saw so many Chinese culture/myth inspired fantasy books, does anyone know about this type of books or if they're good?

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TGCF Short Film English subs by me ! 🏮

So I stayed up trying to finish this before Lantern Festival is actually over for me (failed lol) But here it is!! I translated the opening song as well (using references from radishtears)

I hope you guys enjoy :) Almost cried tl-ing this one icl

Also check out my Youtube for the Lantern Festival extra from the audio drama!!

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Thoughts while reading books about Ancient Yaoi

Don't mind me, just word vomiting. Now I'm reading more on the history of homoerotic literature in China and I really can't help linking them to my understanding on danmei written in the modern times. I'm becoming more certain that relationships in BL, especially classic BL are more based on the pre-modern model of male love, where homosexuality wasn't an orientation and homoerotic relationships were normatively ideal between an older man and a pubescent youth. The younger man, of which the modern uke/shou is modeled after is feminized but is thought of as distinct from women. Femininity isn't so much about womanhood but about sexual submission. This was the model of homoerotic relationships that would have been seen in many cultures including Ancient Greece, Ottoman Turkey, Feudal Japan and Imperial China before we entered the modern era. For the past 300 years understandings of sexuality shifted in the West, but it appears they didn't really in China up until the 20th century, after which there was a century of suppression, then China opened up to globalization.

How does all this contextualize danmei? Well a lot has been said that danmei isn't necessarily supposed to be LGBT media, at least not in the same way Western queer media is. The reality is danmei does draw from different influences including anime/manga, Western pop culture and Chinese classical literature among other things. My thought is that I would imagine it would be hard to completely discard the pre-modern understandings of male/male relationships in art, similar to gender roles. After all they have only been suppressed for a century. Which is a long time but relative to China's history, isn't that long. People are still bringing up "cut-sleeve" and that was so 2000 years ago man. That being said, nowadays there are distinct differences between modern danmei and homoerotic literature from back then:

Monogamous relationships are king. No more offering your wife to your bro in exchange for his ass sir.

LGBT identities are a thing. Western cultural hegemony for the win.

A more egalitarian model for relationships. At least compared to back then, age gap relationships with underage boys are not nearly as normalized. Really Bingqiu and Ranwan are a step up, they at least get together in their adulthood. Same goes for class status (at least couples with class differences won't automatically end tragically).

Related to number 3, the popularity of 年下 and tropes like shizunfucker. The overturning of power dynamics based on age and social ranking would have been anathema to the rich literati of back then.

No conclusion to draw here, but imagine how future scholars would view danmei now, and what that says about society.

Further Reading:

The Libertine's Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China by Giovanni Vitiello

The Dragon's Whim: Ming and Qing Homoerotic Tales from "The Cut Sleeve" by Giovanni Vitiello

Was China Part of a Global Eighteenth-Century Homosexuality? by Matthew H. Sommer

The Daoist Art of the Bedchamber of Male Homosexuality in Ming and Qing Literature by Wanrong Zhang

All interesting reads. The last one makes mention of the first recorded fujoshi (or I guess 腐女), who wrote the only complete novel on male homosexuality written by a woman in ancient China, "with 52 chapters and 1.8 million words" (MXTX got nothing on her good god).

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As someone who's been a lover of traditional folk music from the British Isles for several decades, one thing I've learned is that "True Love" didn't always mean what you think it means. In the older songs, "true love" is not some mystical quality, some type of connection that is magically better than other Loves. No. A love that is "true" merely means that your Love is "true TO YOU." "True" as in faithful and loyal and trustworthy. A lover who will stand by you and with you no matter what comes. True the way a good sword is True. True the way a good knight is loyal. The contrast is "False Love," which is a lover who betrays you, who cannot be trusted.

"True Love" isn't something you find, it's a vow and a choice that you make, every day, to BE TRUE.

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still in love with The Degenerate: Drawing Jianghu Season 5 OP. Excited for Season 7!

