Baihe (百合) literally means “lily.” In Chinese publishing and fan culture, it is also used for stories centered on romantic or intimate relationships between women. The same characters are read yuri in Japanese, but baihe has developed through its own Chinese-language communities and publishing history.
百合
One flower, three names
The Mandarin reading of 百合, and the name Chinese publishing and fandom use.
The Japanese reading of the same flower, and the name of Japan’s genre.
Girls’ Love, a label coined in Japan that now travels across markets.
Flowers in Straight Girl Trap
Three names
Baihe, yuri, and GL all refer to stories and fan cultures centered on intimacy or love between women. Baihe is the Chinese-language term rooted in Chinese publishing and fandom. Yuri comes from Japanese publishing and fan culture, while GL is used more broadly across languages and markets.
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| Chapter 113Straight Girl Trap | Chapter 18I Got Blackmailed by the Green Tea Bitch in Class | Promotional artMy Food Looks Very Cute | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the word says | “Lily,” read in MandarinThe Sinophone reading of 百合, meaning “lily”; most common in Chinese-language publishing and fandom. | “Lily,” read in JapaneseThe Japanese reading of lily, also written ゆり or ユリ; Japanese in origin and now used internationally. | Short for Girls’ LoveShort for Girls’ Love; used across publishing and fan contexts, Chinese and Japanese ones included. |
| Where it took root | Chinese web fandom, 2000sBecame established in Chinese online fandom and web publishing in the 2000s, partly through the local circulation of Japanese yuri. | Japanese magazines, 1970sIts association with the lily appeared in Japanese magazines in the 1970s. Fan circulation and specialist publishing later helped form yuri as a distinct category. | Japan, as the pair to Boys’ LoveProbably coined in Japan as a counterpart to Boys’ Love. Publishers and fans were using GL by the 2000s, and the label later traveled across markets. |
| Where it lives | JJWXC · YamiboJJWXC’s Baihe Fiction channel and the Yamibo fan community. | Comic Yuri HimeIchijinsha’s Comic Yuri Hime and its Yuri Hime Comics books; historically, Yuri Shimai and Houbunsha’s Tsubomi. | Publisher labels and platform tagsNot tied to one institution; it appears in publisher labels, catalogs, and platform tags across markets. KADOKAWA’s GirlsLine is one current Japanese example. |
| What it tells you | A Chinese-language contextA Chinese-language publishing, cultural, or fan context. | A tie to Japanese yuriA connection to Japanese yuri history and culture, even when the work or reader comes from elsewhere. | A broad label across marketsA broad category label that moves readily between languages, publishers, and markets. |
The difference between baihe and yuri becomes clearest when the history is read in order.
1919–1976Japan
Japan's tradition of stories about passionate bonds between girls is older than any of these words.
It reaches back to the “Class S” school stories of the 1910s and 1920s, Yoshiya Nobuko's Yaneura no Nishojo (1919) most famously, where the white lily was already part of the scenery.
The name arrived half a century later.
In 1976, Itō Bungaku, editor of Barazoku, Japan's first commercial gay men's magazine, opened a readers' column called “Yurizoku no Heya,” the Lily Tribe's Room, setting the lily against the rose of his magazine's title.
The word then wandered for two decades, through personal-ad columns and fan slang, before it settled onto fiction about love between women.
1998–2005Japan
What turned a wandering word into a named genre was a boom.
Maria-sama ga Miteru, Oyuki Konno's novel series set in a Catholic girls' school (from 1998), gave yuri its modern template, and its 2004 anime carried that template to a much larger audience, in Japan and far beyond it.
Commercial publishing moved in step: in 2003, Yuri Shimai became the first magazine devoted entirely to yuri; after it folded, Ichijinsha relaunched it in 2005 as what is now Comic Yuri Hime, still running today.
These are the years when “yuri” settled into broad use as the genre's name: a shelf Japanese readers could finally ask for by name.
Late 2004Sinophone forums
2004 was the year yuri broke through on Japanese TV, with Maria-sama ga Miteru, Kannazuki no Miko and Mai-HiME, and Sinophone fans kept pace almost in real time, through volunteer groups recording and subtitling each episode.
