#I'm going to read 天涯客

[shaguagua]

Quotes masterpost

Said by 周子舒 / said by 溫客行 / said by someone else.

ep1 臨終詩

ep2 游俠列傳序 / 洛神賦, 月下獨酌

ep3 漁夫辭 / 菜根譚

ep4 綺懷其十五 / 可嘆

ep5 螳螂捕蟬 黃雀在後

ep6 摸鱼儿·雁丘词

ep7 折桂令·春情

ep8 咏荆轲 

ep9 壯士行 / 將進酒 / 世說新語

ep10 新唐書

ep11 金剛般若波羅蜜經

ep12 春秋左氏傳 / 新唐書

ep13 生查子

ep14 風雨 / 黍離

ep15 桃花扇

ep16 扮豬吃老虎

ep17 莫逆

ep18 我住長江頭 / 金瓶梅

ep19 乘興而來

ep20 次北固山下

ep21 金剛般若波羅蜜經

ep22 綺懷其十五 / 扮豬吃老虎

ep24 不思歸

ep25 卜算子·黄州定慧院寓居作 憶少年·別歷下 擊鼓 小窗幽记 / 古詩十九首

ep26 登樂遊原

ep27 紅樓夢

ep28 論語

ep29 他若故剑情

ep30 水滸傳 / 唐雎不辱使命

ep31 一別經年 別來無恙

ep32 漁夫辭

ep33 有口難言, 眾叛親離, 孤立無援

ep36 送君千里 終須一別 / 風餐露宿

Some of interpretation may not be suitable for some, if that is the case, whatever you say is right. I have no right to estimate or even judge. It's just drivels from a person whose brain is a decoration, which isn't even pretty 🥲 我請你.. 問

[rigelmejo]

I'm linking some of MoonIvy's reddit posts, in case you'd like to read about their language learning journey. They are awesome! They're one of the authors of the Heavenly Path Reading Guide! That guide is super helpful, and I followed a lot of it's advice (and Heavenly Path's recommendations) once I was starting to read more. Heavenly Path also has a ton of recommendations of things you can read that are different difficulty levels, so I suggest browsing their suggestions if you have no idea what to read.

Also, if you use Readibu app, the app can give you a rough estimate of the HSK level of the chapter you're reading (you'll just open the chapter you're reading, click the book icon in lower middle of screen, then click Stats. You'll see a Comprehension % by reader's HSK level). For beginners, I suggest you try to find novels that say 90% or more over the HSK 4 level, or at least 80% and up if you can't find anything easy at first. Once you've moved from graded readers to simpler kids novels like 秃秃大王, novels with a 90%+ comprehension at HSK 4 level above will be the next easiest for you to read. (Later on: if you're looking to extensively read and barely look words up, look for 95-98% comprehension at the HSK level you think you're roughly at). For example, I'm reading 盗墓笔记 and it's 93% comprehensible for HSK 5 level, 98% comprehensible at HSK 6 level, and my vocabulary range is between HSK 5-6 roughly so it makes sense I can read dmbj extensively if I want (without word lookups and still understand it), but still have several unknown words I could look up if desired.

From intermediate to native webnovels in 18 months (Some wonderful mentions of what MoonIvy read. I also read 秃秃大王, 大林和小林, and 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 and felt they were really good novels to read after graded readers but before novels like 盗墓笔记 and 撒野).

21 months of reading native books, and breaking into native platforms

Learn Mandarin Chinese to read danmei — it will be challenging but worth it

I can read novels without a dictionary after 3 years of reading danmei (Chinese boy love)

I reached 3,000 unique character knowledge by reading children's books and danmei (Chinese boy love) 

Some little notes of my own experience, I guess in relating to the journey others took. So: for me, I read stuff WAY harder than graded readers, when I initially tried to read webnovels. It was hard, and it probably made me feel more exhausted than I needed to feel. But it was motivating. So if you really enjoy X difficult novel, you can try to read it whenever, and keep reading it as long as you feel the desire to.

There was one person who shared their reading experience on the chineselanguage subreddit (I'm trying to find the post again) who read 撒野 after like 3 months of initial study. That's way faster than I would've tried! That's a huge spike in difficulty from knowing nothing to reading a novel with thousands of unique words in a few months! But some people just will find that they enjoy doing that, and it works for them, so don't be afraid to just TRY doing what you want to do and see how it goes. It might go awesome. And if it's so hard it's demotivating, you can always go look for something easier for a while.

I tried to read 镇魂 from pretty much my first month, and never got farther than a couple paragraphs until over a year of study. I'd take a glance at it once in a while, and see if it was easier to read, until one day it was 'doable' to actually try reading (while looking unknown words up). I tried reading 默读 from like month 5 onward, usually using a parallel mtl text and only picking up a few words, it was not doable to read until maybe 1.5-2 years into learning. I was already reading the mtl of 默读 because the english translation only had like 20 chapters back then, so I just would try to read the chinese original in small sentence pieces at times. Around 8-10 months I started trying to read 天涯客, and it kind of was doable in Pleco app's Reader as long as I looked up a lot of words. It used to take me 1.5-2 hours to get through a chapter, then over the next 6 months things got better and it'd take 1 hour then 40 minutes then finally 20-30 minutes per chapter. At the same time as reading 天涯客, I also read 小王子 around month 12 extensively (looking no words up) because I had the print book and wanted to practice reading extensively, I read 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 read in Pleco while looking up words (which was easier for me to read than 天涯客 and helped me build up reading stamina and basic vocabulary a bit), and I read a pingxie fanfic called 寒舍 by 夏灬安兰. I read around 60 chapters of that fanfic, and 30 chapters of 天涯客, over those 6 months. 寒舍 was harder to read than 笑猫日记, but easier than 天涯客, so I would switch between all 3 stories depending on how hard/easy I wanted my reading to be. Eventually 笑猫日记 felt readable without word lookups, so I used 寒舍 as my 'easier' read and 天涯客 (and added 镇魂) as my harder reads. Then 寒舍 became readable without word lookups if I wanted (still had unknown words but they no longer affected my ability to follow the plot and most important details), so 镇魂 became my harder novel to read.

And that's pretty much the strategy I continued to use: I would bounce between a 'easier' novel I could read extensively, a medium difficulty novel I could just look keywords up with (if I didn't feel like looking up a ton of words) to understand, and a 'harder' novel I had to look up words in order to read. Maybe 2 years in (I don't quite remember now), I picked some 'easier' novels from Heavenly Path's recommendations with only 1000-2000 unique words, and read some of them to fill in gaps in my basic vocabulary (so looking up unknown words) and practice extensive reading with some of them. I think that was a really helpful decision, and improved my reading comprehension and stamina a LOT. If I could go back, I would've read a lot more 'easier' 1000-2000 unique word novels before trying to push right into the novels I did. But then, on the other hand? I think pushing right into 'difficult' novels helped me learn vocabulary to read priest's writing in particular, much faster, which was rough going at the start but now pays off because I find that author's stories have more words/phrases/sentence structures I'm comfortable with, and also a decent murder mystery/investigative vocabulary base which is helpful since it's a genre I like reading. Without all the 镇魂 reading I did in the past, I think 破云 would be almost incomprehensible to me. But instead, since I did read those investigative words a lot early on, novels like 默读 and SCI are now 'medium' feeling novels to me, and 破云 is harder but readable if I look words up.

