Wait.. since when China openly airs BL AND CALLS IT BL???? WTF IS GOING ON?
it's from Mainland China but it's not airing in China, that's why they don't need to censor anything
this is not the first nor last Chinese BL that have been coming out lately
Do these titles ring any bell
- Stay with Me (new ver. of Addicted censored with diff character names, etc) - Meet You at the Blossom (co-production with Thailand and Taiwan) - Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (banned on IQIYI but later released on gaga and Viki) - I'll Turn Back This Time (the leads were in Meet You at the Blossom) - Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island - The Sparkle in Your Eye ("Singaporean" BL but the cast is all mainland) - same production as Blue Canvas they even namedropped the show - Infidelity, It's a Disease ("Japanese" prod but it's mainland actors) - Trapped in Osaka (same as the above)
The Sparkle in Your Eye and this currently airing
censored titles that got banned but managed to air - The Spirealm - banned on IQIYI as soon as it went up since Chinese fans managed to rip all the eps in time, got fansubbed, later re-released on Viu and Viki - Justice in the Dark (airing in Japan rn after banned on Youku in 2023)
A Guide to Chinese BL Censorship as it Currently Stands
So I see people asking questions about chinese censorship from time to time on this sub since chinese BLs do continue to get released despite the censorship. Since I've done research into the topic, I thought I'd write a post explaining some of the history and the current state of censorship. I am however not an expert, and I invite correction by any of you who know better or are chinese.
The short version:
Censorship is still in place and is the strictest it has been in decades, however Chinese BLs continue to be released because there is a loophole in the restrictions. The loophole is that Chinese BLs will be released internationally but not within china itself. The production company then depends on the fact that chinese fans will find a way to watch the BL usually via methods we would consider "piracy" (although in cases like this I don't really consider the non-legal distribution of media to bypass censorship as piracy). So while BLs do not get official releases on streaming platforms, tv, etc. within China; it's very easy for a chinese person to find a way to watch a BL (whether it be thai, chinese, korean, japanese, etc.) by downloading it from a link they found on weibo (chinese twitter) or from sites dedicated to hosting and distributing links to download episodes. Anytime I'm on weibo, I'm always running into links for watching some thai, korean, or western show that doesn't have an official release in china due to its content--it's that easy and commonplace for people to bypass censorship. The shows make money through the release of merchandise, magazine, and the hosting of fanmeets.
Here's the long version:
Originally, the restrictions on what could be depicted on chinese television hadn't applied to streaming sites. As with most things, the chinese government wasn't really ahead of the curve on changes in society and reacted to issues as they presented themselves. This meant that there was a brief point in time, at the beginning of the streaming era, where people had a platform for pushing out shows that did not have to adhere to the censorship rules of traditional television. Enter a BL that some of you are very familiar with -- Addicted.
Addicted was a small production (financed by the author of the novel herself, right?) that premiered on a streaming site and explicitly depicted gay romance, kissing, and (and sex, right? I haven't seen it tbh). However, it was MASSIVELY popular. Which is not good. Because the chinese government is okay with gay people as long as they stay silent, invisible, and marginal. What is not okay is gay people making themselves known, and especially, GAINING MAINSTREAM ATTENTION. They don't want the gays to influence the youth (seriously, I see this all the time in chinese media. Their concern about gay media is that it will make the kids gay. Funny the things that are common between both the west and china, but I digress.) BL becomes a problem when it gains mainstream attention especially because it meant that the powers that be NOTICED it. And they reacted by yanking Addicted from airing much to the outrage of fans and viewers.
That was early 2016. In 2017, the China Network Audiovisual Program Services Association issued a set of guidelines for streaming content within mainland china. Within the guidelines was a prohibition on the depiction of "abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual violence". So yeah, just homophobic as fuck--equating homosexuality to abuse, assault, and incest and describing it as abnormal.
Enter the era of Dangai, or censored adaptions of explicitly romantic and/or sexual danmei (chinese term for BL) novels. There's a tendency to refer to these shows in western fandom as "bromance" but I don't think that's really a fair description. They're censored adaptions. Danmei web novels had started in the early 90s (maybe even earlier?) as a small sub culture on the internet and had just continued to grow and grow in popularity. The commercial appeal of adapting them and tapping into those fandoms was hard for the streaming execs to resist. And they kept proving themselves to be immensely popular even among those who weren't already fans of the novels. There was addicted yes, but also several other shows, such as Guardian. Which proved that even the censored versions of these shows had massive potential.
The most famous Dangai, probably known to all of you, is of course The Untamed which premiered in 2018/19. It was massive. Truly the first chinese drama to make an impact even in the west. It launched the two leads on their path to becoming the mega superstars they both are today despite the controversies which at times threatened to end those careers (the 227 incident is a topic for another time).
The powers that be weren't exactly sure how to react to this. They were, for the most part, actually positive about the show. They felt it promoted traditional chinese culture to the youth and to the world. Which was a good thing. That's what they wanted chinese dramas to do. But in their op-eds in the People's Daily, you can still sense a little bit of unease around the show, and they were certain to completely ignore the fact that the source material was sexually explicit.
The same powers that be had started to become concerned about a couple of problematic currents in pop culture at that time. The first was an anxiety about chinese masculinity. This anxiety went all the way to the top, with Xi Jingping mentioning in speeches the need for a robust masculinity to be cultivated in the youth in order for china to have a strong and flourishing future. There were denunciations in many media outlets, including the mouthpieces of the party and the state of the perceived femininity of many of china's most popular male stars. I'll spare you the ugly details.
Then there was a growing and perhaps more organic concern over the rise of "traffic stars", in essence, idols who weren't that talented but had HUGE fanbases who willed their faves to success through coordinated drives to push up social media engagement and spending on the brands their faves endorsed. People were feeling this was cheap somehow and there were scandals over fans buying so much of a product and then not using it and creating massive waste. The government took notice of this and denounced it (specifically the scandals over the massive waste created by this fan over-buying).
Unfortunately for BL, there was a feeling from both society and the powers that be that these two phenomenon tended to be closely tied to the stars of these dangai dramas (and also idol survival shows but that's not the topic of this post). The final nail in the coffin for dangai as a genre came with the massive success of one of my all time favorite BLs, Word of Honor.
Word of Honor premiered in 2021. and, well, it was A LOT gayer than The Untamed. You know if you've seen it. There isn't a heterosexual explanation for a lot of that and it was super popular. and kinda just everything the powers that be hated--pretty men and lots of social media traffic around them. Especially since the stars were less coy about the gayness in their promotions.
And then the hammer really and truly dropped with a controversy in which one of the leads was believed to have paid tribute at a shrine in Japan to class A war criminals who had carried out their crimes against Chinese people during the Japanese conquest and colonization of china. The evidence for this is rather thin, it was based on a resurfaced photo from a friend's wedding he had attended in Japan. It's a picture of him OUTSIDE the shrine, but what matters in the end is the narrative that took hold on Chinese social media of him being a terrible person who sympathized with brutal Japanese imperialists against the chinese. He was COMPLETELY blacklisted in the industry, his works were all taken down from the internet, I think even mention of his name was scrubbed. (I have my own theory that this controversy was manufactured for homophobic reasons, but I don't have a lot of proof so who knows). And most importantly this controversy was so massive the government took notice and issued statements on it.
And needless to say they were DONE. FED UP. With this guy, with all of these controversies, and most especially with dangai--the supposed nefarious influence it had on children, the nefarious stars it created, the "unhealthy atmosphere" it created on social media. And most importantly of all, they were done with how it kept getting itself noticed, kept popping up in the public eye. It was kinda gay, and kept getting gayer, and it kept MAKING ITSELF KNOWN.
In 2022, the Beijing municipal government came together with all of the major streaming services--Iqiyi, youku, tencent (known as wetv to us) and issued a ban on dangai (and other types of shows that had been creating similar problems).
This brought to an immediate halt the plans to release quite a few dangai shows that had already been filmed and were in post-production. These shows which were halted and are still out there in censorship jail, had been inspired by the massive success of Word of Honor and The Untamed. Immortality, an adaption of the massively popular danmei webnovel erha was the most expensive show tencent had ever filmed at the time. It still has not been released. There are many others. Just as the dangai industry was truly gearing up, it was strangled by this ban.
