Danmei, Baihe, No CP: A Translator's Glossary of Web Novel Labels

If you translate Chinese web novels, you've hit this a hundred times. The synopsis says 追妻火葬场, and the literal meaning is "chasing wife crematorium". Accurate and useless. Your readers know the trope by another name, and if you don't use it, they can't find the book.

We had the same problem at scale. Most tag labels on DaoSearch started out as machine translation, which is how 魂穿 became "Soul Penetration" and 架空 became "Overhead". In early September every genre and tag label on all three platforms got a curation pass, and the bad ones were replaced with the terms English-language readers actually use. Faloo's labels were curated the same way when it joined later that month. Same Chinese word, same English label, whichever platform it's on.

This is that list, for the labels translators ask about most, with the reasoning where it isn't obvious. The counts are how many books carry each label on the platform where it's most common. The first glossary covers the big Qidian and Fanqie tropes like transmigration, system, rebirth and face-slapping, so this one leans toward JJWXC and romance.

Orientation: who the romance is between

JJWXC files every book under one of these, and it's the first thing a reader wants to know about a book.

• 言情 · Romance. A man and a woman, also called BG (boy-girl). About 1.11 million books on JJWXC. Browse
• 纯爱 · Danmei (BL). Male-male romance. 纯爱 ("pure love") is the current mainland term and 耽美 (danmei) the older one the English fandom kept, so the label carries both the pinyin and BL. About 736,000 on JJWXC. Browse
• 百合 · Baihe (GL). Female-female romance. Baihe means lily, the same flower as the Japanese yuri. About 123,000. Browse
• 无CP · No CP. No romantic pairing at all. CP is short for couple. These are the books to hand a reader who wants plot without romance. About 155,000 on JJWXC. Browse
• 多元 · Multi-Orientation. More than one kind of pairing in the same book. About 40,000. Browse

Danmei vocabulary

• 主受 / 主攻 · Bottom-Lead (Shou) / Top-Lead (Gong). Gong (攻) is the pursuing partner and shou (受) the receiving one, and JJWXC records whose point of view the story follows. The labels keep the romanisation because that's what readers type. 互攻 is Switching. Shou-POV books
• ABO · Omegaverse. Alpha, beta, omega dynamics. The English fandom calls it Omegaverse, so that's the label. About 24,000 on JJWXC. Browse
• 哨向 · Sentinel & Guide. From 哨兵 (sentinel) and 向导 (guide), the paired-abilities trope. About 1,900. Browse
• 生子 · Mpreg. Literally "giving birth". About 24,100. Browse
• 强强 · Power Couple. Both leads are strong and neither one gets rescued. "Strong strong" tells an English reader nothing. It's on about 221,000 JJWXC books. Browse
• 年下 · Younger Love Interest. The love interest is the younger one. Browse

Romance tropes

• 追妻火葬场 · Grovelling Ex. The lead treats their partner badly, loses them, then has to win them back the hard way. The "crematorium" is the lead's pride going up in flames. About 21,700 on Fanqie. Browse
• 破镜重圆 · Second-Chance Romance. "The broken mirror made whole": exes finding their way back. About 87,000 on JJWXC. Browse
• 先婚后爱 · Marriage Before Love. Married first, in love later. Contract and arranged marriages live here. Browse
• 白月光 · White Moonlight. The idealised first love who's out of reach, usually the one a rival can never compete with. Browse
• 替身 · Stand-in. One lead is loved as a substitute for someone else, very often the white moonlight. Browse
• 情有独钟 · Devoted Love. One lead only ever has eyes for the other. One of JJWXC's most common tags, on about 383,000 books. Browse
• 天作之合 · Destined Pairing. "A match made by heaven". About 150,000 on JJWXC. Browse
• 万人迷 and 团宠 · Beloved by All. Everyone adores the lead. 万人迷 leans romantic, everyone wants them, and 团宠 leans familial, the whole family or team dotes on them. Close enough that both share the label. Browse
• 甜文 and 虐文 · Sweet Story and Angst. The tone warning. 甜 is sweet, 虐 is to torment, and a 虐文 will hurt on purpose. On JJWXC about 387,000 books are tagged sweet and about 145,000 angst. HE and BE are Happy Ending and Bad Ending, and plenty of readers check them before chapter one. Sweet · Angst

