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cnovelsI suddenly woke up today on this weird nian-chu-er (second day of lunar new year) in the middle of the week and realized that I had precisely one day to get this out loll. So, enjoy my somewhat unorganized thoughts and this rundown of Yi Zhan Ye Deng, in light of me translating a novel and a short story from her! She's one of my favorite modern baihe authors and definitely deserves the spotlight.
ps. Yi Zhan Ye Deng can be literally translated to 'a night light'. cute and fitting for an author >_<
~Overview~
Yi Zhan Ye Deng has written five modern romance baihe novels (four complete and one updating, though currently on pause). I'd say that she's really good at emphasizing the difference in the two main characters, and her prose involving all the little details of what modern city life entails is very captivating, at least for me. Her prose isn't necessarily 'fancy' and I'd argue that writing 'big events' isn't really her type of thing. She much prefers to string prose together into a melodic river that slowly but surely carves its way into your heart. There's a serene feeling in which she describes things like rain, writing, and romanticism, which really calls out to me. She's really good at focusing in on things like the small feelings that her characters have on the daily, description of micro-expressions and other very minor details that all of a sudden make the characters much more lively while placing them firmly in the modern setting.
One other thing I'd mention is that while her works are very much set in reality and there are many realistic details, there's one aspect of her writing that I love very much and that is the fact that there seems to be a 'textured glass' feeling to her writing when looking at her works from a realistic lens. It's kind of hard to explain myself on this because she writes realistic conflicts and settings, make it very real, but at the same time there is a type of quality to her writing that allows a person to be relatively removed from the 'reality setting', and for some reason that quality of her modern novels is intoxicating. The one very concrete example I can give for this is that in Yi Zhan Ye Deng's writing, she usually doesn't use the modern city name when naming a place; instead, she usually finds an outdated/lesser known name of the place, which makes it both reality-and-not-reality at the same time. Example: Lu Island probably wouldn't ring a bell, but it is in fact modern day Xiamen. Another interesting aspect for me is that it seems Yi Zhan Ye Deng is very well versed in English and world literature at large, and sometimes the English references (pop culture like songs, schools like UCLA or Stanford, or just phrases) that pop out in her works from time to time are very startling (though in a good way). The plot for most of her books could be considered relatively simple, however, the good prose elevates it so much more. Her works would mostly be considered slow pace and romantic, which of course isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I'm of the opinion that this type of writing quality is quite rare and I'm part of the target audience so I will defend it to no end.
~Works (in detail)~
Here's a list of her works (going in time order for her novels):
The first one is Blooming Love Needs No Explanation | Feelings Speak for Themselves, (桃李不言, tao li bu yan). It is Yi Zhan Ye Deng's first novel, her rise to fame, and arguably still her most beloved work today. Tao Anzhi's mother left her with her grandfather as her mother had her very young, in college. When she was six, Anzhi's grandfather died, and she had nowhere to go. Yan Xi, a good friend of Anzhi's mother, offered to take care of her since she had a good background and support, and raised Anzhi until she left for college. However, throughout the years, Anzhi realizes that she loves her xiaoyi who raised her. Yan Xi also struggles with heteronormative expectations before realizing Anzhi's love, and at first she hesitates over the age gap and supposed 'morals', but with encouragement that love is her business only, she accepts.
Second is Four Seasons (春夏秋冬, chun xia qiu dong). It is a college campus romance between Shi Ci, a Professor of Business and Tang Zhou, an undergraduate English major. Tang Zhou is a struggling student who doesn't have any parental support in college, so she works multiple jobs while keeping up with her studies. Shi Ci is from a good background and has a steady footing within her field as one of the youngest experts, so Tang Zhou meets her when Shi Ci invites a friend to eat at the restaurant Tang Zhou works at as a waiter. Because of their differences, at first Tang Zhou resists Shi Ci's advances, but slowly accepts Shi Ci's feelings. They struggle through some obstacles along the way, but finally forgive and decide to continue together. There's a lot of musical symbolism in this work since their shared hobby is collecting vinyl discs.