Since then, no dangai has successfully been aired within the chinese mainland. We had Justice in the Dark and the Spirealm, released briefly before being pulled. The dangai ban is not a law writ in stone, it's an agreement between the city of beijing and the streaming platforms which are headquartered there. I imagine there is, at times, a bit of a complicated dance going on between these parties, the streamers who want to get their investment back on these shows by releasing them, and the powers that be who don't want them to air. It's not watertight, it leaks sometimes. But it is still pretty consistent.
Now what the dangai ban does not cover is bromance/queer-coded shows that are not based on danmei source material. Thus, the chinese media landscape is fairly rife with bromance shows, but these are original stories or based on bromance books. Examples include Mysterious Lotus Casebook (based on a bromance book) and Fangs of Fortune (original story). It also does not cover censored adaptions of explicit GL shows (known as Baihe in chinese). Those continue to air.
The explicit BL shows you see are not getting official releases in china. The people who create them are not even going to try to get through the censorship. They are going right to international distribution. Luckily, some of the imprisoned dangai has been released internationally like Justice in the Dark or the Spirealm. But there are still many others which await an uncertain fate as streamers ponder whether to cut their losses and release them internationally or try to wait out the dangai ban.
An unfortunate side effect of The Loophole is that currently all Chinese BL is going to be pretty low budget as returns on a show which cannot be released in china and rely instead on non-legal means of watching is going to have a low viewership. This is particularly disappointing when we think about how massive the production value of dangai that have been prevented from releasing are (immortality) or if you know how awesome the production value of expensive chinese shows can be. Also, they are going to struggle to attract truly ambitious actors. Being a top star in china depends on the powers that be liking you. And flagrantly bypassing censorship by being in such a show might be looked down upon. One of the leads for Meet You at the Blossom was already in a blacklisted show (right?) and had nothing to lose by being in that show. But then again, you have a fairly high level actor like Liu Dongqin going to Taiwan to star in the On1y One. So maybe they don't care that much.
Also, the mechanism through which chinese censorship of dramas is achieved is an organization which reviews all dramas before they go to air. This censorship board can send a show back to be edited before further review and release or they can give an indefinite "no" on a show. What is aired on television and streamers is controlled. What is filmed within the country itself and the things that chinese people make are not controlled.
From the synopsis, this looks like a BL and not bromance. How did this pass review and censorship?
This is filmed in Mainland China but it's not airing in China, that's why they don't need to censor anything
this is not the first nor last Chinese BL that have been coming out lately
Do these titles ring any bell
- Stay with Me (new ver. of Addicted censored with diff character names, etc) - Meet You at the Blossom (co-production with Thailand and Taiwan) - Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (banned on IQIYI but later released on gaga and Viki) - I'll Turn Back This Time (the leads were in Meet You at the Blossom) - Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island - The Sparkle in Your Eye ("Singaporean" BL but the cast is all mainland) - same production as Blue Canvas they even namedropped the show - Infidelity, It's a Disease ("Japanese" prod but it's mainland actors) - Trapped in Osaka (same as the above)
The Sparkle in Your Eye and this currently airing
censored titles that got banned but managed to air - The Spirealm - banned on IQIYI as soon as it went up since Chinese fans managed to rip all the eps in time, got fansubbed, later re-released on Viu and Viki - Justice in the Dark (airing in Japan rn after banned on Youku in 2023)
A Guide to Chinese BL Censorship as it Currently Stands
So I see people asking questions about chinese censorship from time to time on this sub since chinese BLs do continue to get released despite the censorship. Since I've done research into the topic, I thought I'd write a post explaining some of the history and the current state of censorship. I am however not an expert, and I invite correction by any of you who know better or are chinese.
The short version:
Censorship is still in place and is the strictest it has been in decades, however Chinese BLs continue to be released because there is a loophole in the restrictions. The loophole is that Chinese BLs will be released internationally but not within china itself. The production company then depends on the fact that chinese fans will find a way to watch the BL usually via methods we would consider "piracy" (although in cases like this I don't really consider the non-legal distribution of media to bypass censorship as piracy). So while BLs do not get official releases on streaming platforms, tv, etc. within China; it's very easy for a chinese person to find a way to watch a BL (whether it be thai, chinese, korean, japanese, etc.) by downloading it from a link they found on weibo (chinese twitter) or from sites dedicated to hosting and distributing links to download episodes. Anytime I'm on weibo, I'm always running into links for watching some thai, korean, or western show that doesn't have an official release in china due to its content--it's that easy and commonplace for people to bypass censorship. The shows make money through the release of merchandise, magazine, and the hosting of fanmeets.
Here's the long version:
Originally, the restrictions on what could be depicted on chinese television hadn't applied to streaming sites. As with most things, the chinese government wasn't really ahead of the curve on changes in society and reacted to issues as they presented themselves. This meant that there was a brief point in time, at the beginning of the streaming era, where people had a platform for pushing out shows that did not have to adhere to the censorship rules of traditional television. Enter a BL that some of you are very familiar with -- Addicted.
Addicted was a small production (financed by the author of the novel herself, right?) that premiered on a streaming site and explicitly depicted gay romance, kissing, and (and sex, right? I haven't seen it tbh). However, it was MASSIVELY popular. Which is not good. Because the chinese government is okay with gay people as long as they stay silent, invisible, and marginal. What is not okay is gay people making themselves known, and especially, GAINING MAINSTREAM ATTENTION. They don't want the gays to influence the youth (seriously, I see this all the time in chinese media. Their concern about gay media is that it will make the kids gay. Funny the things that are common between both the west and china, but I digress.) BL becomes a problem when it gains mainstream attention especially because it meant that the powers that be NOTICED it. And they reacted by yanking Addicted from airing much to the outrage of fans and viewers.
That was early 2016. In 2017, the China Network Audiovisual Program Services Association issued a set of guidelines for streaming content within mainland china. Within the guidelines was a prohibition on the depiction of "abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual violence". So yeah, just homophobic as fuck--equating homosexuality to abuse, assault, and incest and describing it as abnormal.
Enter the era of Dangai, or censored adaptions of explicitly romantic and/or sexual danmei (chinese term for BL) novels. There's a tendency to refer to these shows in western fandom as "bromance" but I don't think that's really a fair description. They're censored adaptions. Danmei web novels had started in the early 90s (maybe even earlier?) as a small sub culture on the internet and had just continued to grow and grow in popularity. The commercial appeal of adapting them and tapping into those fandoms was hard for the streaming execs to resist. And they kept proving themselves to be immensely popular even among those who weren't already fans of the novels. There was addicted yes, but also several other shows, such as Guardian. Which proved that even the censored versions of these shows had massive potential.
The most famous Dangai, probably known to all of you, is of course The Untamed which premiered in 2018/19. It was massive. Truly the first chinese drama to make an impact even in the west. It launched the two leads on their path to becoming the mega superstars they both are today despite the controversies which at times threatened to end those careers (the 227 incident is a topic for another time).
The powers that be weren't exactly sure how to react to this. They were, for the most part, actually positive about the show. They felt it promoted traditional chinese culture to the youth and to the world. Which was a good thing. That's what they wanted chinese dramas to do. But in their op-eds in the People's Daily, you can still sense a little bit of unease around the show, and they were certain to completely ignore the fact that the source material was sexually explicit.
The same powers that be had started to become concerned about a couple of problematic currents in pop culture at that time. The first was an anxiety about chinese masculinity. This anxiety went all the way to the top, with Xi Jingping mentioning in speeches the need for a robust masculinity to be cultivated in the youth in order for china to have a strong and flourishing future. There were denunciations in many media outlets, including the mouthpieces of the party and the state of the perceived femininity of many of china's most popular male stars. I'll spare you the ugly details.
Then there was a growing and perhaps more organic concern over the rise of "traffic stars", in essence, idols who weren't that talented but had HUGE fanbases who willed their faves to success through coordinated drives to push up social media engagement and spending on the brands their faves endorsed. People were feeling this was cheap somehow and there were scandals over fans buying so much of a product and then not using it and creating massive waste. The government took notice of this and denounced it (specifically the scandals over the massive waste created by this fan over-buying).
