Danmei vs Baihe: The Difference Between Chinese BL and GL, and Why One Shelf Is Bigger

Danmei (耽美, dānměi) is Chinese fiction about romance between men. Baihe (百合, bǎihé) is the same between women. Both words came from Japanese. In English the real difference is size: Seven Seas has 45 danmei novel series and four baihe.

Both come from the same Chinese websites and reach English through the same publisher, so why does one fill a shelf while the other barely fills a row? This is the comparison. For baihe on its own terms, read What is baihe? first.

What danmei and baihe mean, and why both words are Japanese

Danmei is built from 耽, to indulge in, and 美, beauty. The pair was coined in Japan as tanbi, a translation of the European idea of aestheticism. From the 1970s Japanese readers also used it for romantic comics about beautiful young men. Chinese fans took the word back in the 1990s along with the manga, reading the same characters with Mandarin pronunciation. Language Log, the linguistics blog hosted at the University of Pennsylvania, describes it as a word "reintroduced into Chinese."

Baihe made the same trip. 百合 is the lily, and Japanese fandom reads it yuri, its name for girls' love. Chinese readers kept the characters and changed the pronunciation. Seven Seas, which publishes both genres in English, defines baihe in its glossary as "the woman/woman counterpart to danmei."

In Chinese the two terms are a matched pair, even though the Japanese genres behind them grew up separately, for different readers. That history is in GL vs BL.

There's one wrinkle. On Jinjiang (晋江文学城, JJWXC), where most of the licensed titles started, the word danmei doesn't appear on the front page. The site describes itself as hosting 纯爱小说, chún'ài or "pure love" novels, next to 百合小说, baihe novels. Chun'ai is the softer name the site gave its danmei channel to keep the genre's profile down.

The size gap in English

Seven Seas began its danmei line in December 2021 with all three novels by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX). Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Mo Dao Zu Shi) follows a cultivator who once turned to demonic arts for revenge. Heaven Official's Blessing (Tian Guan Ci Fu) is about a crown prince who has fallen from godhood three times. In The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, a man is reborn as the villain of a web novel he loved to mock, and ends up romancing its hero. All three now carry a New York Times best-seller banner on Seven Seas' site, and ICv2 reported in February 2026 that three of its danmei novels had made that list.

The line kept growing. Thousand Autumns: Qian Qiu by Meng Xi Shi (2023) puts a wounded Daoist sect leader in the care of a demonic sect master who means to corrupt him. Ballad of Sword and Wine: Qiang Jin Jiu by Tang Jiu Qing (2024) is war and court politics, about a traitor's son and the nobleman who wants him dead. When we counted in October 2026, Seven Seas' danmei page listed 45 novel series, a few of them announced but not yet out.

Baihe looks very different. Seven Seas' first title, The Beauty's Blade, came out in November 2025, almost four years after MXTX. Three more were licensed in July 2026, and the first of those, Miss Forensics, isn't scheduled until July 2027. Rosmei, a Singapore publisher, has At the World's Mercy. A running list of officially licensed Chinese novels and comics kept by the small publisher Duck Prints Press (updated August 2026) flags nine baihe titles among well over a hundred entries. Nearly all the rest are danmei.

Why the gap exists

Some of it is plain fact. Baihe is the smaller genre in China too. A 2021 Sixth Tone essay said the number of baihe stories, and the interest they get, lag far behind danmei. Language Log says baihe is not as well known or popular.

Then there's the screen. Danmei novels became live-action dramas and donghua (Chinese animation) that reached Netflix. When Seven Seas pitched the MXTX novels to booksellers, its sell sheet led with The Untamed and the Heaven Official's Blessing donghua. Baihe has nothing comparable. Sixth Tone wrote in 2021 that no baihe story had ever received a mainstream screen adaptation, and ICv2 said in 2026 that baihe doesn't have that kind of exposure yet.

Our interpretation: English publishers license what has already proven it has readers abroad. For danmei the proof was a Netflix audience. Baihe never had its Untamed, so it arrived late, in small numbers, as a bet. That is our reading of the timeline, not something a publisher has said.