Next, Electric Illusions, (电光幻影, dian guang huan ying) was written in starting the first year of the pandemic. Xiang Xiaoyuan is an up-and-coming actor who refuses the advances of the movie director, Wei Jiabao. To get back at her, Wei Jiabao makes it increasingly difficult for her to act within the industry, since he is part of the family that owns the mega entertainment corporation, Tong Hua. Desperate, Xiang Xiaoyuan and her brother try to find help at industry banquets, where she incidentally meets the CEO of Tong Hua Corp, Wei Zhuang, and signs a contract with her, which helps her career take off. *Personal opinion: This has a lot of descriptions of acting and plot of movies/dramas within the plot of the book, but when combined with Yi Zhan Ye Deng's meticulous descriptions and pacing when explaining the small details, it is one of my favorite showbiz portrayals ever despite not finishing it due to other reasons. *
Last in the finished collection is If I Could Mail You a Book (如果给你寄一本书, ru guo gei ni ji yi ben shu). This is a very slice-of-life modern romance following interior designer Liang Xinhe and author Ning Xi. When the story starts, they both are in low points of their life, and since both are over 30, they find it increasingly hard to regain their footing. However, by fate, they meet and start recovering together, and then it blossoms into a love that is both passionate yet slow and cute. Liang Xinhe is 30 and Ning Xi is 36, age gap is six years. The title is from a poem titled, "I Love You", a poem about life, literature and spring, and is one of my top baihe romance novels. It definitely left a deep enough mark on me that I choose to translate it~
Yi Zhan Ye Deng also has a currently ongoing but paused novel named No Stars at Night (夜里无星, ye li wu xing), again another modern baihe romance. It revolves around Chen Xing having a one sided high school crush on her senior, but she's able to chase after her crush after finishing school and becoming a teacher, so there's also some themes of personal growth. I personally went through like 10 chapters of it before she went on hiatus (apparently the author is renovating her new house, yay for her!!) so I stopped and plan on picking it back up when I can confidently see the end in sight.
Yi Zhan Ye Deng also started a short story collection, All About Summer, which has random and sporadic updates, where all the short stories are standalone. I've read the first one-shot and the third short series, a sci-fi story called Galaxy's Breadth, and liked it so much that I translated it too (just finished the epilogue today, huzzahhh!!).
~Notable aspects~
One thing that I'd confidently say is that Yi Zhan Ye Deng really knows how to write age gaps between her couples (er, another piece of evidence in the lore iceberg regarding how baihe fandom just loves their much older jiejies???) As evidenced by her first four books, which all exhibit an age gap of 5+ years, she really is able to capture the chemistry between women who are arguably at different points in their lives, and how that affects their dynamic, and their outlook on life. Well, her fifth book is also technically an age-gap (they aren't the same age for sure) but it's not 5+ years, which could be considered a new attempt for her and I'm looking forward to her finishing it.
Another easter egg (or multiple) that is in store for her longtime readers is that there are many crossovers between her novels. Her (completed) modern novels are all within the same verse, and can often see characters crossing over. Anzhi and Yan Xi made an airport brush-past cameo in Four Seasons. Shi Ci, Tang Zhou, and Shi Ci's brother Shi Hai make cameos in Electric Illusions, and Xiang Xiaoyuan gets multiple mentions and cameos in If I Could Mail You A Book, as she acted in a movie that was adapted from a book Ning Xi wrote. Through the cameos, it's also implied that Blooming Love Needs No Explanation and Four Seasons take place a little earlier in the timeline compared to the two others.
~Translations~
As far as I know, my translation of If I Could Mail You A Book and Galaxy's Breadth are the only completed human translations of her works. Hurts but I suppose that when speaking from personal experience, her prose is a bit difficult to translate. Another thing that I've realized is that I'm often afraid of my translations of her work falling flat in English because there's nuances within all of the micro-details she includes, but can't really be translated to English. I suppose I'm also open to translating more works from her in the future, but it'll have to... be a while.