Unfortunately for BL, there was a feeling from both society and the powers that be that these two phenomenon tended to be closely tied to the stars of these dangai dramas (and also idol survival shows but that's not the topic of this post). The final nail in the coffin for dangai as a genre came with the massive success of one of my all time favorite BLs, Word of Honor.
Word of Honor premiered in 2021. and, well, it was A LOT gayer than The Untamed. You know if you've seen it. There isn't a heterosexual explanation for a lot of that and it was super popular. and kinda just everything the powers that be hated--pretty men and lots of social media traffic around them. Especially since the stars were less coy about the gayness in their promotions.
And then the hammer really and truly dropped with a controversy in which one of the leads was believed to have paid tribute at a shrine in Japan to class A war criminals who had carried out their crimes against Chinese people during the Japanese conquest and colonization of china. The evidence for this is rather thin, it was based on a resurfaced photo from a friend's wedding he had attended in Japan. It's a picture of him OUTSIDE the shrine, but what matters in the end is the narrative that took hold on Chinese social media of him being a terrible person who sympathized with brutal Japanese imperialists against the chinese. He was COMPLETELY blacklisted in the industry, his works were all taken down from the internet, I think even mention of his name was scrubbed. (I have my own theory that this controversy was manufactured for homophobic reasons, but I don't have a lot of proof so who knows). And most importantly this controversy was so massive the government took notice and issued statements on it.
And needless to say they were DONE. FED UP. With this guy, with all of these controversies, and most especially with dangai--the supposed nefarious influence it had on children, the nefarious stars it created, the "unhealthy atmosphere" it created on social media. And most importantly of all, they were done with how it kept getting itself noticed, kept popping up in the public eye. It was kinda gay, and kept getting gayer, and it kept MAKING ITSELF KNOWN.
In 2022, the Beijing municipal government came together with all of the major streaming services--Iqiyi, youku, tencent (known as wetv to us) and issued a ban on dangai (and other types of shows that had been creating similar problems).
This brought to an immediate halt the plans to release quite a few dangai shows that had already been filmed and were in post-production. These shows which were halted and are still out there in censorship jail, had been inspired by the massive success of Word of Honor and The Untamed. Immortality, an adaption of the massively popular danmei webnovel erha was the most expensive show tencent had ever filmed at the time. It still has not been released. There are many others. Just as the dangai industry was truly gearing up, it was strangled by this ban.
Since then, no dangai has successfully been aired within the chinese mainland. We had Justice in the Dark and the Spirealm, released briefly before being pulled. The dangai ban is not a law writ in stone, it's an agreement between the city of beijing and the streaming platforms which are headquartered there. I imagine there is, at times, a bit of a complicated dance going on between these parties, the streamers who want to get their investment back on these shows by releasing them, and the powers that be who don't want them to air. It's not watertight, it leaks sometimes. But it is still pretty consistent.
Now what the dangai ban does not cover is bromance/queer-coded shows that are not based on danmei source material. Thus, the chinese media landscape is fairly rife with bromance shows, but these are original stories or based on bromance books. Examples include Mysterious Lotus Casebook (based on a bromance book) and Fangs of Fortune (original story). It also does not cover censored adaptions of explicit GL shows (known as Baihe in chinese). Those continue to air.
The explicit BL shows you see are not getting official releases in china. The people who create them are not even going to try to get through the censorship. They are going right to international distribution. Luckily, some of the imprisoned dangai has been released internationally like Justice in the Dark or the Spirealm. But there are still many others which await an uncertain fate as streamers ponder whether to cut their losses and release them internationally or try to wait out the dangai ban.
An unfortunate side effect of The Loophole is that currently all Chinese BL is going to be pretty low budget as returns on a show which cannot be released in china and rely instead on non-legal means of watching is going to have a low viewership. This is particularly disappointing when we think about how massive the production value of dangai that have been prevented from releasing are (immortality) or if you know how awesome the production value of expensive chinese shows can be. Also, they are going to struggle to attract truly ambitious actors. Being a top star in china depends on the powers that be liking you. And flagrantly bypassing censorship by being in such a show might be looked down upon. One of the leads for Meet You at the Blossom was already in a blacklisted show (right?) and had nothing to lose by being in that show. But then again, you have a fairly high level actor like Liu Dongqin going to Taiwan to star in the On1y One. So maybe they don't care that much.
Also, the mechanism through which chinese censorship of dramas is achieved is an organization which reviews all dramas before they go to air. This censorship board can send a show back to be edited before further review and release or they can give an indefinite "no" on a show. What is aired on television and streamers is controlled. What is filmed within the country itself and the things that chinese people make are not controlled.
here's what the mods on MDL discord server said "It was submitted several times but unfortunately rejected as all official sites classify it as a Singaporean title, so we can’t accept it at the moment."
This is filmed in Mainland China but it's not airing in China, that's why they don't need to censor anything
this is not the first nor last Chinese BL that have been coming out lately
Do these titles ring any bell
- Stay with Me (new ver. of Addicted censored with diff character names, etc) - Meet You at the Blossom (co-production with Thailand and Taiwan) - Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (banned on IQIYI but later released on gaga and Viki) - I'll Turn Back This Time (the leads were in Meet You at the Blossom) - Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island - The Sparkle in Your Eye ("Singaporean" BL but the cast is all mainland) - same production as Blue Canvas they even namedropped the show - Infidelity, It's a Disease ("Japanese" prod but it's mainland actors) - Trapped in Osaka (same as the above)
The Sparkle in Your Eye and this currently airing
censored titles that got banned but managed to air - The Spirealm - banned on IQIYI as soon as it went up since Chinese fans managed to rip all the eps in time, got fansubbed, later re-released on Viu and Viki - Justice in the Dark (airing in Japan rn after banned on Youku in 2023)
A Guide to Chinese BL Censorship as it Currently Stands
So I see people asking questions about chinese censorship from time to time on this sub since chinese BLs do continue to get released despite the censorship. Since I've done research into the topic, I thought I'd write a post explaining some of the history and the current state of censorship. I am however not an expert, and I invite correction by any of you who know better or are chinese.
The short version:
Censorship is still in place and is the strictest it has been in decades, however Chinese BLs continue to be released because there is a loophole in the restrictions. The loophole is that Chinese BLs will be released internationally but not within china itself. The production company then depends on the fact that chinese fans will find a way to watch the BL usually via methods we would consider "piracy" (although in cases like this I don't really consider the non-legal distribution of media to bypass censorship as piracy). So while BLs do not get official releases on streaming platforms, tv, etc. within China; it's very easy for a chinese person to find a way to watch a BL (whether it be thai, chinese, korean, japanese, etc.) by downloading it from a link they found on weibo (chinese twitter) or from sites dedicated to hosting and distributing links to download episodes. Anytime I'm on weibo, I'm always running into links for watching some thai, korean, or western show that doesn't have an official release in china due to its content--it's that easy and commonplace for people to bypass censorship. The shows make money through the release of merchandise, magazine, and the hosting of fanmeets.
Here's the long version:
Originally, the restrictions on what could be depicted on chinese television hadn't applied to streaming sites. As with most things, the chinese government wasn't really ahead of the curve on changes in society and reacted to issues as they presented themselves. This meant that there was a brief point in time, at the beginning of the streaming era, where people had a platform for pushing out shows that did not have to adhere to the censorship rules of traditional television. Enter a BL that some of you are very familiar with -- Addicted.
Addicted was a small production (financed by the author of the novel herself, right?) that premiered on a streaming site and explicitly depicted gay romance, kissing, and (and sex, right? I haven't seen it tbh). However, it was MASSIVELY popular. Which is not good. Because the chinese government is okay with gay people as long as they stay silent, invisible, and marginal. What is not okay is gay people making themselves known, and especially, GAINING MAINSTREAM ATTENTION. They don't want the gays to influence the youth (seriously, I see this all the time in chinese media. Their concern about gay media is that it will make the kids gay. Funny the things that are common between both the west and china, but I digress.) BL becomes a problem when it gains mainstream attention especially because it meant that the powers that be NOTICED it. And they reacted by yanking Addicted from airing much to the outrage of fans and viewers.