[touchmycoat]

I posted 9,300 times in 2022

449 posts created (5%)

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I tagged 7,912 of my posts in 2022

Only 15% of my posts had no tags

#queue - 5,194 posts

#aesth - 672 posts

#anon - 225 posts

#good words - 155 posts

#murderbot - 131 posts

#asks - 118 posts

#cats - 90 posts

#omg - 85 posts

#hualian - 85 posts

#cinematic treasure - 77 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#she literally went 'what else did priest write?' '天涯客 七爺 鎮魂' 'oh no you've read those i haven't' 'i know i'm answering your question'

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

For fuck’s sake the detail of MR knowing exactly what size of food fits in CWN’s mouth made me so unbearably horny the first time and now the second time. Jesus shit.

54 notes - Posted March 3, 2022

#4

LQG finds deaged!SJ, misunderstanding ensues

word count: 3.8k CW: references to CSA

When Shen Jiu woke up in that strange rich man’s room, his first instinct was to panic because he had no idea how he got there. Of course, panic being a useless state of affairs, Shen Jiu quickly quashed that instinct. His second instinct—to assess the situation and see how utterly fucked he was, and then maybe to squirrel away some of the very pretty, very expensive jade pendants and hairpins if conditions allowed—struck him as more reasonable, so he went with that instead.

He slipped out of bed, leaving behind a nest of fabric that he was actually reluctant to stop touching. Whatever the sheets were made of, they felt heavenly against his skin. Oh hang on, not just the sheets. There were a set of robes there too, sized for a grown man with its inner lining turned up, as if it had been wrapped around Shen Jiu—

…Right, so Shen Jiu had woken up naked in a strange bed wearing only a rich man’s robes. This was looking more and more like the aftermath of one of Qiu Jianluo’s sick games. Maybe Shen Jiu had been fed something. That may explain the memory loss.

Molars painfully grinding against each other, Shen Jiu gave the backs of his hands a few sharp slaps. Stop shaking, stop panicking. Just stop being useless and figure this out.

There were all sorts of expensive things in this room. Very expensive things. If Qiu Jianluo had given Shen Jiu anything it was the ability to discern high-cost items from low, all because Young Master Qiu loved to flaunt every agarwood trinket chest and mutton fat jade bracelet that he got gifted. See this? he would say. This is what it means to be successful. This is why I’m Young Master, and you are…?

A servant.

A bitch! Hahahaha…

A bitch. Alright, fuck that, Shen Jiu was no one’s bitch. Qiu Jianluo should have never let Shen Jiu out of his sight because now Shen Jiu had an opportunity, didn’t he? This was definitely not a room in the Qiu Estate, so if Qiu Jianluo had so carelessly rented Shen Jiu out to a man who would leave Shen Jiu alone in the morning amidst all these goods just waiting to be pawned, then Shen Jiu was damn well going to take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, he only got as far as a handful of calligraphy brushes and pendants before there came a brusque knocking at the door. Shen Jiu startled so bad that he bumped into a table and knocked a hairpin to the floor, paling when he heard something crack.

“Shen Qingqiu, get out of there at once!”

A man, but not the owner of the room by the sound of it. Shen Qingqiu? Shen Jiu had never heard of him, but he could easily imagine Qiu Jianluo saying something about serendipity to another man with the Qiu character in his name. And maybe the shared surname was what prompted Qiu Jianluo loaning Shen Jiu out.

Regardless, Shen Jiu now had a problem. The man at the door—was he friend or foe? He certainly didn’t sound fond of Shen Qingqiu, but lots of “friends” spoke like that to each other. Quickly stashing his handful of pilfered goods behind the changing screen, Shen Jiu opted to run back to the bed and fold up the robes and bedsheets. The man was raring to slam down the door, judging by the force of his knocks, and this way, he wouldn’t catch Shen Jiu doing anything wrong.

Sure enough, the door burst open moments later. Shen Jiu made a point of jumping (though he did not have to fake it) before bowing his head and dropping to his knees.

The man stopped three stomps in.

“Who are you?”

He sounded bewildered, not disgruntled or disgusted. That probably meant he didn’t know about this Shen Qingqiu’s apparent propensity for taking young boys into his bed, or at least hadn’t put the pieces together yet. That wasn’t a bad sign.

“This servant,” Shen Jiu spoke politely with just a hint of a tremor, “is just tidying up Master Shen’s room.”

“Get up.” Shen Jiu started to, not getting very far before the man demanded, “put some robes on.”

Fantastic. Not a pervert. It felt more and more like whatever Qiu Jianluo and this Shen Qingqiu had done with Shen Jiu, this third man had no part nor interest in, which made Shen Jiu inclined to take shelter with him. Just in case though, Shen Jiu wouldn’t throw Shen Qingqiu to the wolves just yet.

“Master Shen must have sent this servant’s robes out to wash.” The words were carefully chosen to hint at the filthy truth—why would a rich man send a servant boy’s robes out to wash and leave him naked in the bedchambers?

“What?”

Shen Jiu still hadn’t lifted his head high enough to see the man’s face, but from the bits that he could see, the man was also richly dressed, with hardy boots and flowing white robes. Confidence oozed from the man’s stance as well, feet planted and arms crossed. Shen Jiu would bet his life deed that this man could not only take Qiu Jianluo in a fight, but also punt Qiu Jianluo around the arena like a rag doll.

“Where are the disciple robes kept here?”

Disciple robes? Shen Jiu swallowed.

“This servant doesn’t know.”

The man clicked his tongue, and the moment his annoyance became visible in his stance, Shen Jiu braced himself for a kick. But it never came. Instead, the man wheeled around and stomped back out of the room, leaving the door swinging open in his wake.

With his heart in his throat, Shen Jiu snuck a quick look, and saw a rolling hill and a sea of bamboos outside.

Where the hell was this? Was this…was this really some rich man’s estate in the city? The man had said disciple robes. Was this a training establishment of some sort?

See the full post

92 notes - Posted April 9, 2022

#3

...inverse Mulan AU where SY transmigrates into the body of the take-no-shit military commander, tasked with whipping his ragtag crew of conscripts into shape for the big war. One conscript, LBH, is ridiculously beautiful and bright and totally the morality pet, and genre-savvy SY goes “ahah, that right there is a filial daughter disguised as a man to go to war.” A series of misunderstandings occur (e.g. LBH getting soaked and clutching at his jade pendant bc the worn string broke off and SY thinks she’s trying to keep her robes together, LBH knowing how to wash and mend clothes and other domestic tasks bc he’s a good child to a washerwoman but SY goes “ahah! wants to be a wife!”) that cement SY’s belief and what I’m saying is, SY happily falls in love with LBH, satisfied in knowing LBH will have a big gender reveal someday and he’s not gay, thank you very much. And he’s also not homophobic! Before LBH is revealed to be a woman, SY will happily fight for mlm rights! As an ally! He’ll let everyone know he absolutely dotes on and treasures his little Bingmei because homophobia is just soooo last year and LBH is a woman anyways and the gender reveal will happen any day now.

....any day now.

105 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

#2

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150 notes - Posted September 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

ficbinding: Chinese stitched binding

BINDING COMPLETED! of my own fic 翻雲覆日回天明 / Best Of. I chose this binding method because 1) Chinese, 2) easy, and 3) cheap. You know how much this fucker costs??

