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Danmei
Danmei (Chinese: 耽美; pinyin: dānměi; lit. 'addicted to beauty'; also known as BL) is a genre of Chinese literature and other fictional media that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. Derived from Japanese boys' love and influenced by Western slash fiction, danmei is a diverse genre that first emerged online in the late 1990s. Danmei works are primarily hosted online as web fiction, and they are typically created by women and for a female audience.
While danmei works and their adaptations have achieved widespread popularity and economic success in China and globally, their legal status remains precarious in China due to government censorship policies, and danmei authors and platforms have been targets of censorship.
The term danmei (耽美; dānměi) literally means "addicted to beauty". It is an orthographic reborrowing from the Japanese wasei-kango tanbi (耽美, lit. 'aestheticism'), which is one of several words used in Japan to refer to boys' love or BL. Chinese fans often use danmei and BL interchangeably, though danmei is the preferred term. Female fans of danmei often refer to themselves as fu nu (腐女; fǔ nǚ; lit. 'rotten women'; also written fu nü or funü), a term borrowed from the Japanese fujoshi.
The male same-sex romance genre of "boys' love", or BL, originated in Japanese manga in the early 1970s, and was introduced to mainland China via pirated Taiwanese translations of Japanese comics in the early 1990s. Chinese fans referred to this genre as danmei, a reborrowing from the Japanese tanbi, which in Japan typically refers to BL prose fiction. Danmei as a genre was also influenced by Western slash fiction, with Chinese fans incorporating elements of both BL and slash fiction into their original stories in ways that suited their local context.
The first danmei story was posted online around 1998. By 1999, several online danmei forums had been founded. These venues started as communities for Chinese fans of Japanese BL, but soon began hosting fanworks and original danmei stories by young Chinese women. 1999 also saw the founding of the first print magazine devoted to danmei, Danmei Season, which was published continuously until 2013 despite not having an official permit to do so.
While early online danmei communities were largely run by amateur fans of the genre, those websites were gradually supplanted by a slew of commercial online fiction websites founded in the early 2000s. The largest of these, Jinjiang Literature City, was founded in 2003 and has since amassed 7 million registered users and over 500,000 titles.[as of?] The works published on Jinjiang Literature City include both original works and fan fiction, and heterosexual, gay and lesbian romance as well as stories in other genres, but it is best known as a platform for original danmei novels.
Danmei reached wider audiences in China and elsewhere in the late 2010s and early 2020s, with censored danmei adaptations like Guardian, The Untamed, and Word of Honor receiving billions of views and broad international distribution. In 2020, film and television producers purchased the rights to 59 danmei titles. In 2022, scholars Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang described danmei as "a significant economic and cultural force in China" and said that it "might well be one of the few created-in-China cultural products that have gained a foothold in overseas markets and potentially enhanced China's soft power despite continuous censorship at home".
Despite its popularity, danmei media is a frequent target of legal action by the Chinese government because it "breaks two social taboos in one shot: pornography and homosexuality."[page needed] Pornography is illegal in China, although the exact laws regarding its possession and distribution are blurry, and danmei literature with explicit sex scenes is unambiguously classified as pornography.[citation needed] Since 1998, when the Chinese Communist Party began the Great Firewall project, Internet users in China have been at least partially blocked from online access to sexually explicit content, though many danmei writers and fans, like other Internet users, have found ways to bypass the Great Firewall.
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Danmei
Danmei (Chinese: 耽美; pinyin: dānměi; lit. 'addicted to beauty'; also known as BL) is a genre of Chinese literature and other fictional media that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. Derived from Japanese boys' love and influenced by Western slash fiction, danmei is a diverse genre that first emerged online in the late 1990s. Danmei works are primarily hosted online as web fiction, and they are typically created by women and for a female audience.
While danmei works and their adaptations have achieved widespread popularity and economic success in China and globally, their legal status remains precarious in China due to government censorship policies, and danmei authors and platforms have been targets of censorship.
The term danmei (耽美; dānměi) literally means "addicted to beauty". It is an orthographic reborrowing from the Japanese wasei-kango tanbi (耽美, lit. 'aestheticism'), which is one of several words used in Japan to refer to boys' love or BL. Chinese fans often use danmei and BL interchangeably, though danmei is the preferred term. Female fans of danmei often refer to themselves as fu nu (腐女; fǔ nǚ; lit. 'rotten women'; also written fu nü or funü), a term borrowed from the Japanese fujoshi.
The male same-sex romance genre of "boys' love", or BL, originated in Japanese manga in the early 1970s, and was introduced to mainland China via pirated Taiwanese translations of Japanese comics in the early 1990s. Chinese fans referred to this genre as danmei, a reborrowing from the Japanese tanbi, which in Japan typically refers to BL prose fiction. Danmei as a genre was also influenced by Western slash fiction, with Chinese fans incorporating elements of both BL and slash fiction into their original stories in ways that suited their local context.
The first danmei story was posted online around 1998. By 1999, several online danmei forums had been founded. These venues started as communities for Chinese fans of Japanese BL, but soon began hosting fanworks and original danmei stories by young Chinese women. 1999 also saw the founding of the first print magazine devoted to danmei, Danmei Season, which was published continuously until 2013 despite not having an official permit to do so.
While early online danmei communities were largely run by amateur fans of the genre, those websites were gradually supplanted by a slew of commercial online fiction websites founded in the early 2000s. The largest of these, Jinjiang Literature City, was founded in 2003 and has since amassed 7 million registered users and over 500,000 titles.[as of?] The works published on Jinjiang Literature City include both original works and fan fiction, and heterosexual, gay and lesbian romance as well as stories in other genres, but it is best known as a platform for original danmei novels.
Danmei reached wider audiences in China and elsewhere in the late 2010s and early 2020s, with censored danmei adaptations like Guardian, The Untamed, and Word of Honor receiving billions of views and broad international distribution. In 2020, film and television producers purchased the rights to 59 danmei titles. In 2022, scholars Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang described danmei as "a significant economic and cultural force in China" and said that it "might well be one of the few created-in-China cultural products that have gained a foothold in overseas markets and potentially enhanced China's soft power despite continuous censorship at home".
Despite its popularity, danmei media is a frequent target of legal action by the Chinese government because it "breaks two social taboos in one shot: pornography and homosexuality."[page needed] Pornography is illegal in China, although the exact laws regarding its possession and distribution are blurry, and danmei literature with explicit sex scenes is unambiguously classified as pornography.[citation needed] Since 1998, when the Chinese Communist Party began the Great Firewall project, Internet users in China have been at least partially blocked from online access to sexually explicit content, though many danmei writers and fans, like other Internet users, have found ways to bypass the Great Firewall.