#dmbj manhua

[taomubiji]

Collection of Zhang Qiling's qilin tattoo in various official works (see more)

[xcziel]

stealing this for tumblr - y'all know what to do

[unforth]

A note on the Bilibili comics situation lest my optimisim gave anyone hope:

nope, it increasingly sounds like the announcement DOES include the app, it's just worded badly and for whatever crappy reason they decided not to tell people who exclusive use the app (my guess, the reason is money: people won't top up coins if they know the app is going away).

Reasons I say this:

The official Bilibili Discord has announced that the app is closing.

I found out someone I know through fandom does translation for the international app, and while I don't have permission to give disclosures of what they said (they did NOT say the app is closing, to be clear), what they told me also supports the conclusion that the entire thing is going away.

My hopefulness and careful reading has not been rewarded; sounds like they're just very bad at giving announcements. Why am I not surprised?

Anyway, definitely is time to read up on anything you were hoping to finish and save your faves. Here's my read/reading list. Some of these I'll DEFINITELY be looking for alternate sources for, and I may pay to finish Kiss the Abyss before the app shuts down at the end of February.

...or it's time to suck it up and start just reading stuff in Chinese. I'm not really good enough yet but when else am I gonna learn?

[rigelmejo]

i’m listening to a random audiobook i found called 我是凶手 (I tell you what it SOUNDS cute, it sure does Not sound like its about ‘i’m a murderer’ so far lmao). and they keep playing this slow harmonica sounding music clip that is screaming to me ‘final fantasy vii soft warm emotional moment’ and it’s absolutely giving me whiplash lol. I’m like ‘oh yeah okay so gay possibly enemies? wait WHY is cloud crying in the countryside in my mind rn’ 

I think.... this is what the novel is? https://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=5301119  我是凶手作者：千若 but... i don’t think that’s right, what i’m listening to has 180 chapters as far as i can tell... not just the 5 I’m seeing on jjwxc... this is what i’m listening to, except i’m listening on bilibili. https://www.ximalaya.com/sound/615931684 what novel am i even listening to...? i just clicked whatever bilibili’s been recommending me since it regularly gives me danmei audiobook recommendations and this looked ‘crime’ genre and i do love that.

[lotusflowerbreakingthesurface]

Let's Talk About PingXie: Part 4

Let's Get To Know the Artists 🎨

As expected of a fandom that has actively existed and for so many years, there are many talented artists who make contributions to Daomu Biji fandom, whether they are official artists or fan artists. I hope that more people will recognize their hard work and give them "like" and "support". Above all, please do not repost their artworks without permission/credible sources.

I know that some fanarts are too old, and we couldn't find out who the artist is no matter how hard we tried T_T If that's the case, please explain it clearly and do not claim them as your own. Some artists also have guidelines on the usage of their artworks, such as: no reposting, no self-printing, avatar/wallpaper only, etc. For more information, you can check their profiles or homepages since every artist has their own rules. Make sure to follow their rules, alright? (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

So, let's talk about PingXie fan artists and Daomu Biji official artists. Of course, only a few of them... there are too many artists to put them all here...

Please note that some may have quit the fandom, not active anymore, take a break from the fandom, or indulge in other fandoms/multifandoms. Hopefully, they wouldn't set up their Weibo to only display within half a year, so we can still appreciate their hard work 💖

Note: Mainly on Weibo (🧣) and Lofter (Lof), feel free to tell me if there is something wrong.

🌾 Fan Artists 🌾

1. 🧣: 尘心尺雪 ・ Lof: 尘心尺雪 ・ X: @kylin37044

About them: PingXie Only; doesn't like people posting her works without permission, but some people still do it and make trouble, so I can see why she is very adamant about it; sometimes drawing for PingXie fanfictions too; rarely update on X.

3. 🧣: —柒拾柒個柒拾柒— ・ Lof: —柒拾柒個柒拾柒—

About them: PingXie; draws single pictures too.

4. 🧣: finnnnnnnnnn_ ・ Lof: 16n

About them: PingXie; but unfortunately, quit the fandom.