Text block (A4, 17 sheets of Nice™ paper): 105 NTD

Cover papers (2 sheets): 20 NTD

Embroidery floss: 25 NTD

Awl: 45 NTD

Glue: 35 NTD

Total: 230 NTD, which is not even 8 US dollars. I mean alright, there were other miscellaneous items needed like a ruler, a needle, a slab of wood for puncturing, and something to hit the awl with, but for the slab of wood I just used an old Daiso wood trivet and for the “mallet” I grabbed a rock and wrapped it in old underwear. There is the optional step of cutting the edges of the book, which I did here, that adds additional cutting pad & xacto knife costs. Also material costs are very low in Taiwan lol. BUT STILL.

Anyways progress pics & things I would do better under the cut:

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171 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[intyalote]

liang jiuxiao chose honor, zhou zishu chose crime, and wen kexing never had a choice at all

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hey Hunxi! Which novels would you recommend for someone who can read Chinese newspapers but never tried Chinese language fiction?

anon!!! I am very impressed, you are more than ready for fiction/webnoveldom if you have newspapers under your belt (I say, personally daunted by newspapers still)

here is a (personal, subjective) rundown of authors on a sliding scale of writing style, since I think that might be helpful when considering a shift from newspaper-style 书面语 to fiction. unfortunately, I have an extremely limited repertoire at the moment, so I can only offer insights on a few authors:

墨香铜臭: terrifically colloquial, I found her writing more accessible than any other author. Generally speaking, the greatest vocabulary challenges are going to be technical worldbuilding aspects. I haven't actually read 《魔道祖师》, but 《天官赐福》 was my first danmei webnovel and I was pleasantly surprised at how very readable it was at my level. hilariously, 《人渣反派自救系统》 kind of goes off the other end due to its high concentration of internet slang — I had to baidu a lot of stuff I haven't seen before — but I personally found the journey absolutely batshit and delightful. 10/10 would recommend 《人渣》 as like, a crash course in Chinese internet culture alone

木苏里: I've only read 《判官》, but I think 木苏里 's style occupies a happy medium between colloquial and referential. once again, greatest vocabulary challenges are probably going to be technical worldbuilding terms. your experience will be improved by some knowledge of references, but they’re not necessary for comprehension. slips into classical construction a few times throughout the entire book, so not too bad

苍梧宾白: again, I've only read 《黄金台》, so I can't vouch for any other title. greatest difficulty I ran into was parsing the court-specific vocabulary (so many bureaucrats. So Many)

一十四洲: I'm only halfway through 《小蘑菇》 at the moment, and in a fun turn of events the vocabulary challenge here leans towards the technical and scientific rather than the fantastic. the opening paragraphs in particular feel very, uh, naturalistic, and were honestly the hardest for me to parse. once the human(oid) shenaniganery begins, the language is quite easy to follow. does benefit from slight familiarity with scientific vocabulary (if you know "magnetic field" and various common genetic terms — or you're ready and willing to Pleco on occasion — you are a-okay)

海晏: heavy, heavy asterisks on this author because I read 《琅琊榜》 approximately (checks notes) uhh six years ago at this point (??!?!?) and my memories of the journey are heavily colored by the fact that it was the first novel I tackled outside of a structured educational environment. I remember struggling with it quite a lot, but that was also 1) fairly early on in my Chinese reading journey and 2) encumbered by a somewhat foolish insistence on looking up every single word I didn't know. my impression, looking back on it now, is that I'd probably slide it between 木苏里 and priest in terms of style, though if the language is anything like the show then it enjoys leaning towards the pseudo-classical in sentence construction

priest/p大: priest isn't difficult to read so much as her writing style really rewards people who have at least some knowledge of poetry and classical texts, both within and without the Chinese tradition. her plots and worldbuilding also tend to be more intricate, though this of course depends on the particular novel. of the three I've read, I would say that 《天涯客》 is the easiest to get into. it's also the novel with the highest concentration of fart jokes, which is neither here nor there

梦溪石: this author has a vocabulary and isn't afraid to use it, which I feel confident saying even though I've only read 《千秋》. her fight scenes in particular tend to cross over into the abstract, and at some point you just kind of sit back and let the language wash over you without trying to parse it too clearly. deeply intricate plots combined with her own historical research can make 《千秋》 a bit daunting to get into, but once you do get into it you're compelled to keep going as fast as possible (I say, having suffered many a late night at the hands of 梦溪石)

as for specific titles! oh gosh this is getting long, um, here's an at-a-glance overview of the webnovels I've read:

《天官赐福》 by 墨香铜臭: xuanhuan/xianxia; 1.1 million words. vast, sprawling, non-linear (ish) narrative that investigates godhood and trauma, humanity and devotion, acceptance and (self-)forgiveness

《人渣反派自救系统》 by 墨香铜臭: xianxia/satire; 432k words. an absolute clown transmigrates into a Legitimately Terrible webnovel as one of the central villains, and in the course of trying to alter his own fate, accidentally makes everyone fall in love with him instead by virtue of being a decent person. also an exploration of genre, tropes, the author-reader relationship, trauma (as usual), and one's own unreliability as a narrator

《判官》 by 木苏里: horror/contemporary fantasy; 539k words. what begins like an episodic horror-mystery series spirals out into a centuries-spanning epic about memory, fate, love, and grief. some of the coolest worldbuilding I've seen so far

《黄金台》 by 苍梧宾白: (a)historical political intrigue; 290k words. a story of how an emperor thought he was making a political match from hell with the two main characters and accidentally created the dynasty's scariest power couple. these two needed to get a room even before they were officially pressured into marriage, honestly. a general and a court official fight for their shared survival in a collapsing dynasty

《小蘑菇》 by 一十四洲: hahaha oh god. um. science fiction + the collision of three simultaneous apocalypses; 313k words. the world is ending, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but a long, ragged groan of pain as humanity refuses to go gentle into that good night. in a world where genetic mutations threaten to destroy humankind and a man-made aurora dances across the sky each night, a sentient mushroom goes undercover in a human city to recover a part of himself that was stolen. an investigation of humanity and personhood, sentience and benevolence, the role of order in a lawless world, how to face despair and the end times with dignity and meaning. also, mushroom-based comedy

《琅琊榜》 by 海晏: (a)historical political intrigue; 740k words. how do I even begin to describe the novel that literally changed my life and led me to where I am today. forgive me but I'm going to pitch it as The Count of Monte Cristo meets Game of Thrones. I am regularly rendered incoherent by my love for 《琅琊榜》. read it and weep

《七爷》 by priest: (a)historical political intrigue/the lightest possible fantasy elements; 292k words. theoretically there's a reincarnation premise but this book is 98% complex political intrigue. in which Jing Beiyuan attempts to put Helian Yi on the throne without dying this time around (and with more naps). finally a political intrigue novel that commits to characters with gray-as-hell morality. a book that balances themes of destiny (and how one defies it) with morality (when you’ve decided that your ends will justify your means, just how far would your means go? what does it mean to smile, and smile, and be a villain?)