That was early 2016. In 2017, the China Network Audiovisual Program Services Association issued a set of guidelines for streaming content within mainland china. Within the guidelines was a prohibition on the depiction of "abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual violence". So yeah, just homophobic as fuck--equating homosexuality to abuse, assault, and incest and describing it as abnormal.
Enter the era of Dangai, or censored adaptions of explicitly romantic and/or sexual danmei (chinese term for BL) novels. There's a tendency to refer to these shows in western fandom as "bromance" but I don't think that's really a fair description. They're censored adaptions. Danmei web novels had started in the early 90s (maybe even earlier?) as a small sub culture on the internet and had just continued to grow and grow in popularity. The commercial appeal of adapting them and tapping into those fandoms was hard for the streaming execs to resist. And they kept proving themselves to be immensely popular even among those who weren't already fans of the novels. There was addicted yes, but also several other shows, such as Guardian. Which proved that even the censored versions of these shows had massive potential.
The most famous Dangai, probably known to all of you, is of course The Untamed which premiered in 2018/19. It was massive. Truly the first chinese drama to make an impact even in the west. It launched the two leads on their path to becoming the mega superstars they both are today despite the controversies which at times threatened to end those careers (the 227 incident is a topic for another time).
The powers that be weren't exactly sure how to react to this. They were, for the most part, actually positive about the show. They felt it promoted traditional chinese culture to the youth and to the world. Which was a good thing. That's what they wanted chinese dramas to do. But in their op-eds in the People's Daily, you can still sense a little bit of unease around the show, and they were certain to completely ignore the fact that the source material was sexually explicit.
The same powers that be had started to become concerned about a couple of problematic currents in pop culture at that time. The first was an anxiety about chinese masculinity. This anxiety went all the way to the top, with Xi Jingping mentioning in speeches the need for a robust masculinity to be cultivated in the youth in order for china to have a strong and flourishing future. There were denunciations in many media outlets, including the mouthpieces of the party and the state of the perceived femininity of many of china's most popular male stars. I'll spare you the ugly details.
Then there was a growing and perhaps more organic concern over the rise of "traffic stars", in essence, idols who weren't that talented but had HUGE fanbases who willed their faves to success through coordinated drives to push up social media engagement and spending on the brands their faves endorsed. People were feeling this was cheap somehow and there were scandals over fans buying so much of a product and then not using it and creating massive waste. The government took notice of this and denounced it (specifically the scandals over the massive waste created by this fan over-buying).
Unfortunately for BL, there was a feeling from both society and the powers that be that these two phenomenon tended to be closely tied to the stars of these dangai dramas (and also idol survival shows but that's not the topic of this post). The final nail in the coffin for dangai as a genre came with the massive success of one of my all time favorite BLs, Word of Honor.
Word of Honor premiered in 2021. and, well, it was A LOT gayer than The Untamed. You know if you've seen it. There isn't a heterosexual explanation for a lot of that and it was super popular. and kinda just everything the powers that be hated--pretty men and lots of social media traffic around them. Especially since the stars were less coy about the gayness in their promotions.
And then the hammer really and truly dropped with a controversy in which one of the leads was believed to have paid tribute at a shrine in Japan to class A war criminals who had carried out their crimes against Chinese people during the Japanese conquest and colonization of china. The evidence for this is rather thin, it was based on a resurfaced photo from a friend's wedding he had attended in Japan. It's a picture of him OUTSIDE the shrine, but what matters in the end is the narrative that took hold on Chinese social media of him being a terrible person who sympathized with brutal Japanese imperialists against the chinese. He was COMPLETELY blacklisted in the industry, his works were all taken down from the internet, I think even mention of his name was scrubbed. (I have my own theory that this controversy was manufactured for homophobic reasons, but I don't have a lot of proof so who knows). And most importantly this controversy was so massive the government took notice and issued statements on it.
And needless to say they were DONE. FED UP. With this guy, with all of these controversies, and most especially with dangai--the supposed nefarious influence it had on children, the nefarious stars it created, the "unhealthy atmosphere" it created on social media. And most importantly of all, they were done with how it kept getting itself noticed, kept popping up in the public eye. It was kinda gay, and kept getting gayer, and it kept MAKING ITSELF KNOWN.
In 2022, the Beijing municipal government came together with all of the major streaming services--Iqiyi, youku, tencent (known as wetv to us) and issued a ban on dangai (and other types of shows that had been creating similar problems).
This brought to an immediate halt the plans to release quite a few dangai shows that had already been filmed and were in post-production. These shows which were halted and are still out there in censorship jail, had been inspired by the massive success of Word of Honor and The Untamed. Immortality, an adaption of the massively popular danmei webnovel erha was the most expensive show tencent had ever filmed at the time. It still has not been released. There are many others. Just as the dangai industry was truly gearing up, it was strangled by this ban.
Since then, no dangai has successfully been aired within the chinese mainland. We had Justice in the Dark and the Spirealm, released briefly before being pulled. The dangai ban is not a law writ in stone, it's an agreement between the city of beijing and the streaming platforms which are headquartered there. I imagine there is, at times, a bit of a complicated dance going on between these parties, the streamers who want to get their investment back on these shows by releasing them, and the powers that be who don't want them to air. It's not watertight, it leaks sometimes. But it is still pretty consistent.
Now what the dangai ban does not cover is bromance/queer-coded shows that are not based on danmei source material. Thus, the chinese media landscape is fairly rife with bromance shows, but these are original stories or based on bromance books. Examples include Mysterious Lotus Casebook (based on a bromance book) and Fangs of Fortune (original story). It also does not cover censored adaptions of explicit GL shows (known as Baihe in chinese). Those continue to air.
The explicit BL shows you see are not getting official releases in china. The people who create them are not even going to try to get through the censorship. They are going right to international distribution. Luckily, some of the imprisoned dangai has been released internationally like Justice in the Dark or the Spirealm. But there are still many others which await an uncertain fate as streamers ponder whether to cut their losses and release them internationally or try to wait out the dangai ban.
An unfortunate side effect of The Loophole is that currently all Chinese BL is going to be pretty low budget as returns on a show which cannot be released in china and rely instead on non-legal means of watching is going to have a low viewership. This is particularly disappointing when we think about how massive the production value of dangai that have been prevented from releasing are (immortality) or if you know how awesome the production value of expensive chinese shows can be. Also, they are going to struggle to attract truly ambitious actors. Being a top star in china depends on the powers that be liking you. And flagrantly bypassing censorship by being in such a show might be looked down upon. One of the leads for Meet You at the Blossom was already in a blacklisted show (right?) and had nothing to lose by being in that show. But then again, you have a fairly high level actor like Liu Dongqin going to Taiwan to star in the On1y One. So maybe they don't care that much.
Also, the mechanism through which chinese censorship of dramas is achieved is an organization which reviews all dramas before they go to air. This censorship board can send a show back to be edited before further review and release or they can give an indefinite "no" on a show. What is aired on television and streamers is controlled. What is filmed within the country itself and the things that chinese people make are not controlled.
I hope they just release all the episodes already. For some reason, I can’t help but fear that this might get…
It won't get banned
it's filmed in Mainland China but it's not airing in China, that's why they don't need to censor anything
Blue Canvas was banned on IQIYI BC it was filmed in China AND trying to air on a China-owned platform which is a no-go by their restriction
As long they distributed ONLY on international platforms and playing coy on its origin by saying it's from a Singapore or Thailand or Taiwan production companies
4 
10 
this is not the first nor last Chinese BL that have been coming out lately
Do these titles ring any bell
- Stay with Me (new ver. of Addicted censored with diff character names, etc)
- Meet You at the Blossom (co-production with Thailand and Taiwan)
- Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (banned on IQIYI but later released on gaga and Viki)
- I'll Turn Back This Time (the leads were in Meet You at the Blossom)
- Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island
- The Sparkle in Your Eye ("Singaporean" BL but the cast is all mainland) - same production as Blue Canvas they even namedropped the show
- Infidelity, It's a Disease ("Japanese" prod but it's mainland actors)
- Trapped in Osaka (same as the above)
The Sparkle in Your Eye and this currently airing
censored titles that got banned but managed to air
- The Spirealm - banned on IQIYI as soon as it went up since Chinese fans managed to rip all the eps in time, got fansubbed, later re-released on Viu and Viki
- Justice in the Dark (airing in Japan rn after banned on Youku in 2023)
A Guide to Chinese BL Censorship as it Currently Stands
https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/1ldglua/a_guide_to_chinese_bl_censorship_as_it_currently/
So I see people asking questions about chinese censorship from time to time on this sub since chinese BLs do continue to get released despite the censorship. Since I've done research into the topic, I thought I'd write a post explaining some of the history and the current state of censorship. I am however not an expert, and I invite correction by any of you who know better or are chinese.