~Audio drama adaptations~
All her completed works seem to have been licensed for audio dramas as shown by the icons on her home page. Blooming Love Needs No Explanation has finished production and is on Lychee while the Four Seasons audio drama is also completed and can be found on Fanjiao. I recall seeing on her Weibo that she was also monitoring the progress of the audio drama for If I Could Mail You A Book, which is obviously one I'm looking very much forward to (so that I can artbait people, make audio edits and squeal over these jiejies ahahahaha)
~Ending remarks~
Finally, I personally wonder if she would ever write a historical setting... when No Stars at Night started serializing she apparently put the wrong tag on it so I got excited over this new 'historical' novel, but then she quickly corrected it to the correct modern tag haha. I'm not disappointed at all but will mourn it just a little(!!) bit. That's all! Hope that more of her works can be appreciated~ A link dump will follow!
~Links~
(my) translations:
If I Could Mail You A Book (carrd)
Galaxy's Breadth page
JJWXC raws for Blooming Love Needs No Explanation
JJWXC raws for Four Seasons
JJWXC raws for Electric Illusions
JJWXC raws for If I Could Mail You A Book
JJWXC raws for All About Summer
JJWXC raws for No Stars at Night
ps. Yi Zhan Ye Deng can be literally translated to 'a night light'. cute and fitting for an author >_<
~Overview~
Yi Zhan Ye Deng has written five modern romance baihe novels (four complete and one updating, though currently on pause). I'd say that she's really good at emphasizing the difference in the two main characters, and her prose involving all the little details of what modern city life entails is very captivating, at least for me. Her prose isn't necessarily 'fancy' and I'd argue that writing 'big events' isn't really her type of thing. She much prefers to string prose together into a melodic river that slowly but surely carves its way into your heart. There's a serene feeling in which she describes things like rain, writing, and romanticism, which really calls out to me. She's really good at focusing in on things like the small feelings that her characters have on the daily, description of micro-expressions and other very minor details that all of a sudden make the characters much more lively while placing them firmly in the modern setting.
One other thing I'd mention is that while her works are very much set in reality and there are many realistic details, there's one aspect of her writing that I love very much and that is the fact that there seems to be a 'textured glass' feeling to her writing when looking at her works from a realistic lens. It's kind of hard to explain myself on this because she writes realistic conflicts and settings, make it very real, but at the same time there is a type of quality to her writing that allows a person to be relatively removed from the 'reality setting', and for some reason that quality of her modern novels is intoxicating. The one very concrete example I can give for this is that in Yi Zhan Ye Deng's writing, she usually doesn't use the modern city name when naming a place; instead, she usually finds an outdated/lesser known name of the place, which makes it both reality-and-not-reality at the same time. Example: Lu Island probably wouldn't ring a bell, but it is in fact modern day Xiamen. Another interesting aspect for me is that it seems Yi Zhan Ye Deng is very well versed in English and world literature at large, and sometimes the English references (pop culture like songs, schools like UCLA or Stanford, or just phrases) that pop out in her works from time to time are very startling (though in a good way). The plot for most of her books could be considered relatively simple, however, the good prose elevates it so much more. Her works would mostly be considered slow pace and romantic, which of course isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I'm of the opinion that this type of writing quality is quite rare and I'm part of the target audience so I will defend it to no end.
~Works (in detail)~
Here's a list of her works (going in time order for her novels):
The first one is Blooming Love Needs No Explanation | Feelings Speak for Themselves, (桃李不言, tao li bu yan). It is Yi Zhan Ye Deng's first novel, her rise to fame, and arguably still her most beloved work today. Tao Anzhi's mother left her with her grandfather as her mother had her very young, in college. When she was six, Anzhi's grandfather died, and she had nowhere to go. Yan Xi, a good friend of Anzhi's mother, offered to take care of her since she had a good background and support, and raised Anzhi until she left for college. However, throughout the years, Anzhi realizes that she loves her xiaoyi who raised her. Yan Xi also struggles with heteronormative expectations before realizing Anzhi's love, and at first she hesitates over the age gap and supposed 'morals', but with encouragement that love is her business only, she accepts.