Baihe fans were scattered across big ACG forums, so in late 2004 a group of them built a home of their own: Yamibo (百合会), named after the “Mountain Lily Council” of Maria-sama ga Miteru.
Yamibo grew into the largest Chinese-language baihe community, drawing fans from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, and its translation energy helped push Taiwanese publishers into dedicated yuri imprints by 2006.
This era was not merely a prelude: it built the readership, the vocabulary, and the archive that everything later stood on.
2010Jinjiang
Stories about love between women had appeared on Jinjiang since the early 2000s, but writers often had to place them under danmei and add “GL” to the title so readers could find them.
In 2010, after years of requests from writers and readers, Jinjiang made baihe a searchable category of its own.
That change gave baihe fiction a clearer place to grow.
Authors could write for a recognized readership, readers could find more stories together, and the category gradually developed a distinctive presence within Chinese web fiction.
2010s–2020sAcross platforms
Baihe soon spread beyond web fiction.
Forums, Tieba groups, Weibo accounts, and Bilibili became places to recommend stories, share resources, make fan edits, and discuss relationships between women. Other social media accounts also brought the word into conversations about lesbian life and community.
At the same time, baihe was developing into a connected cultural ecosystem. Stories moved between fiction, comics, audio, video, and games, while fan communities helped readers discover, discuss, reinterpret, and circulate them.
2020sA wider readership
By the 2020s, baihe had become a familiar way for Chinese-speaking fans to discuss stories about women loving women, including GL works from other countries.
In April 2024, baihe reached full structural parity with danmei on Jinjiang.
Its local culture kept expanding: more creators, formats, communities, and routes of discovery emerged around baihe, connecting original work with fan discussion and independent creation.
2025In English
The catalog began with Chinese baihe stories translated into English across manhua, novels, and audio drama.
As of September 2026, Baiheverse publishes 18 officially licensed Chinese baihe titles in English. The catalog keeps growing as more Chinese stories reach English readers.
Naming
Stories about women loving women have often received less visibility than danmei. Keeping baihe visible helps readers trace the Chinese-speaking writers, readers, platforms, and adaptation networks behind these works.
In Chinese-speaking communities, baihe can name a genre1, a way of reading intimacy between women2, and sometimes love between women more broadly3.
Its meaning changes with context because the word has grown through everyday use as well as publishing.
Choosing a name
Across baihe, yuri, and GL, the shared center is stories that take intimacy between women seriously. Use the name that gives your reader the most useful context. The terms overlap, so the same story may carry more than one.
That is why Baiheverse uses baihe and GL together:
Manga, manhwa, and manhua are related words for comics in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. In English, they usually point to a comic’s language and publishing tradition, not its genre. The comics on Baiheverse are baihe manhua: Chinese comics about intimacy and love between women.
Two different questions. Manga, manhwa, and manhua tell you which comics tradition a work comes from; baihe and yuri describe its relationships and cultural context. Stories about women loving women appear in all three traditions: a Japanese yuri comic is manga, a Korean GL comic is manhwa, and a Chinese baihe comic is manhua.
| Compare by | 漫画MangaJapanese | 만화ManhwaKorean | 漫画ManhuaChinese |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language and publishing context | Japanese / Japan | Korean / South Korea | Chinese / mainland China and other Chinese-speaking markets |
| Common reading format | Usually page-based; Japanese editions often read right to left | Vertical scrolling is common online; print formats vary | Vertical scrolling is common online; page-based formats also exist |
| Common presentation | Often black and white; color editions and digital formats also exist | Often full color as webtoons; print and older formats vary | Often full color online; print and page-based works vary |
| How readers find GL | Specialist yuri magazines such as Comic Yuri Hime and Galette, plus general magazines, apps, and web platforms | GL tags and curated sections on webtoon platforms such as Lezhin, alongside broader romance catalogs | Baihe or GL tags, platform search, publisher catalogs, and fan recommendations |
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Chapter 1Remaking of the Unforgotten Love
Manhua, read page by page in black and white.
Episode 1Submission Time! Yes or Yes?