The short version:
Censorship is still in place and is the strictest it has been in decades, however Chinese BLs continue to be released because there is a loophole in the restrictions. The loophole is that Chinese BLs will be released internationally but not within china itself. The production company then depends on the fact that chinese fans will find a way to watch the BL usually via methods we would consider "piracy" (although in cases like this I don't really consider the non-legal distribution of media to bypass censorship as piracy). So while BLs do not get official releases on streaming platforms, tv, etc. within China; it's very easy for a chinese person to find a way to watch a BL (whether it be thai, chinese, korean, japanese, etc.) by downloading it from a link they found on weibo (chinese twitter) or from sites dedicated to hosting and distributing links to download episodes. Anytime I'm on weibo, I'm always running into links for watching some thai, korean, or western show that doesn't have an official release in china due to its content--it's that easy and commonplace for people to bypass censorship. The shows make money through the release of merchandise, magazine, and the hosting of fanmeets.
Here's the long version:
Originally, the restrictions on what could be depicted on chinese television hadn't applied to streaming sites. As with most things, the chinese government wasn't really ahead of the curve on changes in society and reacted to issues as they presented themselves. This meant that there was a brief point in time, at the beginning of the streaming era, where people had a platform for pushing out shows that did not have to adhere to the censorship rules of traditional television. Enter a BL that some of you are very familiar with -- Addicted.
Addicted was a small production (financed by the author of the novel herself, right?) that premiered on a streaming site and explicitly depicted gay romance, kissing, and (and sex, right? I haven't seen it tbh). However, it was MASSIVELY popular. Which is not good. Because the chinese government is okay with gay people as long as they stay silent, invisible, and marginal. What is not okay is gay people making themselves known, and especially, GAINING MAINSTREAM ATTENTION. They don't want the gays to influence the youth (seriously, I see this all the time in chinese media. Their concern about gay media is that it will make the kids gay. Funny the things that are common between both the west and china, but I digress.) BL becomes a problem when it gains mainstream attention especially because it meant that the powers that be NOTICED it. And they reacted by yanking Addicted from airing much to the outrage of fans and viewers.
That was early 2016. In 2017, the China Network Audiovisual Program Services Association issued a set of guidelines for streaming content within mainland china. Within the guidelines was a prohibition on the depiction of "abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual violence". So yeah, just homophobic as fuck--equating homosexuality to abuse, assault, and incest and describing it as abnormal.
Enter the era of Dangai, or censored adaptions of explicitly romantic and/or sexual danmei (chinese term for BL) novels. There's a tendency to refer to these shows in western fandom as "bromance" but I don't think that's really a fair description. They're censored adaptions. Danmei web novels had started in the early 90s (maybe even earlier?) as a small sub culture on the internet and had just continued to grow and grow in popularity. The commercial appeal of adapting them and tapping into those fandoms was hard for the streaming execs to resist. And they kept proving themselves to be immensely popular even among those who weren't already fans of the novels. There was addicted yes, but also several other shows, such as Guardian. Which proved that even the censored versions of these shows had massive potential.
The most famous Dangai, probably known to all of you, is of course The Untamed which premiered in 2018/19. It was massive. Truly the first chinese drama to make an impact even in the west. It launched the two leads on their path to becoming the mega superstars they both are today despite the controversies which at times threatened to end those careers (the 227 incident is a topic for another time).
The powers that be weren't exactly sure how to react to this. They were, for the most part, actually positive about the show. They felt it promoted traditional chinese culture to the youth and to the world. Which was a good thing. That's what they wanted chinese dramas to do. But in their op-eds in the People's Daily, you can still sense a little bit of unease around the show, and they were certain to completely ignore the fact that the source material was sexually explicit.
The same powers that be had started to become concerned about a couple of problematic currents in pop culture at that time. The first was an anxiety about chinese masculinity. This anxiety went all the way to the top, with Xi Jingping mentioning in speeches the need for a robust masculinity to be cultivated in the youth in order for china to have a strong and flourishing future. There were denunciations in many media outlets, including the mouthpieces of the party and the state of the perceived femininity of many of china's most popular male stars. I'll spare you the ugly details.
Then there was a growing and perhaps more organic concern over the rise of "traffic stars", in essence, idols who weren't that talented but had HUGE fanbases who willed their faves to success through coordinated drives to push up social media engagement and spending on the brands their faves endorsed. People were feeling this was cheap somehow and there were scandals over fans buying so much of a product and then not using it and creating massive waste. The government took notice of this and denounced it (specifically the scandals over the massive waste created by this fan over-buying).
Unfortunately for BL, there was a feeling from both society and the powers that be that these two phenomenon tended to be closely tied to the stars of these dangai dramas (and also idol survival shows but that's not the topic of this post). The final nail in the coffin for dangai as a genre came with the massive success of one of my all time favorite BLs, Word of Honor.
Word of Honor premiered in 2021. and, well, it was A LOT gayer than The Untamed. You know if you've seen it. There isn't a heterosexual explanation for a lot of that and it was super popular. and kinda just everything the powers that be hated--pretty men and lots of social media traffic around them. Especially since the stars were less coy about the gayness in their promotions.
And then the hammer really and truly dropped with a controversy in which one of the leads was believed to have paid tribute at a shrine in Japan to class A war criminals who had carried out their crimes against Chinese people during the Japanese conquest and colonization of china. The evidence for this is rather thin, it was based on a resurfaced photo from a friend's wedding he had attended in Japan. It's a picture of him OUTSIDE the shrine, but what matters in the end is the narrative that took hold on Chinese social media of him being a terrible person who sympathized with brutal Japanese imperialists against the chinese. He was COMPLETELY blacklisted in the industry, his works were all taken down from the internet, I think even mention of his name was scrubbed. (I have my own theory that this controversy was manufactured for homophobic reasons, but I don't have a lot of proof so who knows). And most importantly this controversy was so massive the government took notice and issued statements on it.
And needless to say they were DONE. FED UP. With this guy, with all of these controversies, and most especially with dangai--the supposed nefarious influence it had on children, the nefarious stars it created, the "unhealthy atmosphere" it created on social media. And most importantly of all, they were done with how it kept getting itself noticed, kept popping up in the public eye. It was kinda gay, and kept getting gayer, and it kept MAKING ITSELF KNOWN.
In 2022, the Beijing municipal government came together with all of the major streaming services--Iqiyi, youku, tencent (known as wetv to us) and issued a ban on dangai (and other types of shows that had been creating similar problems).
This brought to an immediate halt the plans to release quite a few dangai shows that had already been filmed and were in post-production. These shows which were halted and are still out there in censorship jail, had been inspired by the massive success of Word of Honor and The Untamed. Immortality, an adaption of the massively popular danmei webnovel erha was the most expensive show tencent had ever filmed at the time. It still has not been released. There are many others. Just as the dangai industry was truly gearing up, it was strangled by this ban.
Since then, no dangai has successfully been aired within the chinese mainland. We had Justice in the Dark and the Spirealm, released briefly before being pulled. The dangai ban is not a law writ in stone, it's an agreement between the city of beijing and the streaming platforms which are headquartered there. I imagine there is, at times, a bit of a complicated dance going on between these parties, the streamers who want to get their investment back on these shows by releasing them, and the powers that be who don't want them to air. It's not watertight, it leaks sometimes. But it is still pretty consistent.