Second is Four Seasons (春夏秋冬, chun xia qiu dong). It is a college campus romance between Shi Ci, a Professor of Business and Tang Zhou, an undergraduate English major. Tang Zhou is a struggling student who doesn't have any parental support in college, so she works multiple jobs while keeping up with her studies. Shi Ci is from a good background and has a steady footing within her field as one of the youngest experts, so Tang Zhou meets her when Shi Ci invites a friend to eat at the restaurant Tang Zhou works at as a waiter. Because of their differences, at first Tang Zhou resists Shi Ci's advances, but slowly accepts Shi Ci's feelings. They struggle through some obstacles along the way, but finally forgive and decide to continue together. There's a lot of musical symbolism in this work since their shared hobby is collecting vinyl discs.
Next, Electric Illusions, (电光幻影, dian guang huan ying) was written in starting the first year of the pandemic. Xiang Xiaoyuan is an up-and-coming actor who refuses the advances of the movie director, Wei Jiabao. To get back at her, Wei Jiabao makes it increasingly difficult for her to act within the industry, since he is part of the family that owns the mega entertainment corporation, Tong Hua. Desperate, Xiang Xiaoyuan and her brother try to find help at industry banquets, where she incidentally meets the CEO of Tong Hua Corp, Wei Zhuang, and signs a contract with her, which helps her career take off. *Personal opinion: This has a lot of descriptions of acting and plot of movies/dramas within the plot of the book, but when combined with Yi Zhan Ye Deng's meticulous descriptions and pacing when explaining the small details, it is one of my favorite showbiz portrayals ever despite not finishing it due to other reasons. *
Last in the finished collection is If I Could Mail You a Book (如果给你寄一本书, ru guo gei ni ji yi ben shu). This is a very slice-of-life modern romance following interior designer Liang Xinhe and author Ning Xi. When the story starts, they both are in low points of their life, and since both are over 30, they find it increasingly hard to regain their footing. However, by fate, they meet and start recovering together, and then it blossoms into a love that is both passionate yet slow and cute. Liang Xinhe is 30 and Ning Xi is 36, age gap is six years. The title is from a poem titled, "I Love You", a poem about life, literature and spring, and is one of my top baihe romance novels. It definitely left a deep enough mark on me that I choose to translate it~
Yi Zhan Ye Deng also has a currently ongoing but paused novel named No Stars at Night (夜里无星, ye li wu xing), again another modern baihe romance. It revolves around Chen Xing having a one sided high school crush on her senior, but she's able to chase after her crush after finishing school and becoming a teacher, so there's also some themes of personal growth. I personally went through like 10 chapters of it before she went on hiatus (apparently the author is renovating her new house, yay for her!!) so I stopped and plan on picking it back up when I can confidently see the end in sight.
Yi Zhan Ye Deng also started a short story collection, All About Summer, which has random and sporadic updates, where all the short stories are standalone. I've read the first one-shot and the third short series, a sci-fi story called Galaxy's Breadth, and liked it so much that I translated it too (just finished the epilogue today, huzzahhh!!).
~Notable aspects~
One thing that I'd confidently say is that Yi Zhan Ye Deng really knows how to write age gaps between her couples (er, another piece of evidence in the lore iceberg regarding how baihe fandom just loves their much older jiejies???) As evidenced by her first four books, which all exhibit an age gap of 5+ years, she really is able to capture the chemistry between women who are arguably at different points in their lives, and how that affects their dynamic, and their outlook on life. Well, her fifth book is also technically an age-gap (they aren't the same age for sure) but it's not 5+ years, which could be considered a new attempt for her and I'm looking forward to her finishing it.
Another easter egg (or multiple) that is in store for her longtime readers is that there are many crossovers between her novels. Her (completed) modern novels are all within the same verse, and can often see characters crossing over. Anzhi and Yan Xi made an airport brush-past cameo in Four Seasons. Shi Ci, Tang Zhou, and Shi Ci's brother Shi Hai make cameos in Electric Illusions, and Xiang Xiaoyuan gets multiple mentions and cameos in If I Could Mail You A Book, as she acted in a movie that was adapted from a book Ning Xi wrote. Through the cameos, it's also implied that Blooming Love Needs No Explanation and Four Seasons take place a little earlier in the timeline compared to the two others.