Premise tropes

• 快穿 · Quick Transmigration. The lead hops through a run of worlds, often other novels, finishing a task in each before moving on. Not "wear quickly", which is what a machine makes of 快 plus 穿. About 60,000 on JJWXC and 31,000 on Fanqie. Browse
• 穿书 · Transmigrated Into Book. The lead wakes up inside a novel, usually one they've read. About 73,000 on JJWXC. Browse
• 女配 · Supporting Female Lead. The lead is, or becomes, the side character: the rival, the villainess, the one the original plot throws away. Its pair 男配 is Supporting Male Lead. Browse
• 炮灰 · Cannon Fodder. The lead is a throwaway character fated to die early, and refuses. Browse
• 无限流 · Infinite Flow. The lead gets pulled through a series of deadly scenarios, game-like instances, horror films, dungeons, and has to survive each one. Infinite Flow is the established fan term. It turns up on all four platforms. Browse
• 规则怪谈 · Rule-based Horror. "Follow these rules or die" horror, the creepy rule lists that went viral. About 17,900 on Fanqie. Browse
• 迪化 · Misunderstanding Comedy. Everyone around the lead over-reads their most ordinary actions as genius or proof of hidden power, and the lead has no idea. It's not the old name for Urumqi, whatever a machine translator tells you. Browse
• 马甲 · Secret Identity. The lead has hidden identities, 马甲 or "vests", and the fun is watching them come off one by one. Browse
• 女尊 · Female-Dominant World. A world where women hold the power. About 15,600 on JJWXC. Browse

Setting and tone

• 种田 · Slice-of-Life Farming. Literally "farming", but really low-stakes building of a good life: fields, a shop, a family. Browse
• 基建 · Base Building. Building a town, territory or base up from nothing. Browse
• 年代文 · Retro Era. Set in China's recent past, usually the 1960s to the 80s, heavy on period detail. Browse
• 末世 · Apocalypse and 星际 · Interstellar. Plain enough in English, which is the point. Apocalypse · Interstellar
• 沙雕 · Absurd Comedy. Internet slang for a goofball, and a polite stand-in for a much ruder word. A 沙雕 novel is proudly silly. About 34,400 on JJWXC. Browse
• 群像 · Ensemble Cast. Lots of point-of-view characters and no single lead. Browse
• 娱乐圈 · Showbiz. Actors, idols and the entertainment industry. Browse
• 综漫 · Anime Crossover. Fan fiction that crosses several anime at once. Browse
• 直播 · Livestream. The story runs through a livestream, usually with the chat reacting. Browse

The rules we followed (steal them)

1. Use the fandom's word when it has one. Danmei, Omegaverse, Infinite Flow, Quick Transmigration, Face-slapping. A reader searching in English types those, not a fresh translation.
2. Keep the pinyin when English has nothing, and gloss it once. Danmei and baihe are better known than any English phrase for them, so pair them with BL and GL where it helps.
3. Never translate an idiom tag character by character. 追妻火葬场 isn't about a crematorium and 快穿 isn't about clothes. Translate the trope, not the words.
4. One Chinese term, one English label. If 女配 is Supporting Female Lead in one place, it's that everywhere, and its pair 男配 matches. Readers learn a label once.
5. Let synonyms share a label. 种田 and 种田文 are both Slice-of-Life Farming, and 同人 and 衍生 are both Fanfiction. Two labels for one idea just split the search in half.

Where the Chinese still wins

The labels are curated by hand. Book titles, synopses and pen names are machine translated, and they're now being redone with GPT-6 Luna and a glossary built on the same rules: fandom names the fandom uses, one English form per term, slang translated as the trope rather than the words. So 魔道祖师 reads Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and 天官赐福 reads Heaven Official's Blessing. How the retranslation works. It's still machine translation, which is why the Chinese sits next to everything on the site. If an English title reads strangely, trust the Chinese.

Start browsing: JJWXC, Fanqie or Qidian. If JJWXC is new to you, its numbers are explained here.