Censorship and the "bromance" adaptations

Danmei reached the screen despite the rules. Industry guidelines dated December 31, 2015 surfaced in March 2016. They banned television from showing "abnormal sexual relationships," listing homosexuality alongside incest. Shortly before, the streaming site iQiyi had pulled Addicted, a web series about gay students.

The industry's answer was the 耽改 (dāngǎi), literally "danmei adaptation": the novel's romance rewritten as devoted friendship. The Untamed, adapted from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, came out on Tencent Video in summer 2019. All 50 episodes reached Netflix that October. There are no kisses and no marriage, just a lot of long looks. Netflix's own listing calls the leads "two soulmates." The University of Hong Kong's interpreting glossary notes that some adaptations, including the 2021 hit Word of Honor, marketed themselves as martial-arts epics rather than danmei adaptations.

The rules got harder. In 2018 a court in Anhui sentenced a danmei author who wrote as Tianyi to about a decade in prison for selling copies of a homoerotic novel. On September 16, 2021, China's broadcasting regulator told the industry to firmly resist the "dangai trend," when dozens of such dramas were already in production.

Here's the irony. Seven Seas sold its MXTX editions to the shows' viewers as the first official English release with the romance left uncensored. Seven Seas has since licensed Priest's Faraway Wanderers, the novel behind Word of Honor.

Baihe sat out the whole cycle. It was never adapted at scale, so it was never cut down, but it never got the overseas audience either.

How the two fandoms overlap in English

In English the overlap is mostly in the channels that sell and report on the books.

• The same publisher. Seven Seas Baihe is a sister imprint to Seven Seas Danmei. The July 2026 announcement put three baihe novels on the same slate as a danmei one.
• The same news. DanmeiNews, an English site that tracks danmei licences, runs its baihe coverage under a Baihe News banner.
• The same trackers. Fan lists, from the Duck Prints Press page to a StoryGraph reading challenge, track licensed danmei and baihe together.

Sects, transmigration and court intrigue work the same way on both shelves, so a danmei reader won't need a new glossary. We have no survey of how many English baihe readers came over from danmei. Our guess, from the sister-imprint setup, is that Seven Seas is counting on plenty.

Where a danmei reader should start with baihe

Start from the danmei you already like.

• **If you liked Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation or Thousand Autumns:** read The Beauty's Blade. A righteous heir and a demonic sect leader make a three-month bargain over a rare medicine. It's one volume, rated 17+, and out now. For more cultivation and martial-arts titles, see xianxia GL novels in English. The Demonic Cultivator Owes Me Her Life is a NovelMyth original, written in English for this site and not a translation, with three free chapters so far. A demonic heir stages her own rescue by a sword cultivator, and it goes wrong.
• **If you liked Qiang Jin Jiu:** try At the World's Mercy. A general and a chief minister share a marriage while each hides her real motives. It's rated Mature (18+). The catch is that Rosmei sells through Singapore channels, so most readers have to order from abroad.
• **If you liked Priest's crime novels, such as Silent Reading:** wait for Miss Forensics, a hot-headed forensic doctor paired with a detective. Seven Seas lists volume one for July 2027.
• **If you liked Scum Villain:** watch for Matrilocal Marriage, in which a modern woman lands in an unrecorded dynasty and ends up betrothed to an heiress. Seven Seas has volume 1 down for August 2027.

FAQ

What does baihe mean if you know danmei?

It's danmei's counterpart: Chinese fiction about romance between women, which is how Seven Seas defines it. Both words were borrowed from Japanese.

Why is there so much more danmei than baihe in English?

Danmei was the bigger genre in China, had Netflix adaptations, and got to English first. Seven Seas started danmei in 2021 and baihe in 2025, and its danmei list is about ten times longer.

Is danmei more explicit than baihe?

Not as a rule. Ratings go book by book: the MXTX novels and The Beauty's Blade are 17+, At the World's Mercy 18+.