5. 🧣: 阝可王月王月 ・ Lof: 天隅

About them: PingXie; mostly comic strip; but sadly she seems to quit the fandom.

6. 🧣: 柳壮壮的鱼缸 ・ Lof: 柳壮壮的鱼缸

About them: PingXie; HeiHua; often draws single pictures too.

7. 🧣: 霹雳小奸包 ・ Lof: 霹雳小奸 ・ X: @pajiji1206

About them: PingXie Only; chibi style; do not repost to other platform without permission.

8. 🧣: 条鱼豆���

About them: PingXie; often make cute gif.

9. 🧣 藏九归一 ・ Lof: 藏九归一

About them: PingXie; Iron Triangle, many more; sadly something happened and then she quit the fandom.

Continue in "PingXie (DMBJ) Fan/Artist List Part 1" | "PingXie (DMBJ) Fan/Artist List Part 2"

There are stores on Taobao if you want to buy their PingXie fan merchs (it's PingXie Only Stores):

🧣: 十一仓出品 ・ 🍑: 十一仓出品

🧣: 互坑组 ・ 🍑: 互坑组

Or the official one from NPSS:

🧣: 南派量子泛娱正版周边

🍑: 南派泛娱 正版周边

🌾 Official Artists 🌾

All these pictures below are the commercial ones coming from 南派悠选直播间 (NPSS Live Broadcast Account).

Artist: LiuBabu (刘巴布)

He is the artist who draws Tibetan Sea Flower Manhua (The Secret of Metok) and some scenes in “雨村笔记”, “花夜前行”, etc.

Image source: GoodSmile

Artist: _丢兜

Artist: Xishisan (西十三)

Artist: Kanose

Artist: 晓泊

Artist: XmXxiaomoxiao (XmX笑莫笑)

Artist: Penny Yang (叛逆星)

Artist: ATangTang (阿堂堂)

Artist: Guaisanmu (怪三木)

Artist: YuLinTian (鱼鳞天)

I know it's a bit late to talk about it now, but I need to get it out of my draft lol

Happy New Year! 🎉🎉

◀ Previous | Next ▶

[lunarriviera]

mo du mains—forever suffering over justice in the dark being cancelled, unshutuppable about it. will never have an english license but don't care because e. danglars already did the best translation possible. follow people around the internet begging someone to let them describe the insanely complex plot in detail. true stamina. ability to withstand whump like you cannot imagine. come for the fade-to-black romance, stay for 600k of convoluted procedural. get very worked up about childhood trauma and their poor little meow meow fei du, will grab your collar weeping, hundreds of pictures of him fall out of their pockets. probably has a murder board in their living room.

dmbj mains—yes we get it it's not a BL okay okay already. npss never finishes anything so fans get to wallow in eighteen novels, nine dramas, a dozen movies, manhua and donghua—and literally six plays, something that should be impossible to stage given that it's a franchise about tomb raiding. truly the star wars of china. even though everyone knows qin hao is the hot wu xie, most get sucked into the franchise via gateway drug zhu yilong, but then are somehow unable to leave (tomb curse?). vast reams of fic feature every imaginable ship. more ships than a naval battalion. multishippers' paradise. do you understand that there are a lot of ships. heihua stans get emotional over sunglasses and the colors black and pink placed next to each other. don't ask why the ship is called pingxie or you will get a TED talk, something something bronze gate something something ten years' promise something something if you disappeared at least i would notice. any random dmbj fan will have strong opinions about liu sang. xiaoge often played by a dancer because he has to be a) forever 19 years old and b) literally able to fly. none of the timelines make sense and all of the actors are randomly different ages but don't point this out or you will never hear the end of it. very likely you will never hear the end of it anyway. if you ask a dmbj fan about any of this it's like inviting a missionary at your door to come inside and talk with you about the bible.