Now what the dangai ban does not cover is bromance/queer-coded shows that are not based on danmei source material. Thus, the chinese media landscape is fairly rife with bromance shows, but these are original stories or based on bromance books. Examples include Mysterious Lotus Casebook (based on a bromance book) and Fangs of Fortune (original story). It also does not cover censored adaptions of explicit GL shows (known as Baihe in chinese). Those continue to air.
The explicit BL shows you see are not getting official releases in china. The people who create them are not even going to try to get through the censorship. They are going right to international distribution. Luckily, some of the imprisoned dangai has been released internationally like Justice in the Dark or the Spirealm. But there are still many others which await an uncertain fate as streamers ponder whether to cut their losses and release them internationally or try to wait out the dangai ban.
An unfortunate side effect of The Loophole is that currently all Chinese BL is going to be pretty low budget as returns on a show which cannot be released in china and rely instead on non-legal means of watching is going to have a low viewership. This is particularly disappointing when we think about how massive the production value of dangai that have been prevented from releasing are (immortality) or if you know how awesome the production value of expensive chinese shows can be. Also, they are going to struggle to attract truly ambitious actors. Being a top star in china depends on the powers that be liking you. And flagrantly bypassing censorship by being in such a show might be looked down upon. One of the leads for Meet You at the Blossom was already in a blacklisted show (right?) and had nothing to lose by being in that show. But then again, you have a fairly high level actor like Liu Dongqin going to Taiwan to star in the On1y One. So maybe they don't care that much.
Also, the mechanism through which chinese censorship of dramas is achieved is an organization which reviews all dramas before they go to air. This censorship board can send a show back to be edited before further review and release or they can give an indefinite "no" on a show. What is aired on television and streamers is controlled. What is filmed within the country itself and the things that chinese people make are not controlled.
that's why propaganda is so rampant there
only the ones who use VPN escape it
this is not the first nor last Chinese BL that have been coming out lately
Do these titles ring any bell
- Stay with Me (new ver. of Addicted censored with diff character names, etc)
- Meet You at the Blossom (co-production with Thailand and Taiwan)
- Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (banned on IQIYI but later released on gaga and Viki)
- I'll Turn Back This Time (the leads were in Meet You at the Blossom)
- Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island
- The Sparkle in Your Eye ("Singaporean" BL but the cast is all mainland) - same production as Blue Canvas they even namedropped the show
- Infidelity, It's a Disease ("Japanese" prod but it's mainland actors)
- Trapped in Osaka (same as the above)
The Sparkle in Your Eye and this currently airing
censored titles that got banned but managed to air
- The Spirealm - banned on IQIYI as soon as it went up since Chinese fans managed to rip all the eps in time, got fansubbed, later re-released on Viu and Viki
- Justice in the Dark (airing in Japan rn after banned on Youku in 2023)
A Guide to Chinese BL Censorship as it Currently Stands
https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/1ldglua/a_guide_to_chinese_bl_censorship_as_it_currently/
So I see people asking questions about chinese censorship from time to time on this sub since chinese BLs do continue to get released despite the censorship. Since I've done research into the topic, I thought I'd write a post explaining some of the history and the current state of censorship. I am however not an expert, and I invite correction by any of you who know better or are chinese.
The short version:
Censorship is still in place and is the strictest it has been in decades, however Chinese BLs continue to be released because there is a loophole in the restrictions. The loophole is that Chinese BLs will be released internationally but not within china itself. The production company then depends on the fact that chinese fans will find a way to watch the BL usually via methods we would consider "piracy" (although in cases like this I don't really consider the non-legal distribution of media to bypass censorship as piracy). So while BLs do not get official releases on streaming platforms, tv, etc. within China; it's very easy for a chinese person to find a way to watch a BL (whether it be thai, chinese, korean, japanese, etc.) by downloading it from a link they found on weibo (chinese twitter) or from sites dedicated to hosting and distributing links to download episodes. Anytime I'm on weibo, I'm always running into links for watching some thai, korean, or western show that doesn't have an official release in china due to its content--it's that easy and commonplace for people to bypass censorship. The shows make money through the release of merchandise, magazine, and the hosting of fanmeets.
Here's the long version:
Originally, the restrictions on what could be depicted on chinese television hadn't applied to streaming sites. As with most things, the chinese government wasn't really ahead of the curve on changes in society and reacted to issues as they presented themselves. This meant that there was a brief point in time, at the beginning of the streaming era, where people had a platform for pushing out shows that did not have to adhere to the censorship rules of traditional television. Enter a BL that some of you are very familiar with -- Addicted.
Addicted was a small production (financed by the author of the novel herself, right?) that premiered on a streaming site and explicitly depicted gay romance, kissing, and (and sex, right? I haven't seen it tbh). However, it was MASSIVELY popular. Which is not good. Because the chinese government is okay with gay people as long as they stay silent, invisible, and marginal. What is not okay is gay people making themselves known, and especially, GAINING MAINSTREAM ATTENTION. They don't want the gays to influence the youth (seriously, I see this all the time in chinese media. Their concern about gay media is that it will make the kids gay. Funny the things that are common between both the west and china, but I digress.) BL becomes a problem when it gains mainstream attention especially because it meant that the powers that be NOTICED it. And they reacted by yanking Addicted from airing much to the outrage of fans and viewers.
That was early 2016. In 2017, the China Network Audiovisual Program Services Association issued a set of guidelines for streaming content within mainland china. Within the guidelines was a prohibition on the depiction of "abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual violence". So yeah, just homophobic as fuck--equating homosexuality to abuse, assault, and incest and describing it as abnormal.
Enter the era of Dangai, or censored adaptions of explicitly romantic and/or sexual danmei (chinese term for BL) novels. There's a tendency to refer to these shows in western fandom as "bromance" but I don't think that's really a fair description. They're censored adaptions. Danmei web novels had started in the early 90s (maybe even earlier?) as a small sub culture on the internet and had just continued to grow and grow in popularity. The commercial appeal of adapting them and tapping into those fandoms was hard for the streaming execs to resist. And they kept proving themselves to be immensely popular even among those who weren't already fans of the novels. There was addicted yes, but also several other shows, such as Guardian. Which proved that even the censored versions of these shows had massive potential.
The most famous Dangai, probably known to all of you, is of course The Untamed which premiered in 2018/19. It was massive. Truly the first chinese drama to make an impact even in the west. It launched the two leads on their path to becoming the mega superstars they both are today despite the controversies which at times threatened to end those careers (the 227 incident is a topic for another time).
The powers that be weren't exactly sure how to react to this. They were, for the most part, actually positive about the show. They felt it promoted traditional chinese culture to the youth and to the world. Which was a good thing. That's what they wanted chinese dramas to do. But in their op-eds in the People's Daily, you can still sense a little bit of unease around the show, and they were certain to completely ignore the fact that the source material was sexually explicit.
The same powers that be had started to become concerned about a couple of problematic currents in pop culture at that time. The first was an anxiety about chinese masculinity. This anxiety went all the way to the top, with Xi Jingping mentioning in speeches the need for a robust masculinity to be cultivated in the youth in order for china to have a strong and flourishing future. There were denunciations in many media outlets, including the mouthpieces of the party and the state of the perceived femininity of many of china's most popular male stars. I'll spare you the ugly details.
Then there was a growing and perhaps more organic concern over the rise of "traffic stars", in essence, idols who weren't that talented but had HUGE fanbases who willed their faves to success through coordinated drives to push up social media engagement and spending on the brands their faves endorsed. People were feeling this was cheap somehow and there were scandals over fans buying so much of a product and then not using it and creating massive waste. The government took notice of this and denounced it (specifically the scandals over the massive waste created by this fan over-buying).
Unfortunately for BL, there was a feeling from both society and the powers that be that these two phenomenon tended to be closely tied to the stars of these dangai dramas (and also idol survival shows but that's not the topic of this post). The final nail in the coffin for dangai as a genre came with the massive success of one of my all time favorite BLs, Word of Honor.