《天涯客》 by priest: wuxia; 292k words. sequel/companion novel to 《七爷》, best read in conjunction with it. a retired assassin wants to do nothing more than drink his wine and die in peace, but the rest of the jianghu and a budding found family refuse to leave him alone. a roundabout exploration of how one escapes from the shadow of one's past and how even the bloodiest of hands can build a joyous future with love and care

《烈火浇愁》 by priest: contemporary fantasy/modern mythology; 783k words. an ancient resurrected sorcerer-emperor reluctantly teams up with a credit card debt-ridden millennial (ish. it’s complicated) to unravel a shadowy conspiracy with literally volcanic stakes. bleak, gorgeous, hilarious, heart-rending. explores the nature of humanity and grief, purpose and desolation, pedestals and sacrifice. the ravages of memory. how one is meant to be human when one has been relentlessly dehumanized. alternatively, "the sentient weapon of a sentient weapon falls in love with the sentient weapon and both of them forget about each other for 3000 years"

《千秋》 by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi: historical (!!) political intrigue + wuxia; 637k words. an isolationist sect leader is unceremoniously yeeted off a cliff into the midst of changing political regimes and capricious jianghu turmoil. investigates the complexities of good and evil, reputation and hearsay, betrayal and understanding, pride and forgiveness. what it means to remain faithful and unchanging in a world that seeks to break you. what responsibility an individual bears to a world that has only betrayed them. the profoundly revolutionary act of trusting another person

oh goodness this post is getting out of hand, feel free to ask if you have any more questions! alternatively, I present this post as a clickbait-ish selection for your perusal

[shijiujun]

Hi! feel free to ignore this, I saw an ask u answered a while back mentioning some novel reading difficulties on a scale of 1-10. You mentioned 天涯客 as 5, 默读 as 9, and SVSSS as like a 4-5. I was wondering if I could ask if you have any particular bl novel recs in that lower range? I'm learning, thanks 2 ur post started tian ya ke since u made it sound easier than I assumed! Its readable, just takes me a while per chapter ToT so I was curious what novels are also its level/a bit easier?

and if you saw my last ask lol, I was also curious how difficult you'd rate SCI, 镇魂, and 破云, 1-10? Maybe compared to Tian Ya Ke? They're novels I'm planning to read. I've read bits of 镇魂 and 默读 before, but wasn't really ready to handle reading much of them last I did so I just read pieces at a time. If 默读 is like a 9 then I'd like to read a few more novels I can push through before going back to it ToT

heya hmmm at the moment i really can’t think of any that’s simpler except maybe for Your Distance 你的距离 - if it’s historical it definitely ranks like 5 and above just by vocab alone, so your best bet are modern ones or school ones, those are infinitely easier to read. ermm i’m not sure if you’ve heard of these before but:

- 我和我的四个舞伴 by 娜可露露: A short & cute piece about a five-member pop star group which does fanservice in front of fans but are totally not close together in real life, and main guy is the leader of the group who ends up like chatting with someone he thinks is a girl (recommended by the youngest member of the group) who turns out to be the coldest member in the group. Leader is unaware that this is his team member’s number (as it’s his other phone number) and starts flirting with him online, so team member thinks leader likes him, and starts staring at him, and then leader who doesn’t know the ‘girl’ he’s chatting with is team member starts thinking “oh no does he like me” 

- 迪奥先生 by 绿野千鹤: I haven’t read this yet but it’s by one of my fave authors (the one who wrote qi wei shang) and I think there’s a vampire in this one, modern setting, and my friend loved it

- 碎玉投珠 by 巫哲: A piece set in 1988, where main CP are apprentices at some antiques or artisan product shop, and they fall in love, it’s pretty cute! And this is pretty popular like in the top 50s for Chinese danmei fans so far 

i haven’t read zhen hun so i can’t really say, but once again it’s priest, and having read 5 of hers and having headaches at all but one, i’d say zhen hun is no walk in the park either, especially because she interweaves world building and plot really intricately on so many levels.

so SCI’s premise is actually not difficult, but the issue is a lot of the psychological stuff can be a bit complex - er ya’s writing is not convoluted and pretty straightforward and you can try, but because it heads in a pretty far-fetched and sometimes not easily connected direction, you may get confused, plus there’s.. more than 400 chapters and 5 seasons of books at the moment

gosh i wouldn’t even recommend you start with po yun because... damn okay huai shang is not a complex writer in terms of language BUT they (she??) is a master at twists and subplots, PLUS because it’s heavily set in the drugs/narcotics world, the language and style of writing gets way more heavy than you expect - if you wanna try this, you may wanna try the manhua first to get a gist before diving into po yun - it’s like a makjang plot but more serious if you get what i mean 

[specialability]

This is by far the most popular post I've ever had (lmao) so I thought I'd pull out a few of the tag replies. Tumblr's lack of threaded commenting makes this unnecessarily annoying...

@jiggit

#hmmmmmmm i think it would be fun and cool to look at tyk alongside zen cho's the order of the pure moon reflected in water#because that one has been described BY the author as fanfic of a wuxia drama that doesn't exist#which brings me a little bit to the extent to which i agree with this (and OP this is a great discussion topic tbh)#the definition of the wuxia genre here is a little bit narrow and specifically pinpoints the kind of wuxia that jin yong made popular#(and later himself also satirised in the duke of mount deer/deer and the cauldron)#the order of the pure moon reflected in water turns to a side of wuxia that is part of why it's such an enduring genre:#historical oppression of chinese people#which while it's set in a secondary world (in that places mentioned are not real) it is very much inspired by real malayan emergency histor#(and subsequent malaysian chinese concerns etc which is a huge part of why this book is so important to me as stuff my family lived through#the order of the pure moon reflected in water IS about the hero's journey but it's not the same hero's journey that chengling is on#there's a similar kind of narrative found in kung fu wing chun for example#(whose pacing as a movie is flawed but w/e i love it to hell and back)#where the story opens with a girl seeking to help her cousin get away from the bully magistrate's son and she uses kung fu to do it#but her sifu has escaped the destruction of the northern shaolin temples & the forces that engendered that extermination catch up w to them#now once again i agree with op (especially love the conclusion of the original post!)#but in early shl days a number of people pointed out that wkx and zzs feel like gu long protagonists#and gu long's style of wuxia is entirely different from jin yong's but no less important to the genre#older jaded protagonists are no stranger in gu long's work & i think that's also interesting to keep in mind bc it expands on this reading#so while i do think that tyk in no way goes as far as rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead#(tho i note that i have only read the ummmmmmm piecemeal early english fan translation of tyk)#i do think this is a fascinating and meaty lens to use as a way to dig into tyk (to mix my metaphors)#(i will also say that tyk and shl are entirely different canons in my mind tho i have conflated them a bit here)#(author zen cho if in the unlikely but non-zero chance u are reading this pls know u remain my absolute favourite seasian author ever)#天涯客#山河令#q#the order of the pure moon reflected in water

You're right to guess that the only "real" classic wuxia novels I've read are Jin Yong's Legend of the Condor Heroes 😅 Definitely not an expert on that angle. It's interesting to know someone else has taken the "fanfic of a story that doesn't exist" angle explicitly. I will always find it frustrating that I can't read Chinese fandom's speculation and meta because I am sure there are lots of things I'm missing.

@beansofm

#this is delightful!!#i love this analysis so much!!!#that's why the whole drama between 5 clans doesn't even feel that important#and why i love zzs as a character#but yeah priest's writing style is fascinating#like qi ye also has this out of the box idea of finding love in someone other than your fated soulmate and maim character essentially#trying really hard to avoid his fated soulmate as best as he can because screw fate and screw narrative#woh#*main not maim😅

Qi Ye is definitely even more explicitly about a character trying to subvert their own fate/narrative. At the risk of pushing the metaphor too far, Jing Qi living multiple lives that just keep repeating the same patterns is similar to how an stage actor knows their character is going to die every time they play the part. Simply following the script isn't enough, he has to actively change things behind the scenes while superficially keeping the story the same. This of course can probably be said of most isekai/reincarnation stories.