Western Danmei Fandom Archetypes

2ha mains - ‘READ THE BOOK READ OUR BOOK NOW sobs about HYX something about hole READ THE BOOK NOW shout out to the absolute unit’ - your book is a terrifying masterpiece and CWN is the kind of character Shakespeare could only dream of crafting and all you do is scream and make terrible jokes, excellent work

mdzs mains - they’re hard to hear over the sound of their own ongoing wars tbh - ‘the author is DEAD unless she says something that proves me right - everyday means everyday!!!! BUT ONLY WITH LUBE! WWX desecrated my mom’s corpse but it wasn’t HIS FAULT, Alexa play wangxian.mp3’ you have all the best and all the worst things about being a massive fandom and if you are not Chinese you need to be throwing flowers at the feet of the Chinese members of this fandom (and every Chinese culture fandom tbh, translations, cultural explainers and endless patience, folks are generous as hell) cus y’all are ANNOYING. Anyway, special shout out for the yi city youts, living in their own darkest timeline cus CQL mains won’t let you have dark and disturbing things

TGCF mains - the simpiest gong and the most smiley shou so quite often y’all miss the heart of darkness in your own story! TGCF is a jamboree of pain, stop selling it as sweet autumnal walks! The delusion that is Beefleaf is a collective trauma response to a deeply harrowing side plot that involved arguably MXTX’s most loveable side character! Jun Wu gives 2ha villains a run for their money in terms of corpse heavy architectural structures! That being said, canonical Self insert porn, and you have a ferret in a cute hat, which is fresh and exciting, not a dog or a fox or cat or a dragon like every fucker else, well done

SVSSS mains - I have to keep it real y’all are a bunch of edgelords, and smug as hell but I’m finna allow it because your (reluctant) gong is the sweetest (sqq if you topped him he might not cry! Just a thought. Ok he might cry less) and you’re right, witty meta with one (1) harrowing scene of like borderline consensual non con (if your focus is sqq) or just plain non con (if your focus is lbh? But the perpetrator is the system? a sword? Their partner trying to save their life?) ent for everyone and people misunderstand your chaotic ass text a lot, because they don’t want to ask difficult questions about ‘what consent even means’ and ‘the intricacies of a meta take on a genre that is from a culture they did not grow up in and found out about on tumblr’ So you know. Frighten people out of your fandom with your in jokes, it’s ok. Also a cumplane is a horrific image when you don’t know what that means, exemplary work.

WOH mains - my beloved Shanrens, y’all and your beloved cast deserved so much better than 813 and you have my whole heart. You are a bit unhinged, cus you only eat ice. Y’all are horny as hell, which makes sense cus your leads were stunning and push hard at the F of RPF, let’s keep it real. All these danmei characters are pretty dark, but yours don’t have a war to hide behind, they’re just like that, (I’m over simplifying, sometimes you have to eat your daddy to survive and that’s ok 😭😭) so you are the most feral of them all. Congratulations. I’m happy for people who’s focus is Yexie, but there are about 6,368 lesbians who found love in hopeless place just waiting for you to write about them, please, I don’t ask for much but write some strap on content I BEG. Speaking of which, shouts to the Nya-Xu girls, you’ve got everyone doing pet play on main and THAT? That is what fandom is about.

Guardian mains - you staggered, limped, dragged yourself across the floor so everyone else could shimmy forwards. You got a good theme tune, well done on your musical taste. Everyone needs to put respect on your name but they don’t, because your show ran out of money half way through 😭 and what little they had was spent almost exclusively on getting two gorgeous leading men and giving them NOTHING to work with (and the snake ladies wardrobe) 😭😭😭

Advance Bravely mains - you’re right, it’s a Dadaist masterpiece, but this shouldn’t be your main, beloved, please watch word of honour, gong jun is in it and everything.

Winter Begonia mains - the thing is, you want people to sit with you! Your show is beautiful in every way, and you advocate for it so softly, with such love. But you look like high art and it’s scaring the sluts away. Make some memes!