Word of Honor premiered in 2021. and, well, it was A LOT gayer than The Untamed. You know if you've seen it. There isn't a heterosexual explanation for a lot of that and it was super popular. and kinda just everything the powers that be hated--pretty men and lots of social media traffic around them. Especially since the stars were less coy about the gayness in their promotions.
And then the hammer really and truly dropped with a controversy in which one of the leads was believed to have paid tribute at a shrine in Japan to class A war criminals who had carried out their crimes against Chinese people during the Japanese conquest and colonization of china. The evidence for this is rather thin, it was based on a resurfaced photo from a friend's wedding he had attended in Japan. It's a picture of him OUTSIDE the shrine, but what matters in the end is the narrative that took hold on Chinese social media of him being a terrible person who sympathized with brutal Japanese imperialists against the chinese. He was COMPLETELY blacklisted in the industry, his works were all taken down from the internet, I think even mention of his name was scrubbed. (I have my own theory that this controversy was manufactured for homophobic reasons, but I don't have a lot of proof so who knows). And most importantly this controversy was so massive the government took notice and issued statements on it.
And needless to say they were DONE. FED UP. With this guy, with all of these controversies, and most especially with dangai--the supposed nefarious influence it had on children, the nefarious stars it created, the "unhealthy atmosphere" it created on social media. And most importantly of all, they were done with how it kept getting itself noticed, kept popping up in the public eye. It was kinda gay, and kept getting gayer, and it kept MAKING ITSELF KNOWN.
In 2022, the Beijing municipal government came together with all of the major streaming services--Iqiyi, youku, tencent (known as wetv to us) and issued a ban on dangai (and other types of shows that had been creating similar problems).
This brought to an immediate halt the plans to release quite a few dangai shows that had already been filmed and were in post-production. These shows which were halted and are still out there in censorship jail, had been inspired by the massive success of Word of Honor and The Untamed. Immortality, an adaption of the massively popular danmei webnovel erha was the most expensive show tencent had ever filmed at the time. It still has not been released. There are many others. Just as the dangai industry was truly gearing up, it was strangled by this ban.
Since then, no dangai has successfully been aired within the chinese mainland. We had Justice in the Dark and the Spirealm, released briefly before being pulled. The dangai ban is not a law writ in stone, it's an agreement between the city of beijing and the streaming platforms which are headquartered there. I imagine there is, at times, a bit of a complicated dance going on between these parties, the streamers who want to get their investment back on these shows by releasing them, and the powers that be who don't want them to air. It's not watertight, it leaks sometimes. But it is still pretty consistent.
Now what the dangai ban does not cover is bromance/queer-coded shows that are not based on danmei source material. Thus, the chinese media landscape is fairly rife with bromance shows, but these are original stories or based on bromance books. Examples include Mysterious Lotus Casebook (based on a bromance book) and Fangs of Fortune (original story). It also does not cover censored adaptions of explicit GL shows (known as Baihe in chinese). Those continue to air.
The explicit BL shows you see are not getting official releases in china. The people who create them are not even going to try to get through the censorship. They are going right to international distribution. Luckily, some of the imprisoned dangai has been released internationally like Justice in the Dark or the Spirealm. But there are still many others which await an uncertain fate as streamers ponder whether to cut their losses and release them internationally or try to wait out the dangai ban.
An unfortunate side effect of The Loophole is that currently all Chinese BL is going to be pretty low budget as returns on a show which cannot be released in china and rely instead on non-legal means of watching is going to have a low viewership. This is particularly disappointing when we think about how massive the production value of dangai that have been prevented from releasing are (immortality) or if you know how awesome the production value of expensive chinese shows can be. Also, they are going to struggle to attract truly ambitious actors. Being a top star in china depends on the powers that be liking you. And flagrantly bypassing censorship by being in such a show might be looked down upon. One of the leads for Meet You at the Blossom was already in a blacklisted show (right?) and had nothing to lose by being in that show. But then again, you have a fairly high level actor like Liu Dongqin going to Taiwan to star in the On1y One. So maybe they don't care that much.
Also, the mechanism through which chinese censorship of dramas is achieved is an organization which reviews all dramas before they go to air. This censorship board can send a show back to be edited before further review and release or they can give an indefinite "no" on a show. What is aired on television and streamers is controlled. What is filmed within the country itself and the things that chinese people make are not controlled.
but on weibo (China equivalent of Twitter) you can easily find download links to watch BL
GTV Drama YT channel (worldwide except Japan, Korea)
https://www.youtube.com/@gtv-drama
GagaOOLala
Teaser
https://youtu.be/9On5Ltooc7w
GTV Drama YT channel (worldwide except Japan, Korea)
https://www.youtube.com/@gtv-drama
GagaOOLala
Teaser
https://youtu.be/9On5Ltooc7w
GTV Drama YT channel (worldwide except Japan, Korea)
https://www.youtube.com/@gtv-drama
GagaOOLala
Teaser
https://youtu.be/9On5Ltooc7w
GTV Drama YT channel (worldwide except Japan, Korea)
https://www.youtube.com/@gtv-drama
https://youtube.com/@gtvdramaenglish
GagaOOLala
Teaser
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLCiHRKRl2O/
English subbed
https://youtu.be/9On5Ltooc7w
BTW 10 EPs is just a placeholder
this is not the first nor last Chinese BL that have been coming out lately
Do these titles ring any bell
- Stay with Me (new ver. of Addicted censored with diff character names, etc)
- Meet You at the Blossom (co-production with Thailand and Taiwan)
- Blue Canvas of Youthful Days (banned on IQIYI but later released on gaga and Viki)
- I'll Turn Back This Time (the leads were in Meet You at the Blossom)
- Secrets Happened on the Litchi Island
- The Sparkle in Your Eye ("Singaporean" BL but the cast is all mainland) - same production as Blue Canvas they even namedropped the show
- Infidelity, It's a Disease ("Japanese" prod but it's mainland actors)
- Trapped in Osaka (same as the above)
The Sparkle in Your Eye and this currently airing
censored titles that got banned but managed to air
- The Spirealm - banned on IQIYI as soon as it went up since Chinese fans managed to rip all the eps in time, got fansubbed, later re-released on Viu and Viki
- Justice in the Dark (airing in Japan rn after banned on Youku in 2023)
A Guide to Chinese BL Censorship as it Currently Stands
https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/1ldglua/a_guide_to_chinese_bl_censorship_as_it_currently/
So I see people asking questions about chinese censorship from time to time on this sub since chinese BLs do continue to get released despite the censorship. Since I've done research into the topic, I thought I'd write a post explaining some of the history and the current state of censorship. I am however not an expert, and I invite correction by any of you who know better or are chinese.
The short version:
Censorship is still in place and is the strictest it has been in decades, however Chinese BLs continue to be released because there is a loophole in the restrictions. The loophole is that Chinese BLs will be released internationally but not within china itself. The production company then depends on the fact that chinese fans will find a way to watch the BL usually via methods we would consider "piracy" (although in cases like this I don't really consider the non-legal distribution of media to bypass censorship as piracy). So while BLs do not get official releases on streaming platforms, tv, etc. within China; it's very easy for a chinese person to find a way to watch a BL (whether it be thai, chinese, korean, japanese, etc.) by downloading it from a link they found on weibo (chinese twitter) or from sites dedicated to hosting and distributing links to download episodes. Anytime I'm on weibo, I'm always running into links for watching some thai, korean, or western show that doesn't have an official release in china due to its content--it's that easy and commonplace for people to bypass censorship. The shows make money through the release of merchandise, magazine, and the hosting of fanmeets.
Here's the long version:
Originally, the restrictions on what could be depicted on chinese television hadn't applied to streaming sites. As with most things, the chinese government wasn't really ahead of the curve on changes in society and reacted to issues as they presented themselves. This meant that there was a brief point in time, at the beginning of the streaming era, where people had a platform for pushing out shows that did not have to adhere to the censorship rules of traditional television. Enter a BL that some of you are very familiar with -- Addicted.