@baek1nho

#this is so cool!!!#i've thought about it before but you're so right!!#even in woh how wenzhou are really extras in that ep 15/16 hero's conference#tian ya ke

It's been so long since I watched WOH I forgot about this, but you're totally right.

Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I wrote an 800 word essay about TYK as a meta-narrative. Voilà.

"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." – Jessica Rabbit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

One of the things I think many fans of Tian Ya Ke like about it is that, unlike the tv drama, it is something of a satire or deconstruction of the wuxia genre. If you are familiar with the usual wuxia tropes (of which I am by no means an expert) it becomes clear how Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are merely side-characters in what normally would be Zhang Chengling's Hero's Journey. Wen Kexing should, as the mastermind of the plot that killed Zhang Chengling's family, be the manipulative and enigmatic final boss. Zhou Zishu should be the scruffy old retired martial arts master who reluctantly takes the young hero under his wing – and then conveniently dies in order to encourage the hero to come of age. Instead of following this usual track, we are shown the scandalous underbelly of the conventional wuxia narrative – which I think Priest really digs into with Tai Sui (so go read it!!!).

As a result, TYK often reads like really good fanfiction of a novel that doesn't exist. You know the type, some author's 150k magnum opus on two side-characters that in canon have barely any depth and the fanfic author goes on to add so much new characterization and world-building that it feels like an entirely different work. The kind of fanfic that makes the source material look lacking by comparison.

But it was reading lianzi's translated chapter 15 that made me look at the narrative from a different perspective as a post-modernist piece. If you've read Hamlet you're familiar with the idea of a play within a play. But then there is another play, Rozencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, which is Hamlet from the perspective of two minor side-characters mostly taking place "off-stage". And that's really what TYK reminds me of. You know those two old muppets who sit in theatre box seats and always make snide remarks about whatever the other muppets are doing? That's where Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are situated.

In this Chapter 15 scene they are quite literally seated on the balcony watching Cao Weining fail to pay his dinner bill while making commentary and bickering. Zhou Zishu inserts himself into the narrative by paying Cao Weining's bill, and when Cao Weining comes up to the balcony to introduce himself Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu intentionally start acting like heroic figures from fiction. As I imagine it: the camera was originally only on Cao Weining, but then the camera pans up to see the pair on the balcony and then the camera follows Cao Weining up to the balcony bringing the narrative with it. Once the camera arrives on the balcony Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are effectively "on stage" now and have to act the part.

Thinking about this scene reminded me of many other scenes where Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are simply standing to the side and watching the action. Two obvious examples are outside the Scorpion's brothel and Liu Qingqiao's death, but there are also other smaller scenes where Zhou Zishu alone intentionally removes himself from the frame, like when Wen Kexing and Ye Baiyi fight. I imagine the stage where the spotlight is on Liu Qingqiao as she struggles to fight for her life, while Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing are in the wings, covered by darkness, whispering to each other. They don't quite have the powers of breaking the fourth wall and become fully self- or genre-aware, but they definitely have a cynical insiders perspective on the wuxia story they have become a part of. The themes of acting and wearing masks is a common one in the whole novel, especially the differences between how people are in public vs in private. But all of this gives the novel a voyeuristic tone at times.

Zhou Zishu already chose to leave the stage of the capital city, and although he got sucked into Zhang Chengling's story he could disappear from this new stage at any moment. Wen Kexing more actively plays his role up until the bitter end. In the end, Wen Kexing is supposed to reveal his True Identity and be killed by Zhang Chengling, allowing both of them to fulfill revenge for their families. This is the ending that Wen Kexing imagined for himself, and that's the part he knew he was playing. That's why it's so touching when he asks Zhou Zishu if it's okay that he survives. If it's okay that he selfishly violates the rules of the narrative.

Then they choose to leave the stage completely. Once off the stage (in the Extras) they can act like whoever they want. The only way to live freely is to quit the main story. And acting like a good person is pretty much as close as you can get to being a good person, regardless of how your character was written.

[rigelmejo]

Reading 镇魂 is like reading 寒舍 a little. My brain is like ahhhh thank goodness I am home I know what's going on I can relax I don't have to struggle or slog through desperately trying to figure anything out... I can just relax and enjoy and maybe contemplate something if I feel inclined. No urgent need to figure out a puzzle I have no prior ideas about. It's like starting a puzzle when I Can see a picture of the completed version on the box 镇魂, versus starting a puzzle with no idea what it makes. Even if the puzzle is "easy" I have this tension about what if I don't figure out what it's a picture of ToT which makes reading harder.

Also I just.... priests writing style is comforting to me a bit, okay. It's the first writing material I ever practiced trying to read, I have a lot of familiarity with it. Guessing words feels safe because I know the writing style well enough to know the unknown word is an adjective or noun or verb easily, is core information or an extra descriptive detail easily, which Part of rhe sentences tend to move actions forward versus add to the scene. I have a very good idea of the sentence structures I'm looking at when I read a priest novel. That kind of comfort is... nice. Even in English, its the difference between like... me reading someone who writes like me (or who's style I find familiar like say Stephen King or Holly Black) versus when I try reading a new English author and the style is just different enough it slows me down and takes time to adjust to.

Even 天涯客... its written differently than this kind of modern 镇魂 and 默读 style. But tyk still has ultimately the same kind of overall paragraph and sentence clause organization priest writes in. This is also true of 杀破浪 and even Can Ci Pin. Even though yes all these are harder to read, and with some variance in style, compared to when I read zhenhun... just the fact it's priests writing makes my brain feel less fried and more comfortable figuring things out. Whereas when I read 破云s author, or even the easier SCI writers stuff, I am just so struck by the writing style differences I feel like it's degrees harder (and that's before I even factor in unknown words).

[rigelmejo]

I'm now on chapter 10 of dmbj book 1 woohhhhhh

Thoughts:

I looked up the first 10 books other learners read, hoping to maybe copy their choices if they were helpful. I may link the articles later. A lot of interesting choices but also a lot of choices driven by literary classic picks, which I think webnovels may be easier than in some cases? Also my first novels were like... 小王子 (it was doable as my first extensive read but i had intensively read like 30 priest novel 天涯客 chapters beforehand and in any language the plot of this novel is not predictable so its mentally a lot conceptually)，笑猫日记 (I highly recommend these books as early reading as they were easy everyday language and chengyu which are very common, and being children's stories they felt repetitive in vocabulary but interesting like the multichapter novels made for 7-11 year olds), then like 120 chapters of pingxie fanfics 寒舍 and 半夜衣寒 (which felt closer to dmbjs reading level, repeated vocabulary and setting a lot to help with new words, and took me months, in retrospect they were hard reads the first time which is why I reread 60 chapters twice and 15 chapter of the other one multiple times), 镇魂 reincarnation dial arc like 4 times (intensive reading like 3 times, extensive reading 2 times), then just this WEEK 秃秃大王 （great first read along with 笑猫日记 ideal beginner reading material), and 当你走进图书馆而书里夹了一枚书签 (easy short and very motivating, also a great early reading choice). And now, reading some 盗墓笔记 (again). Some of what I read worked out well and I'd recommend to beginners, some I absolutely slogged through out of interest and hey at least it worked out for me. For me I did notice rotating between intensively reading a "difficult" material and extensively reading (with maybe up to 5 word lookups a chapter) something closer to my reading level, helped boost my reading level fairly well.