Sleuth mains - this fandom seems to divide cleanly into 30 somethings that are tired and might wake up in the middle of the night to strangle you at the slightest provocation and gender fuckers that want to be topped by Jin San and honestly? Mood. Y’all are kinkier than you’d think, much like the source material, but mostly you are just here to eat and sigh wistfully at Fu Meng Paul thirst traps while you write service top porn. If you read that as a RongZhi main and couldn’t see yourself you need to read it again.

Qi Ye mains - we get it, you can read, and yes, ZZS is darker than we ever knew and JBY is more of a mess and we need to be more scared of Wu Xi than we are, and Helian Yi is not prince Jin. Counter point: Prince Jin is a simp and it’s FUNNY, it’s nice having Xiyuan as like, ethereal couple goals and ZZS kills a toddler in SHL and then dumps WKX just for REMINDING HIM, we know what he is, even if he is pretending he does not see. It’s a real good and funny book though, you’re right.

Thousand autumn mains - one guy in your animation looks pretty hot and slutty with his shirt all open and the non jiang purple but you never really sell it, come on! Do some evangelism, we’re never getting HYX so I may as well read something.

BONUS nirvana in fire (it’s not a danmei but if you don’t watch it they take your non problematic consumer card away, and do you know what? That’s fair) - y’all are sophisticated. Smart. Aesthetes. You’re here for POETIC CINEMA, and will accept nothing less. But no one needs your meta, the show is clever enough on its own, stand down. Make some memes instead. We need more porn in this here fandom.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

fan art of daomu biji for mooncake festival (the lost tomb/grave robbers’ chronicles) - wu xie × zhang qiling (aka naivete × xiaoge) - part ① -by 刘巴布liu babu

双黄白莲蓉shuāng huáng bái lián róng: mooncake with double yolks and lotus seed 

[selenuntius]

guess who’s back

I guess I never really left but I’m putting my scans hat back on. Letting myself just... not clean everything was very liberating. So what I’ve decided to clean will be very inconsistent, but I’m looking into more fonts so hopefully that’ll be better. I think what I did clean looks very good though, and it’s only sfx that I haven’t cleaned

[thosch3i]

Hi hi! So the lost tombs and chronology all super confuse me. So tlt2 ended on a cliffhanger that was not resolved by tlt3 which is ultimate note, but now there is another tlt3 that I am guessing is made by the same studio as tlt2 (but not UN) that actually follows tlt2? And it has the same WPZ as tlt2 (but sadly different WX, ZQL though I’m sure these guys are great). You seem to know what you’re talking about so I’m hoping you can help!

UN also ended on a cliff hanger so I’m wondering if they’ll get a sequel from their studio that comes before tomb of the sea.

ahhh hello anon! yes ahaha the dmbj dramas are certainly very confusing--because they keep switching the screenwriters/entire production team between dramas. huanrui did tlt1 (2015), tlt2 (2019), and the sequel to tlt2 (2021). they're also technically the production company for un (2020), but linghe did like all the directing/casting/writing so its significantly different in tone and quality from the other dramas huanrui produced. npss (dmbj author) did sha hai (2018) and tltr (2020), with sha hai being in collab with linghe, so you can see lots of parallels with un and shared cast. (gonna add that i dont know much about the m9 because that’s not what im personally interested in, so i’m only going by stories with wu xie & the iron triangle.)

unfortunately, the dramas pretty have no continuity as a result of all the weird shit and multiple studios doing different dramas and messy stuff going on behind the scenes. the author's production company currently has all the rights back for filming future dramas, which is......imo, a good thing for book fans who love the author but a 😬 thing for book fans who like the original story more than what the author is now doing with it. I'll uh avoid saying too much opinion stuff though so no more on that 😅

that aside! yes 云顶天宫 “explore with the note” part 2......is the direct sequel to tlt2 and done by the same studio. unfortunately the writers are different and im not sure how much of the production team is the same either. idk how much you know about the novels so brief summary here--for the chinese version, the main story has 9 parts split among 8 books (though the official eng tls have each part being a different book) with some important content being as follows:

official eng title “cavern of blood zombies” (first time wx goes into a tomb, first t3j meeting)