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the China misinformation anon here. thank u so much for your time and energy (and confirming my suspicions). I think im adequate enough in fact checking journo's and influencers, but it's rando comments from places like reddit ( where there is indeed no historical nor geographical nor socio-econ context given to their descriptions of their lives in China, that raises my eyebrows all the way to my hairline lol) Time for some social media cleansing on my end lol. anyway thank u so much for your time and have a good weekend! 😊

No problem!^^ Yeah I agree about the random comments, sometimes when I check news from other countries and scroll through the comments, I just don't know if a lot of the comments are believable or not. So like I said, I think the best way is just to read from as many sources as possible to get a more accurate idea. Hope you have a good weekend too! :)

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Hi, sorry if this ask is gonna sound weird, but do you have any tips on how to spot misinformation/fake news on how life was (under communist) China? i sometimes come across posts that just...sounds off to me, but i can't really put my finger on it, but otoh, as a diaspora, I really don't know how life was there, outside of my own family's history. Again, sorry if this is a weird ask and im crossing a boundary...

Hi! This is a really interesting question. If you find these posts noticeably lacking in complexity and nuance, and if they're trying too hard to drill some opinion or message into you, then they're more likely to be misinformation. It could also help you get a more objective read on things if you could figure out where people are coming from, like what're the possible motivations behind the opinions they posted, if their posts are strongly coloured by their personal experiences, etc.

For example with this clown that posts about his life in China, all of his videos are about how mind-bogglingly marvelous life is in China and how it makes the US look like trash. This sort of propagandist narrative is super appealing to Chinese ultra-nationalists so he's basically bending backwards to cater to their tastes. People from Western countries disgruntled with their domestic politics are susceptible to such narratives too. A lot of his travels across China are also most likely sponsored by state media (like he collaborates with CGTN and you can see that in some of his videos).

On the opposite end of the spectrum we have this American guy who lived in China for a decade and now posts exclusively about the evil of the CCP. If you watch his earliest videos, he was thrilled to experience life in China and saw China as this land of endless possibilities and growth. But after Xi Jinping came into power and the country became more hostile to foreigners, he got really disillusioned and eventually just barely managed to get his family out of China (his wife is Chinese). I think he was probably very traumatised by it, and now all his videos about China are like "doom death destruction", but that would not be what a lot of Chinese people feel about their lives.

It also reminds me of an old Chinese film called In the Heat of the Sun, which is about the life of a group of teenagers during the Cultural Revolution. Their parents were (if I remember correctly) senior officials so they led a relatively affluent and peaceful life; the riots, massacres, and political struggles that raged across the country didn't seem to touch them, and the film showed them exploring love and friendship and sexual awakening as any teenager would. Even in the darkest times there're people enjoying themselves, and even during the best times there're people having miserable lives. To understand "what life is like in China" is too complicated a question in itself.

I also get that it's very hard to obtain objective and truthful information about China because on the one hand the Western media is used to painting China as a cardboard villain (which unfortunately is becoming truer in recent years), on the other hand a lot of the content you see about Chinese people showing you "authentic" life in China on Western media platforms such as YouTube is most likely just covert state propaganda. My advice is that the more you read and watch from as many sources as possible, a more comprehensive and objective view you'll get.

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chapter 3 translation of 裴公罪 (The Sins of Lord Pei) is out now!

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reading Oscar Wilde's De Profundis - the parallel between this and Xie Lian's bamboo hat

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Since Seven Seas is releasing Peerless, I am once again asking people to read this book :P It has well-written characters, engaging plots, admirable historical accuracy, and most importantly for me, Cui Buqu is the first danmei main character I've encountered who doesn't reply on good looks at all for charm and appeal. Danmei does literally mean "indulging in beauty," but beauty can be such a false idol... Whereas Cui Buqu is magnetic solely because of his powerful intellect, his unique and caustic charisma, and his tenacious character, which is what his love interest Feng Xiao falls for. Feng Xiao, on the other hand, is a publicly-recognised and self-acknowledged pretty boy, and his view is literally that if he wants someone handsome, he can just look in the mirror so that's not what he loves Cui Buqu for.