For example: I started with extensively reading 500 hanzi graded readers, then switched to 镇魂 天涯客 默读 (I know wtf was I thinking I fried my brain. Then I switched to more difficult graded readers with 1000-2000 hanzi, and intensively reading more priest (rip my brain). Then went back to easier with extensive reading 小王子, and intensively reading 笑猫日记 (which was WAY easier than priest but still considerably more unique words than 小王子). Then extensively read 笑猫日记 as it got easier, and made the pingxie fanfics my intensive reading. Then as pingxie fanfics became possible to read with 5 word lookups or less per chapter, they became that "easier" reading and 撒野 and priest stuff again became the intensively read "harder" stuff. Now "dmbj" is the stuff I'm intensively reading, but I can tell it's going to get easier as it sticks to the tomb horror genre and I'm picking up some of the most common words. So I imagine soon dmbj will become the "easy" read extensively mostly (handful of word lookups per chapter or less) and 撒野 or something else with considerable amounts of new words will become the intensive "harder" reading material. Basically: I keep going between one material with few word lookups needed, and one material that makes me look up a lot more often. This way I eventually get extensive reading practice, and keep reading stuff that teaches me a LOT of new words faster and challenges me, and eventually I move "up" so the hard material gets easier and I can pick a new "hard" reading material. At the beginning, grammar factored into what counted as "hard". But after over 120 chapters of pingxie fanfic and priest lol grammar rarely completely confuses me.

Dmbj is actually a good book series for a learner (if long term you plan to read horror related genres). Which I'm surprised by to be honest? To me, writing is extra "helpful" if it: goes to one setting and describes things in that place for a while like things to do/see, and stays in that setting for a decent duration and repeatedly uses the words related to that setting. So for example: case fic novels are great because they'll go to X place where a crime was, describe furniture and people working there and what work they do, what the building is, what is ordinary there, and then keep repeating those kinds of words for multiple chapters. The fanfic 寒舍 helped me so much cause it would focus in on one location of a mysterious death then go in depth (about a job at a clothing store/going to work and coming home/clothing words/shop words/customer service words) for 10 chapters reusing those related words regularly so I learned them. I did not expect dmbj to be like this, as it's not a case structured story. But apparently an adventure story structure has some similar benefits. In dmbj book 1: they start at a tomb and describe basic outside of tomb words, basic casual language, basic fighting and scared language. Chapter 2 they describe a shop, antiques, customer service, expenses. Chapter 3 they continue using words from the first chapters, adding now supplies words. Adding more weapons and supplies, more tomb words building on chapter 1 words. They get to the river and it's a couple chapters on a boat so you get the swimming/moving a boat/going toward away/sticking into/stepping on/kicking verbs just DRILLED into you, you get 虫子 风铃 船工 矿灯 DRILLED into ur memory. They finally get off the boat and they're in a village, very basic useful village words now mentioned, 水泥 CEMENT is now finally learned (after seeing it in passing in other novels lol) as is recognizing how 电 is used for a bunch of electricity compound words so now u know how to guess future ones. Then they go to the rockslide area and drill common "out in nature" scenery words, they drill literal drill and shovel words into you and camping words. Then they finally get in the tomb and you see 葬 so much you FINALLY remember it (I've been seeing that word since 镇魂 and finally remember it). Dmbj does not stay in a location for several chapters, which I like about case structure stories. But in each chapter it does GO TO A SPECIFIC SETTING/SCENARIO and then hammer in relevant common words to that scenario. The new words get repeated over and over, which makes remembering them easier. And the other main words are very simple verbs, some version of laughed/glared/smiled/thought/scared/shook/went forward/went back/froze, and real simple descriptors mostly being suddenly/unexpectedly/immediately/continued/clearly/obviously/basically. So even if you don't manage to pick up the new setting words of the chapter, you're hammering in familiarity with such useful direct language in writing - the transition words, basic action and reaction verbs and descriptors. When reading more description rich stuff like 镇魂, the skill to see the simple part (which is what dmbj uses lol) and then single if you need to look up any of the additional descriptors you need versus what you can just guess and retain meaning, makes reading harder stuff extensively "easier". I got this skill earlier due to 寒舍 eventually hammering in "this is bare bones what you need to follow a sentence" versus "this is description fluff you can survive not grasping and still comprehend the main plot." But it seems like dmbj also hammers in those patterns.

Dmbj is also good for a learner in that it's just... its really simply written? The vocabulary isn't simple entirely - it's a lot of everyday words I did NOT learn yet like cost, price, profiteer, generator, concrete. But it is simply written in that it is a lot like it's supposed to be: a journal of some guy just saying plainly what happened. With small bits of judging (saying he's a jerk, he's annoying, he's impressive, I wanted to X, I felt uneasy). So it's first person pov, and very directly just "this happened, I felt x, suddenly Y happened, he's an idiot." It is very straightforward. I was reading the 云村笔记 and thats even easier! It's just wu xie in some village running a business! Judging people! (At least so far lol). There's many new words for me (I didn't know election, or again price, balance books, rent property etc), but the words are very common and useful to the situation they appear in. These words are not super rare and unlikely to be ran into, they're words you probably will see in another show/novel during a similar scenario/setting/genre.

Dmbj is easier than priest. And 撒野 (if you read tomb horror - if you don't then yeah the specialized vocab makes 撒野s everyday language easier maybe?). You say, duh, we knew that! And to that I say!! There's a LOT easier than priest, and a lot of danmei easier than priest (and a lot of non danmei webnovels). But dmbj has a nice perk of being a novel I enjoy as an adult, that has novels less than 100 fucking chapters ToT. A LOT of Chinese webnovels clock in at 60-200 chapters. Before I found HeavenlyPath's sites reading list suggestions, the shortest chinese novel I wanted to read was 他们的故事 which was still clocking in at 50 chapters. ;-; 撒野 is arguably about the same difficulty for me right now as dmbj, but comes off slightly more difficult because: 1 撒野 has LONG chapters (as long as my own writing lol) and 2 it also has denser descriptions, which leads to less word repetition and more details to sort through to figure out what's important/what you can follow the plot without and which parts are the action moving forward versus description details. Dmbj is pretty much all action moving forward, it's written very bare bones. Which isn't as pretty to read (I feel you) but is again great for vocab learning repetition and fluidly reading without breaks. Mainly though: dmbj being 20-50 chapters at least for the first several books, makes them more appealing as a "look I finished a novel! I accomplished this!" (Just like in English where I'd also finish reading a novel in a week and feel so glad I got thru something on my reading list lol). Like... 撒野 is also something I want to read and should be able to... but with its length it's going to be a month commitment or more, not just a week or 2 max. (Also see HeavenlyPaths recommendations cause a lot of their shorter novel recommendations are great for this reason! It feels good to start and finish something when you still have the motivation to push through it).

I turned off Readibus underline words feature, and as expected I'm reading faster. I do think seeing no lines gets my brain to think I "need to rely on itself" and my brain gets into the zone of guessing new stuff and figuring out stuff it recognizes and me feeling too lazy to click an unknown unless I'm really curious/it seems particularly useful. So yeah, I do just... read faster/remember more when my brain thinks it's got to rely on its own memory only lol. Anyway I think I'll keep it off for a while. I think the feature to turn on traditional characters looks cool too but I'll save that for when I can read something without running into much unknown stuff. (Fun fact I have guardian in simplified and traditional so one day maybe that's how ill do it.. traditional 镇魂 has the Prettiest covers, but my simplified version has all the extras and added scenes).