Manhua, read page by page in full color.
Chapter 1The Wayward Tenant and Her Pretty Landlady
Manhua, drawn for scrolling like most webtoons.
Four things readers searched before they found this page.
Searched: “gl version of danmei”
In a way, yes: danmei tells stories of love between men, and baihe tells stories of love between women. Both grew up as Chinese web fiction on Jinjiang, where baihe was filed under danmei until it got a category of its own in 2010. But baihe is not a mirror image. It has its own writers, fandoms and history, and a much smaller spotlight.
Searched: “danmei yuri”
Danmei built its readership as web fiction first. Novels such as Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Mo Dao Zu Shi (2015–2016) had devoted fans long before any screen version. The adaptations came later: Guardian (2018) and The Untamed (2019) each drew billions of views in China, The Untamed reached fans worldwide on Netflix in 2019, and official English editions of the novels followed from 2021.
Baihe has had nothing on that scale yet, so many readers assume the stories are not there. They are.
Searched: “female version of danmei”
You will often hear that women read danmei and men read baihe. It does not hold up. Women are baihe’s most devoted readers, many of them queer women, and men and straight women read it too.
Searched: “what is baihe novel”
Chinese web fiction about love between women, most of it written chapter by chapter on Jinjiang. As of September 2026, Jinjiang lists more than 31,000 completed original ones.
Official English editions are arriving: Seven Seas published The Beauty’s Blade in 2025, with Miss Forensics and My Wandering Spirit Lady due in 2027, and Rosmei publishes Ning Yuan’s At the World’s Mercy.
Read on BaiheverseThe Clouds of Past MillenniaNovel · Completed · Free to startSix officially licensed Chinese baihe manhua in English, from a high school blackmail comedy to a court romance. Pick a spine to pull one out.
“If you don’t want other people to find out… you’ll have to do what I say.”
Everyone at school calls Tongtong a green tea bitch. When she corners honors student Lin Luxi with a secret, the blackmail turns into a sweet high school romance.
“If Shijie says jump, I say ‘how high?’”
Lan Qinghe wakes up as the villainess of a cultivation novel, with a glitchy system and one job: protect the heroine, her shijie Ji Linxue.
“Say… might I ask you a little favor, my darling?”
On the loneliest New Year’s Eve of her marriage, a neglected wife uncovers an old mirror in the storeroom, and the woman who steps out of it calls her darling.
“Even if it clearly is a trap, should I still step into it?”
Zhan Ying is sure her boss, Zhou Yuanyou, is only being kind. Sleepovers, a fake date and one game of truth or dare later, it turns into a home they share.
“Then, try something that has taste.”
Maria, a vampire who has slept for nearly two centuries, is woken by Xing Lan, a werewolf who stumbles on her coffin, and a curse lands on Xing Lan the moment the lid comes off.
“They are opposed as fire to water.”
In public, graceful Shen Qingshuang and fearless Mu Yunzhao are fire and water. In her dreams, Shen Qingshuang wants nothing more than to fall with her.
Other things readers ask about the word.
There is substantial overlap. Many baihe stories are clearly lesbian or sapphic romance, while others leave identities or relationships less explicitly named. Baihe also points to a Chinese publishing and fan context, so readers often use it alongside those words rather than instead of them. For stories that say it plainly, try I Got Blackmailed by the Green Tea Bitch in Class, where two schoolgirls fall for each other and then have to face their mothers, or Long as We Have Loved, which begins with one more call about marriage.
Yes. Every story on Baiheverse is an officially licensed English edition. If you want to know where else baihe is published legally in English, Where to read baihe manhua legally lists the official platforms and how to tell them from scan sites. About Baiheverse covers who we are.
Many do. If you want to be sure before you start, GL Manhua With Happy Endings lists completed series that end with the couple together.
Yes. The Clouds of Past Millennia is also an audiobook, with a free audio drama alongside it, and A Little Sweet is an audio drama of short stories from everyday life.
Here on Baiheverse, which publishes officially licensed Chinese baihe stories in English across manhua, novels and audio drama. Most are free to start, and these five are free to the last chapter.