official eng title “angry sea, hidden sands” (xisha seabed tomb, introduce a-ning)

official eng title “bronze tree of death” (bronze tree in qinling, wx & lao yang solo adventure)

official eng title “palace of doom” (heavenly palace on the clouds, introduce bronze gate)

official eng title “deadly desert winds” (golmud, introduce hei xiazi, desert, rainforest, tamutuo)

official eng title “graveyard of a queen” (the rest of that arc, wu sanxing & xie lianhuan reveal, jade meteorite, amnesiac xiaoge and escape, sanshu vanishes for good--also i think the official eng tl covers a couple chapters of the beginning of the next part too)

阴山古楼 (searching for xiaoge’s memories in banai, miluotuo cave, i think introduction of wu erbai)

邛笼石影 (auction/hotel iron triangle fight, introduce xiao hua & xiuxiu, wx & xh on the mountains alone while pz & xg go with granny huo)

finale (rescue from zhang family mansion, changbai mountain goodbye, 10 years promise)

after the main story are the main sequels:

zang hai hua (tibetan sea flower; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie a few years after xiaoge has entered the gate, searching to understand xiaoge’s past

sha hai (tomb of the sea; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie’s plan to wipe out the wang family, after zhh

chongqi (reunion: the sound of the providence) covers wu xie’s lung disease and how he recovers from that, set after they pick up xiaoge again from the bronze gate. thunder city and everything.

灯海寻尸&万山极夜 (still updating on wechat) don’t worry about this one since it’s still a WIP lol

btw between sha hai and chongqi there’s also ten years later (a short story) that covers how wu xie and pangzi pick up xiaoge from the bronze gate and take him home

the dramas Do Not Connect To Each Other At All, which the exception of tlt2 & tlt2 pt2 somewhat, but they go in this order:

盗墓笔记 / the lost tomb 1 (2015): covers part 1 but with major OCs and filler, and includes the auction scene from part 8 for some reason, so introduces xiao hua early.

怒海潜沙&秦岭神树 / the lost tomb 2 (2019) technically “explore with the note”: covers parts 2 & 3 but with major OCs and filler, introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu (and hei xiazi briefly) early. last couple episodes also cover the beginning of part 4. not a direct sequel to tlt1 despite being done by the same studio.

云顶天宫 / heavenly palace on the clouds (2021) technically also “explore with the note”: covers part 4 with major OCs and filler (and the same changes carrying over from tlt2). some episodes are identical to the last couple episodes of tlt2. works as a direct sequel only if you ignore the last couple episodes of tlt2 that take place in the snowy mountains. (those episodes of tlt2 were filmed after this drama was filmed, and im still not sure why they dragged the wu xie and xiaoge from tlt2 back to changbai mountain to film those episodes.)

终极笔记 / ultimate note (2020): covers parts 5-8 with minor OCs and minimal filler, also introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu early. the only adaptation that resembles its source material most of the time.

沙海 / tomb of the sea (2018): covers the second sequel with major OCs and filler. includes some bits from zhh and the short story “three days of silence”.

重启之极海听雷 / the lost tomb reboot (2020): covers third sequel with major OCs and filler.

in addition there is the prequel series mystic nine (2016) and side movies for the dramas that the author produced. there is also a single standalone movie--time raiders (2016) that is....well it’s. very strange. it’s fully subbed on youtube if you’re interested?

the best way to watch the dramas is to assume each one is its own self-contained AU set along different points of the dmbj timeline because even the dramas the author himself worked on don’t have continuity LOL (and with the exception of ultimate note & sha hai most of the time, also assume most characters are pretty OOC from the novels).

i uh regret to inform you though, that ultimate note will not be getting a sequel unless the author magically decides to not care about making money anymore and sells the rights to film the finale to linghe or something ^^;;;; it’s....unfortunate bc un is the most highly-rated dmbj adaptation on douban by A Lot, but it’s an adaptation that the author had literally nothing to do with whatsoever.

more information on some of the side movies/stage plays/manhua/donghua here.