I am. Blown away I read 1/3 of dmbj 1, in 2 days. That means like if I got INTO a book this level I could finish in a week. That means if I picked at a novel at this level I could maybe finish it in a couple weeks. That is way closer to my English reading speed and really fucking motivated and so. Blown away by it.

Knowing I am reading this fast, I desperately wanna reread and finish 半夜衣寒 because it's 30 chapters, I've read 25 before at least 2 times, so i know most of the words, and I really wanna finish that fic! Last time I read that much in a month. So to know now I could do it in a week or 2... it makes me wanna go do it nowwwww. But I wanna finish dmbj 1 first or I might fucking drop it then have to come back and reread (like I do with so many things-.-; )

I found like 5 other pingxie fics I wanna read today, so I guess I'll be posting some titles if any of them turn out good.

Still absolutely in the mood to write fanfic but I can't read and write, they're both time sinks so ive been mostly reading ToT for now

Will this be the year I read a decent number of pages in chinese? Will this be the year I get to idk 3000-5000 pages where other learners say extensive reading starts to get easier?? (If I remember correctly they say first 2000-3000 it's slow, 3000-5000 pages you can read okay and easier stuff just flows, 5000-7000 you feel reading is easy but are still picking up new words, 7000-9000 pages plus u start feeling its as easy as reading ur native language). I think last time I counted, at Most I was at like 2000 pages or less read in chinese. 寒舍 alone would be like 540 pages (字数*.65 English word equivalent, put into words to page counter calculator). 镇魂 is like 850 pages on its own. 天涯客 and 七爷 are both around 500 pages each. Oh how if I could read faster... how quickly I could get into Intermediate with my pages read count ToT. Then I'd find out if their claim is true or not! (Also lol 寒舍 is so fucking long and I've read half of it twice so ive read 600 pages of chinese just from that story that's wild... and I'm gonna do it again...). By the way... the suggestion also floated around besides 9000 pages is often 50ish books, and 9000 pages/200 page books (assuming you read 150-300 page books the usual shorter length novels) comes out to be 45 books. If you are an animal (like me ToT) and keep aiming for 500 page books, you'd only need to read 18. (And for curiosity sake if the books are averaging 333 pages which would Maybe be one volume of your typical danmei - each zhenhun volume is 300-400 pages, same with modu etc, then you'd need to read about 27 books to meet the goal 9000 page count). And yes... with a language like chinese and its very long form webnovels the page goal isn't even that unrealistic to reach. Another fun fact, if you happen to like The Kings Avatar, the whole novel is about 7511 pages which is a LOT (you'd probably get limited vocabulary returns eventually though? Unless the novel genre opens up more, I've only seen ep 1 of rhe drama I know little). The dmbj series (if 1.45 million characters is the correct amount) is 2094 pages all on its own, which would also be a hefty portion of the reading required ToT. If you happened to be someone with a few favorite big series in various genres, you could probably just read 9 chinese series or less and easily meet that page count recommendation.

[rigelmejo]

I did give reading 魔道祖师 a try yesterday, to see if my reading level is up to that yet.

Conclusion: almost. I'm missing some key words that mxtx seems to be going for (or simply that genre type) that I think reading with Readibu for the first few chapters would solve, I'd likely be able to pick up the needed vocab for overall comprehension after that. I also am not familiar with all names/locations in hanzi version, and I think last with many novels, you can slightly "ease" the difficulty if you look up a character/location name list first. (Surprisingly Legend of The Condor Issues hasn't had this difficulty hurdle so far though, since it introduces the main characters in actual introductory people meeting scenes, making names very clear).

I suspect on some level mxtx may use simpler writing than priest, but maybe that means less description, but still the same amount of unique characters. I found svsss readable in the past, but to be fair svsss protagonist is modern and there's a sort of modern writing of the xianxia setting which makes it easier. I find reading (some) priest easier than reading mxtx. I think though, it's because I'm much more familiar with Priests word choice overall? Like 大哥 threw me for a loop (a bit harder to follow the main idea than mdzs, so mdzs is easier right now at my vocab level), but 默读 天涯客 镇魂 I all find easier than mdzs (denser reads, but I grasp most details when I read them). And I think that's definitely due to me studying so much using priest novels, so the word choice is just less unfamiliar.

[rigelmejo]

Y'all I finished reading 盗墓笔记1 in chinese, what do I read next?! ToT (below are realistically what I feel up to tackling potentially, but I'll note alternatives for when I'm at that reading level ToT)

寒舍 by 夏灬安兰 (pingxie supernatural au, favored because I've read 2/3 of this before so I know I can read it extensively which is faster... though it's like 300k characters so faster is relative)

盗墓笔记2 (upside? It's like 40-50k so short, and I'll probably start picking at this as the alternative reading choice to go back and forth with something else. On the flip side, I just read the first book and would prefer learning some more varied vocab right now)

云村笔记 (yuncun village dmbj story, very slice of life iron triangle living in a village, upside its that slice of life adult vocab I lack and its fairly easy reading, downside its maybe also better as an alternative I switch to when tired of Main Reading material)

苍兰诀 (Love Between Fairy and Devil novel, upside I do think I can handle reading this alongside the audiobook which could be cool, and some xianxia vocab. However it is a bit more challenging since it's xianxia)

琉璃 (Love and Redemption novel. Upside is I was listening to this audiobook today, and like canglanjue I think I could just listen along to audiobook with this. Same challenges/benefits: I learn more xianxia vocabulary but it's more of a slog. It's longer than canglanjue which is Intimidating as I've only finished a 124k characters story so far, nothing longer.)

撒野 (upside: big potential increase in daily life vocab, I can also read this extensively making reading faster. Downside is it is a LONG novel and I'm not sure modern romance teen setting is something I can focus on consistently right now to actually make much progress... it's not one of my fave genres... also the chapters are like 4k characters a piece, quite long.)

镇魂 (upside? Could just read along with audiobook. Downside? It's quite long, like 撒野, and I'm a bit scared to tackle something much longer than 100k... I want to like... work my way up in novel size I can handle... I've finished 20 chapters of 镇魂 multiple times but attention burns out about that far in. Also i love this story so me not knowing every word perfectly may demotivate me, causing me not to finish Again, and ultimately the goal right now is just to read a LOT so... that would not be ideal).

SCI (I do like a good murder mystery, and this series meets several criteria: I can handle reading this author right now without much difficulty, it's in case format so I could read a section then stop for another novel and come back later - dmbj also has this benefit - and I could pick up some modern day and crime novel words, which woulsd benefit me trying to read 默读 and 破云 later. In addition, this author ErYa also has another novel in a different time period, which I'm considering for picking up some vocabulary in that setting. So anything by ErYa is up for potential reading).

成化十四年 (novel Sleuth of Ming Dynasty is based on. A candidate because surprisingly this is a bit easier for me to read than 天涯客 - and 天涯客 is one of the priest novels I can tackle extensive reading right now - and I am interested in reading the story. I could pick up setting vocabulary, some case vocabulary, and i imagine it's somewhat split by cases which may help with reading it in chunks... so yes any cases/arcs structure novels will be easier to read since I don't have to commit to reading a full novel in one go, but instead just one section at a time)

???