Addicted was a small production (financed by the author of the novel herself, right?) that premiered on a streaming site and explicitly depicted gay romance, kissing, and (and sex, right? I haven't seen it tbh). However, it was MASSIVELY popular. Which is not good. Because the chinese government is okay with gay people as long as they stay silent, invisible, and marginal. What is not okay is gay people making themselves known, and especially, GAINING MAINSTREAM ATTENTION. They don't want the gays to influence the youth (seriously, I see this all the time in chinese media. Their concern about gay media is that it will make the kids gay. Funny the things that are common between both the west and china, but I digress.) BL becomes a problem when it gains mainstream attention especially because it meant that the powers that be NOTICED it. And they reacted by yanking Addicted from airing much to the outrage of fans and viewers.
That was early 2016. In 2017, the China Network Audiovisual Program Services Association issued a set of guidelines for streaming content within mainland china. Within the guidelines was a prohibition on the depiction of "abnormal sexual relationships and behaviors, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and sexual violence". So yeah, just homophobic as fuck--equating homosexuality to abuse, assault, and incest and describing it as abnormal.
Enter the era of Dangai, or censored adaptions of explicitly romantic and/or sexual danmei (chinese term for BL) novels. There's a tendency to refer to these shows in western fandom as "bromance" but I don't think that's really a fair description. They're censored adaptions. Danmei web novels had started in the early 90s (maybe even earlier?) as a small sub culture on the internet and had just continued to grow and grow in popularity. The commercial appeal of adapting them and tapping into those fandoms was hard for the streaming execs to resist. And they kept proving themselves to be immensely popular even among those who weren't already fans of the novels. There was addicted yes, but also several other shows, such as Guardian. Which proved that even the censored versions of these shows had massive potential.
The most famous Dangai, probably known to all of you, is of course The Untamed which premiered in 2018/19. It was massive. Truly the first chinese drama to make an impact even in the west. It launched the two leads on their path to becoming the mega superstars they both are today despite the controversies which at times threatened to end those careers (the 227 incident is a topic for another time).
The powers that be weren't exactly sure how to react to this. They were, for the most part, actually positive about the show. They felt it promoted traditional chinese culture to the youth and to the world. Which was a good thing. That's what they wanted chinese dramas to do. But in their op-eds in the People's Daily, you can still sense a little bit of unease around the show, and they were certain to completely ignore the fact that the source material was sexually explicit.
The same powers that be had started to become concerned about a couple of problematic currents in pop culture at that time. The first was an anxiety about chinese masculinity. This anxiety went all the way to the top, with Xi Jingping mentioning in speeches the need for a robust masculinity to be cultivated in the youth in order for china to have a strong and flourishing future. There were denunciations in many media outlets, including the mouthpieces of the party and the state of the perceived femininity of many of china's most popular male stars. I'll spare you the ugly details.
Then there was a growing and perhaps more organic concern over the rise of "traffic stars", in essence, idols who weren't that talented but had HUGE fanbases who willed their faves to success through coordinated drives to push up social media engagement and spending on the brands their faves endorsed. People were feeling this was cheap somehow and there were scandals over fans buying so much of a product and then not using it and creating massive waste. The government took notice of this and denounced it (specifically the scandals over the massive waste created by this fan over-buying).
Unfortunately for BL, there was a feeling from both society and the powers that be that these two phenomenon tended to be closely tied to the stars of these dangai dramas (and also idol survival shows but that's not the topic of this post). The final nail in the coffin for dangai as a genre came with the massive success of one of my all time favorite BLs, Word of Honor.
Word of Honor premiered in 2021. and, well, it was A LOT gayer than The Untamed. You know if you've seen it. There isn't a heterosexual explanation for a lot of that and it was super popular. and kinda just everything the powers that be hated--pretty men and lots of social media traffic around them. Especially since the stars were less coy about the gayness in their promotions.
And then the hammer really and truly dropped with a controversy in which one of the leads was believed to have paid tribute at a shrine in Japan to class A war criminals who had carried out their crimes against Chinese people during the Japanese conquest and colonization of china. The evidence for this is rather thin, it was based on a resurfaced photo from a friend's wedding he had attended in Japan. It's a picture of him OUTSIDE the shrine, but what matters in the end is the narrative that took hold on Chinese social media of him being a terrible person who sympathized with brutal Japanese imperialists against the chinese. He was COMPLETELY blacklisted in the industry, his works were all taken down from the internet, I think even mention of his name was scrubbed. (I have my own theory that this controversy was manufactured for homophobic reasons, but I don't have a lot of proof so who knows). And most importantly this controversy was so massive the government took notice and issued statements on it.
And needless to say they were DONE. FED UP. With this guy, with all of these controversies, and most especially with dangai--the supposed nefarious influence it had on children, the nefarious stars it created, the "unhealthy atmosphere" it created on social media. And most importantly of all, they were done with how it kept getting itself noticed, kept popping up in the public eye. It was kinda gay, and kept getting gayer, and it kept MAKING ITSELF KNOWN.
In 2022, the Beijing municipal government came together with all of the major streaming services--Iqiyi, youku, tencent (known as wetv to us) and issued a ban on dangai (and other types of shows that had been creating similar problems).
This brought to an immediate halt the plans to release quite a few dangai shows that had already been filmed and were in post-production. These shows which were halted and are still out there in censorship jail, had been inspired by the massive success of Word of Honor and The Untamed. Immortality, an adaption of the massively popular danmei webnovel erha was the most expensive show tencent had ever filmed at the time. It still has not been released. There are many others. Just as the dangai industry was truly gearing up, it was strangled by this ban.
Since then, no dangai has successfully been aired within the chinese mainland. We had Justice in the Dark and the Spirealm, released briefly before being pulled. The dangai ban is not a law writ in stone, it's an agreement between the city of beijing and the streaming platforms which are headquartered there. I imagine there is, at times, a bit of a complicated dance going on between these parties, the streamers who want to get their investment back on these shows by releasing them, and the powers that be who don't want them to air. It's not watertight, it leaks sometimes. But it is still pretty consistent.
Now what the dangai ban does not cover is bromance/queer-coded shows that are not based on danmei source material. Thus, the chinese media landscape is fairly rife with bromance shows, but these are original stories or based on bromance books. Examples include Mysterious Lotus Casebook (based on a bromance book) and Fangs of Fortune (original story). It also does not cover censored adaptions of explicit GL shows (known as Baihe in chinese). Those continue to air.
The explicit BL shows you see are not getting official releases in china. The people who create them are not even going to try to get through the censorship. They are going right to international distribution. Luckily, some of the imprisoned dangai has been released internationally like Justice in the Dark or the Spirealm. But there are still many others which await an uncertain fate as streamers ponder whether to cut their losses and release them internationally or try to wait out the dangai ban.
An unfortunate side effect of The Loophole is that currently all Chinese BL is going to be pretty low budget as returns on a show which cannot be released in china and rely instead on non-legal means of watching is going to have a low viewership. This is particularly disappointing when we think about how massive the production value of dangai that have been prevented from releasing are (immortality) or if you know how awesome the production value of expensive chinese shows can be. Also, they are going to struggle to attract truly ambitious actors. Being a top star in china depends on the powers that be liking you. And flagrantly bypassing censorship by being in such a show might be looked down upon. One of the leads for Meet You at the Blossom was already in a blacklisted show (right?) and had nothing to lose by being in that show. But then again, you have a fairly high level actor like Liu Dongqin going to Taiwan to star in the On1y One. So maybe they don't care that much.
Also, the mechanism through which chinese censorship of dramas is achieved is an organization which reviews all dramas before they go to air. This censorship board can send a show back to be edited before further review and release or they can give an indefinite "no" on a show. What is aired on television and streamers is controlled. What is filmed within the country itself and the things that chinese people make are not controlled.
Daily Short、GagaOOLala、Heavenly、Rakuten Viki、Viu、YouTube
https://twitter.com/RevengedLove_/status/1929810290171932851
it's filmed in Mainland China but it's not airing in China, that's why they don't need to censor anything
Blue Canvas was banned on IQIYI BC it was filmed in China AND trying to air on a China-owned platform which is a no-go by their restriction
As long they distributed ONLY on international platforms and playing coy on its origin by saying it's from a Singapore or Thailand or Taiwan production companies