summaries of the main novel stories (currently through zhh) here.

edited mtl (some of which has apparently been looked over by native cn speakers) of the novels following where official eng tls end here. (there are many scattered extras as well.)

you can get the official eng tl books/ebooks on amazon or elsewhere(?), but if you have problems purchasing them or like you just dont wanna support amazon or something, dm me off anon. (also i dont want to be mean but frankly the official tls are kinda bad too ^^;;;)

a rough timeline (spoilers galore) for the dmbj novels here. (fair warning im not 100% sure how accurate all of this is--they put three days of silence as 1991 but looking at the info in zhh, it seems like it should have been before the 1950s...but it’s more than fine as a general overview.)

anyway i hope that was helpful in some way? dmbj is a Very Confusing thing to get into ahahaha, one of my twitter mutuals has made a few carrds if you think they might be helpful: book, dramas (slightly out of date bc it says heavenly palace hasn’t aired yet), ultimate note (got its own carrd by virtue of being the only adaptation aside from sha hai sometimes that most og book fans acknowledge lol ^^;;;)

also anon if anything wasn’t clear or if you had more questions feel free to ask again sorry ahahaha im kinda tired rn @.@ 

[shijiujun]

it’s not a lie when people say you get a serotonin boost from seeing stores ship your purchases out and these are on their way

1. First batch MDZS manhuas

2. My huge ass pressure cooker for FOOOOD (not that I cook much I got it for my mom so she can cook more easily)

3. My recent Taobao purchase with a gazillion earrings and accessories and dumb stamps

4. Shipping not involved but when an artist you commissioned goes I’m almost done with your piece 😭

5. Trapped Interview Logbook and Manga 😭

6. 花西子 engraved lipsticks that I ordered two weeks ago LIKE FINALLY THEY SHIPPED IT

Now all I need to wait for is like the second batch of manhua and the DMBJ OST set ahhhhh my lovelies please come to me soon

[taomubiji]

Random DMBJ Trivia Part 2

Wu Xie is 181cm or 5'11''. Hei Yanjing is 185cm or 6'1''.

In the novel, Hei Yanjing has a degree in music and anatomy from Germany. In The Lost Tomb, Wu Xie studied in Germany and in Tomb of the Sea, Huo Daofu also studied in Germany.

He Longlong, who played Huo Daofu, was an actor in an agency NPSS owns. He left the agency before Reunion aired and as a result, wasn't included in any promotional pictures for the show.

Li Cu was born sometime around 1996 in the novels. Based on this, he will be 28 years old in 2024.

Wu Xie has described Zhang Haiyan/Zhang Hailou as an "evil madman" and reminded him of Hei Yanjing.

Hei Yanjing's birthday (January 23) and Xie Yuchen's birthday (October 3) likely originated from official merchandise that was released.

One of the head writers for Ultimate Note, Tian Liangliang, also worked as a screenwriter on The Lost Tomb 2.

Qi Yu's name has been mentioned in Volume 2 and Restart. However, in the animation Buried Tree Devil and the television adaptations The Lost Tomb 2 and Reunion, his name was taken out.

The color of Zhang Qiling's tattoo was initially described as being 青色 (Qīngsè) which can mean blue, green, blue-green, or even black. This is why the color is described as green in Cavern of the Blood Zombies and may be why the tattoo is so blue in The Lost Tomb. In later novels, the tattoo is described as black.

More than six thousand modifications were made to the online version of Sand Sea 2 to meet publishing requirements.

The artist company that worked on the early editions of Wu Xie's Privates Notes, also worked on the Daomu comic.

Part of the Warehouse 11 arc in Reunion: Sound of the Providence was not included in the final product which means the Warehouse 11 arc was intended to be even longer.

In the Restart comic, Boss Jiao feeds an unloyal employee to his pet alligator named Charlie.

The first chapter of DMBJ was posted to Qidian in July 2006. The novels will be 20 years old in 2026.