[hunxi-after-hours]

hello hunxi! hope you're well <3 I was wondering what you're reading these days... I adore your metas and analyses, and I'm looking forward to what you dip your toes into next!

hi there! I‘m chugging along under the yoke of calendrical inevitability these days, that’s for sure!

you can find the stuff I’ve been reading/am planning to read/watching/am planning to watch and post about in this pinned post, so the immediate future contains:

being wrecked by The Burning God, i.e. the third and final book in R.F. Kuang’s devastating trilogy (she really took the Opium Wars, smashed it into the second Sino-Japanese War, and made her magic system dependent on the slow loss of your humanity and drug dependency so like. these books go hard)

《天涯客》 Tian Ya Ke / Faraway Wanderers by Priest, and if I’m being honest I am 95% doing this so I can listen to its audiodrama because I love the work this studio does SO much

I made a rule for myself that I have to switch off books in English or else I’ll never get through the cardboard box on my dresser, so probably Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire after that! Postcolonial space opera that utilizes poetry as encryption and a million levels of linguistic register is like, my second favorite genre in existence (the first being silkpunk postcolonial space opera, look, I just really love Ninefox Gambit okay)

and we’ll see where I go from there! Hoping to get my hands on a copy of 《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang by Priest, because I 1) want to see what all the fuss is about, and 2) LOVE the idea of steampunk wuxia, but I might read 《无双》 Wu Shuang / Peerless by Meng Xishi first just because I have it on my e-reader already

a friend sent me a copy of N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became and I’ve been sitting on it for half a year, so I’d love to get to that and finally read some N.K. Jemisin, I've heard only good things about her work and it’s honestly embarrassing that I haven’t read her yet

oh oh oh I keep meaning to get into more classic wuxia! we have a lot of Jin Yong at home, so perhaps 《天龙八部》? it’s so long though I’m lowkey scared

would actually love to read The Widow Queen by Elzbieta Cherezinska? it’s a historical epic translated from Polish, and I’d love to broaden my consumption of translated texts

I’m reading Martha Wells’ Murderbot series exceedingly slowly, but it’s nice to have a novella that I can pick up between doorstoppers now and then

and I finally got around to picking up some academic texts, so I’m planning to (re)read Stephen Teo’s Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition because I read a lot of it for a class once and would like to read the whole thing properly. And The Translation Studies Reader edited by Lawrence Venuti, because... because yeah

anyway yeah this will probably take me the rest of the year to get through because I’m apparently in the middle of... oh god... four post-canon fics for four different fandoms simultaneously? and attempting to re-subtitle 《山河剑心》 so I can finally start flinging recommendations at people with abandon. and writing a research paper? I need to be stopped

[rigelmejo]

Update: to find audiobooks (and audio in general)

Search in a web search like Google, or YouTube, or ximalaya, or bilibili. Search novel name in chinese then add 有声读物 youshengduwu. You may also need to add author name, 小说 xiaoshuo (if there's an audio drama the word may help differentiate), or 在线 zaixian (online). If it's a popular danmei or book that was turned into a popular drama, the audiobook will likely be easy to find. If it's not danmei, not popular right now etc, keep digging. There's still usually audiobooks theyre just a bit harder to find. Bilibili currently has a TON if you just go to the site or app, then search novel name in chinese followed by 有声读物. They will often be conveniently a big massive long video, with individual sections for each chapter. If you're lucky, some will have chinese subtitles 字幕 zimu. You can add 字幕 to the search terms but it usually doesn't help me. More often, when you turn on the scrolling comments that overlay videos, you'll find for some videos the comments add subs that match the audio. If you go to missevan.com to watch audiodramas, scrolling comments often include someone subbing the audio in the top or bottom section of the scrolling comments.

If you're specifically looking for an audio drama, use the term 有声剧 youshengju. If you see 剧 in a file/title then you have likely found and audio drama and Not a book.

Examples:

天涯客有声读物 searched on bilibili.com (literally search "天涯客有声读物 bilibili.com" on a search engine if you're in a web browser not using the app, it will search on the site for you, if you click from a web browser and have Google translate pages option on like I often do then apparently it Even Translates the Chinese subs put on the video in the scrolling comments into English! So that's cool!)

https://m.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1t7sB

The link above is what I got, complete TianYaKe audiobook with chinese subs in the scrolling comments as the bottom yellow text (which Google translate can auto translate if desired). If you desperately need subs for your audiobooks, dig around because subs are common on dramas but not common on audiobooks so it's hit or miss if a given post has subs or not. Youtube has a lot of audio dramas but much less audiobooks.

If you like a particular manhua, it's worth looking up 漫剧 on bilibili.com (so search in web browser "漫剧 bilibili.com"). For example, poyun 破云 has a manhua I like, and on bilibili the panels are posted animated slightly, with sound effects and music and voice acting, as manju 漫剧. 19天 also has some, 撒野 etc. They're easier, since there's pictures and text on screen for all dialogue, and of course more direct with no description words just dialogue.

While I'm at it: for finding manhua

In a web browser search name in chinese and then "漫画" manhua. Just like manga scans, if you dig you can find most any manhua free on several sites, with the first few results being the official sites and later results being other places the manhua was posted (that may have chapters/pages if they were deleted elsewhere). Also, you can search for non Chinese comics too. Just search the comic name in chinese and add 漫画, 在线 if you're struggling to find the digital scans rather than print copies. I found a ton of Chinese translated Deadpool and xmen comics this way.

Also, bilibili comics apps has a TON of free Chinese manhua, you can switch your language between English and Chinese on the app and bookmark stuff in both languages, amd when you read chapters it gives you little stuff to customize your avatar (which hey is motivating if like me you can't focus well lol). It also has genre lists (so you can just browse 耽美 bl 百合 gl etc), and the app like most apps nowadays will message you when your favorited comics update or when a new one you might like is posted. If you just want an app to streamline finding chinese manhua to read the app makes it easy (likewise if you get the bilibili app and start searching audiobooks like me you'll quickly have a recommended list full of danmei audiobooks, audio dramas, fan videos, and animated voiced manhua, which has been great for me so far ToT)

So yeah, go out, explore, send me links if you find any cool stuff you'd like to recommend!

(Probably obvious) tip for chinese learners:

Do you want to read a Chinese book? Could be a webnovel, but you can do this for any novel.

Go to search engine of your choice. Type the name of the novel in chinese (so if it's an English book translated into Chinese type the Chinese name, look it up ahead of time if needed). For example I want to read Guardian, I type in 镇魂

Also type in "小说在线” book online. You can just type book 小说 or just online 在线 or add author name in chinese if needed.

You will find like 3-20 sites as the first results. Most of those will take you directly to a site to read the novel. Of the first handful, usually one or a few are the original site it was posted on so you can support the author directly there. If you're looking for a chapter/novel that was later taken down due to X reasons, then go down go further sites where it's likely to still be posted. If all else fails, instead search the Chinese book name then "txt" and you will find some txt file downloads of the book you're looking for. You may need to add "小说" or authors name. You can also find fanfic and deleted fanfic (if some fan saved it as a txt file) this way. Also, z-lib.com has a very large chinese collection, so feel free to go there, type in chinese, and find the epub versions of novels.

Basically, text (and audiobooks) are very easy to find online in chinese.