~Translations~
As far as I know, my translation of If I Could Mail You A Book and Galaxy's Breadth are the only completed human translations of her works. Hurts but I suppose that when speaking from personal experience, her prose is a bit difficult to translate. Another thing that I've realized is that I'm often afraid of my translations of her work falling flat in English because there's nuances within all of the micro-details she includes, but can't really be translated to English. I suppose I'm also open to translating more works from her in the future, but it'll have to... be a while.
~Audio drama adaptations~
All her completed works seem to have been licensed for audio dramas as shown by the icons on her home page. Blooming Love Needs No Explanation has finished production and is on Lychee while the Four Seasons audio drama is also completed and can be found on Fanjiao. I recall seeing on her Weibo that she was also monitoring the progress of the audio drama for If I Could Mail You A Book, which is obviously one I'm looking very much forward to (so that I can artbait people, make audio edits and squeal over these jiejies ahahahaha)
~Ending remarks~
Finally, I personally wonder if she would ever write a historical setting... when No Stars at Night started serializing she apparently put the wrong tag on it so I got excited over this new 'historical' novel, but then she quickly corrected it to the correct modern tag haha. I'm not disappointed at all but will mourn it just a little(!!) bit. That's all! Hope that more of her works can be appreciated~ A link dump will follow!
~Links~
(my) translations:
If I Could Mail You A Book (carrd)
Galaxy's Breadth page
JJWXC raws for Blooming Love Needs No Explanation
JJWXC raws for Four Seasons
JJWXC raws for Electric Illusions
JJWXC raws for If I Could Mail You A Book
JJWXC raws for All About Summer
JJWXC raws for No Stars at Night
no subject
Date: 2025-01-31 05:31 am (UTC)Finished: Blooming Love Needs No Explanation, Four Seasons, If I Could Mail You A Book. All super good.
Dropped: Electric Illusions, something about the main ship kinda sat wrong with me the first time around, but I do love Xiang Xiaoyuan very much. Might try rereading sometime.
On hold (with the book): No Stars at Night
Random things:
Favorite ship: Liang Xinhe x Ning Xi (If I Could Mail You A Book)
The designated little white bunny + fox in one character(?): lol but Tao Anzhi all the way
Most appealing character development: Xiang Xiaoyuan
Most Mature jiejie-tm: Yan Xi
no subject
Date: 2025-01-31 07:17 pm (UTC)I remember you mentioning that January is very busy for you so I appreciate you taking the time to write this out!
Mm, I think I can sorta imagine how the "textured glass" feeling is like. Sounds like a fun author to read~
I'm often afraid of my translations of her work falling flat in English because there's nuances within all of the micro-details she includes, but can't really be translated to English.
Can you share a little about some examples of sentences/scenes you found difficult to translate? I always like to hear of people's processes.
(i'll be back with more comments later! was going a quick skim)
no subject
Date: 2025-02-01 06:47 am (UTC)One really recent chapter that comes to mind that I had a really hard time with was the 3rd chapter of Galaxy's Breadth. It's about the main characters having the most romantic sci-fi concert date, so there were some song lyrics and a lot of internal monologues about their feelings. It was super difficult for me (I finished the two chapters after it before I got that one out) I think because a lot of the internal emotions really reflect the more Chinese take on romanticism, which leans reserved instead of loudly proclaiming your love (and Yi Zhan Ye Deng's writing style amplifies it beautifully as well).
But the whole time I was like trying to pick words that both were passionate because there were truly a lot of feelings underneath the waves there but couldn't be too over on the surface, if that makes sense? So I really had a hard time with it. I think my process for this chapter was to just sit on it for long enough so that I could cherry pick my words and then question all of my word choice twice before deciding it wouldn't get any better haha
no subject
Date: 2025-02-12 05:48 pm (UTC)(I marked all replies as read and didn't realize I didn't reply to this yet!)
I can see why that would be difficult to translate! Song lyrics and internal monologues and restrained emotions all in one go? (I am imagining it like a TV episode!)