Zhang Qiling's iconic blue hoody is said to have originated from the first edition of the Daomu comic. However, other fans believe it originated from early official artwork by the same artist company which was subsequently replicated in fan art.

[dmbjartreblogs]

From “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles” on Bilibili. You can read the official translation, legally and for free, here!

>>> your daily dose of Xiaoge being a badass, brought to you today by the DMBJ manhua.

[rigelmejo]

Do any of you have memories of reading when you were in elementary school (or equivalent)? I remember my dad started with very simple kids books and read them to me and had me sound out the simple words. I remember my parents got me the book-toy thing where you could press a stylus pen to the book page and the toy would read the word out loud, so I used that to practice reading. I remember at school, they gave us 2 kinds of reading assignments: short reading where we read word definitions in a vocabulary list first, and longer chapter books for children where I guessed what the unknown words meant (like Holes). I remember at various times from 5-10 I would pick up books on my parents bookshelves and try to read them - I picked up Michener novels and only understood maybe 30% of the words, certainly not all the stuff about how the land mass of alaska was formed and all the descriptions (describing landscape setting formation is most of the beginning of his books), I picked up some nonfiction books they had like textbooks and tried to read bits and pieces like about space or physics but they were written for adults so I did not understand all of it. My dad would take me to the library and I would certainly try to read books (about learning Egyptian, about space) but I don't think I fully understood anything written above the level of Catwings and Bunnicula.

I remember at home, my dad started trying to read me chapter books around age 8 in an effort to get me more into reading, and eventually it did work and I got frustrated with how slow we went through the book together so I started trying to read it on my own. And that really kicked me off, I read 3 chapter books in increasing speed and I think when I was done doing that I was around 9-10 and finally felt Good at reading. I finally felt like I could pick up any book and get the main idea, and some to most details (some details if it was something for adults like say Dracula or The Prince and the Pauper or Shakespeare, most details to all if it was written for kids/young adults).

Because I remember how it went... I've tried to approach learning to read in other languages as if it'll be a similar process, and I expect to hit similar milestones.

I read Chinese webnovels with TTS (Read Aloud in Edge is probably the best one) half the time, because it's like learning to read English and I looked up a LOT of word pronunciations back then. I listen to audio pronunciation every time I look up just an individual chinese word when reading, if I didn't just hear it in a show. I remember how english reading went... how at first I could just understand chapter books for kids, I got into a young adult chapter book series and reading a TON of that really helped improve my reading. Even though at first when my dad read it to me, there were a LOT of detail words (particular items) and description words I did not know, so I was only able to follow the main idea. I highly recommend Heavenly Path's Notion Site for their reading recommendations for mandarin, because they do have a lot of childrens-chaptered story recs, which I did read a couple years ago and helped tremendously.

I feel like now reading chinese is like... me when I started to read young adult novels on my own in english. Like I'm getting rhe main idea, adult novels I'm ONLY getting the main idea and the easier the reading material is the More I grasp (like manhua i get everything if its daily life, or main idea plus most details like Poyun, same with childrens novels I can follow all of Xiao Wang Zi and Tu Tu DaWang but depending on setting i just get main idea and most details - but not all), and then young adult level reading it varies. I needed to look up a ton of words reading dmbj 1, but i just read 2 and 3 extensively. I can read some priest novels okay extensively (especially if i've looked up words in them prior) and follow main idea and Some Details, but i tried to read a romance bl yesterday about an actor returning from overseas to fans and his assistant, and his contract with a company ending and some rival possibly replacing him with the company, and he goes to his apartment and puts his feet on the table and insists he's irritated (not sure if he wants to fight to keep contract, or quit because he's gay and doesn't want to remain in closet) and thats ALL i understood in chapter 1. I don't know the words for contract, or various business terms, so I couldn't figure out details any more in depth unless I looked words up (and I didn't look words up). So my reading comprehension varies greatly depending on the subject and how many words about that subject I know. I think like with improving reading in english, the bulk of improvement in reading in chinese will happen by just reading MORE that i can follow the main idea of. Which is not difficult at this point, since most webnovels now fall between "I can just manage to grasp the main idea" and "I grasped the main idea and many individual details." Which is around where I felt my reading skill in english was at 10-11, which is when I started reading young adult novels on my own a lot and then in the following years also fanfic. And im at the point where it just needs to keep improving until its where my english reading was at aroung age 13 when i could start reading ALL stuff for main idea, and things written for young adults and nonfiction for main idea and most details.

