What's It About?

Multimillionaire director Zhang Yuwen has it all--fame, fortune, and a successful career. But what he really craves is to create a novel he can call true art. Fueled by this passion, he abandons the film industry to pursue writing full-time, only to hit an unexpected roadblock: his characters feel flat and inauthentic. The problem? Zhang Yuwen has spent most of his life as a loner with little real-world interactions.

As a single gay man with a luxurious yet empty villa, Zhang Yuwen comes up with a solution: rent rooms to other gay men and use them as inspiration! Enter his four new roommates: Yan Jun, a single father; Chen Hong, a fitness coach; Zheng Weize, a shy young livestreamer; and Chang Jinxing, a playboy and aspiring photographer--all unique men and perfect subjects for Zhang Yuwen to study. But, as Zhang Yuwen dives deeper into their lives, one question remains: can these five very different men manage to coexist long enough for him to finish his masterpiece? Or will the chaos of living together become the real story?

Riverbay Road Men's Dormitory has story by Fei Tian Ye Xiang and art by Tamtam, with English translation by Xia. Published by Seven Seas (April 15, 2025). Rated T+.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

More than any other danmei novel I've read from Seven Seas, Riverbay Road Men's Dormitory feels like a slice-of-life story. There's no supernatural element, no mystery to be solved, just six men trying to figure out life while five of them share a house. Zhang Yuwen, the arguable main protagonist, decides to open his home to boarders as a way to broaden his social horizons. A successful director, he's trying to become a novelist but keeps being turned away with statements about how his stories lack a human element and feel stilted and staged. Since he's essentially orphaned and isn't currently dating, he figures that pretending he's subletting rooms in his house (so as not to let on how wealthy he actually is) is the best way to interact with more people. And because he doesn't want to have to hide anything, he restricts his boarders to other gay men.

The set up out of the way, the story follows the interactions of Zhang Yuwen, his boarders, and Huo Sichen, another man the group befriends. Everyone's got their own circumstances – Yan Jun is raising his orphaned infant niece Xiao-Qi, Zheng Weize is a live streaming trying to make ends meet, Chen Hong is a trainer whose gym just went under – and those circumstances influence their relationships with the world and each other. There's a strong element of found family in the book, and that's probably the best part of it. Despite Yan Jun's fears about what people will think if they realize that he's Xiao-Qi's sole guardian, everyone embraces the baby, and when she comes down with a fever, everyone bands together to help him care for her. Zheng Weize struggles with feeling like his body's the only good thing about him, but interactions with the others help him to realize that that's not true. Not everyone gets along immediately, but the slow growth towards family is a rewarding throughline.

Of course, “family” in this case also means splitting off into romantic pairings eventually, and the main romance is a mild love triangle between Huo Sichen, Zhang Yuwen, and Yan Jun. That's mostly unresolved at the end of the book – there's a second volume forthcoming – but that doesn't mean that things don't get racy towards the end. There's no penetrative sex, but I'd still say that there are sex scenes. That also leads to the biggest issue I have with the book, which is a weird preoccupation with firm “top” and “bottom” roles and a bit of biphobia thrown in for good measure. If there's going to be a sticking point for readers, these will be it.

But if you can overlook or get past that (and I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't; there were some rough patches for me as a reader), this is a nice change from most of the danmei novels we get in English. It's low-key and gentle, and that's pretty great.