Oh and for comparison's sake: what learning to read in French was like. Ultimately also the same, but so much faster. English took 9 years to learn to read most things (kindgergarten to eigth grade age 13, with me starting to try reading most things for main idea in 6th grade so 7 years in), chinese i started trying to reading most things i think 3 years in? And im 5 years in now and still working on it. For french I started reading "kids type" stuff around 6 months? Graded readers and news from 3-6 months looking lots of words up, then 6-12 months i read textbook type stuff and wikipedia and looked up about 5-10 words per article, then year 1-2 i read adult nonfiction (easier to understand main idea as its written for communicating facts), then year 2-3 i started reading novels for young adults and adults (it felt very hard and i was trying to just grasp the main idea), and then somewhere after year 3 it just "clicked" and i could read any french fanfic i came across and the fiction novels i had no longer were draining to read and follow the main idea/most details and it felt l could read french as well as 13 year old me could read english. I would guess a lot of french "just clicking" was how many english cognates i could guess the meaning of, a lot of the nonfiction i read was re-explaining things i know in english only in french so i learned like a kid in their native language learns words from textbooks they study, and so mostly it just followed the process learning to read english did. Just super sped up. The novel part was the funnest, because I would just pick up books then feel too exhausted to read them, then try again in a few months and suddenly they'd feel easier. I was reading French daily because i changed my google account to french (and therefore all linked sites like Huffington post was in french, google search results were in french, wikipedia was in french - all of those are still in french for me). So i did a little practice daily without thinking about it. In retrospect i WISH i'd listened to more words as i read and listened to pronunciations of words i looked up more, that definitely fucked over my listening skills in French. I am so glad I listened more when reading Chinese, it helped a ton, including with just general reading only skills (chinese hanzi sometimes have a sound component so if I have learned a words pronunciation before, and see a hanzi in a book and "sound it out" sort of by looking at the sound component then I can sometimes recall if I HAVE actually seen the word before and know it, that all makes reading chinese paper novels way easier and remembering hanzi for words I look up easier).

[gathered-pieces]

#WHEN WU XIE IS LITERALLY RIGHT THERE SJSJKSKALA#DMBJ#THE LOST TOMB REBOOT#XIAOGE#LIU SANG#ok so i LOVE the chongqi manhua cause SO MUCH of it is this energy#xiaoge's his usual self but like he's just constantly doing wu xie-centric helpful things like kidnapping santa to give wu xie christmas#presents. going to the moon cause wu xie wants moon cakes. cutting wu xie's phone in half cause some ppl sent wu xie messages#that upset him ToT#and like. xiaoge's just like???? i have no use for a fan but if u wanna help go do something for wu xie#meanwhile wu xie IS xiaoge's biggest fan and xiaoge is really happy/conflicted about it#in the early days SUPER conflicted cause he adored wu xie but was afraid wu xie was gonna get killed trying to help him#and then just got real fond cause wu xie's irresistable#xiaoge's like. by all means be my fan but u gotta like wu xie too#also im mysterious im the night HOW did i even get a fan#i got wu xie but wu xie's WEIRD and a monster magnet have u SEEN HIM#like i GET why his ass clung onto me. but other ppl??? whats UP#also i still remember when liu sang was gonna let pangzi and wu xie die ToT#and xiaoge probs got frustrated at that#wu xie still saved liu sang later cause its WU XIE and then liu sang finally warmed up to him lol

thank you for this excellent addition @mejomonster

IM LOSING MY MIND

[taomubiji]

The Iron Triangle in the Restart Comic

[taomubiji]

Wu Xie and Pangzi chatting while watching the rain in the Restart Comic (x)