In January, a 23-year-old from Guangxi took her own life. While going through her belongings, her three cousins discovered screenshots of private messages between her and her high school physics teacher, Tang Yuwen, along with photos of her handwritten diaries. They were devastated to learn that she had been coerced into a relationship with Tang while she was still underage.

On February 10, her cousins published this evidence online. As the public learned more details, many noted that the 22-year-old’s diary contained mentions of the novel Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, written by Lin Yi-Han, who also took her own life. Their stories were strikingly similar.

Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise is inspired by Lin’s personal experiences. A small publishing house in Taiwan first published it in 2017, and it became an immediate hit—not only in sales, going into its fifth print within two months, but also in social impact, becoming an integral part of the #MeToo movement on the island. The simplified Chinese version was published in the Chinese mainland the following year and sold more than one million copies by 2020. In May 2024, seven years after Lin’s death, the book was finally made available in English.

In the novel, the titular character, a teenager with a passion for literature, is emotionally abused and repeatedly raped by Lee Guo-Hua, her neighbor and Chinese teacher at a cram school, who approaches Si-Chi under the pretense of free private tutoring when she was 13. To make sense of what’s happening to her, Si-Chi convinces herself that she is in a romantic relationship with Lee, a married man 37 years her senior, and that they loved each other until she couldn’t pretend any longer. Her dissociation, a subconscious attempt to protect herself from the harsh reality and a symptom of her long-time depression, becomes so severe that she turns into “that girl who read too much and went crazy” in the neighborhood gossip, while the perpetrator Lee moved on to the next young girl.

The original Chinese text is so blunt and explicit that some readers, already aware of Lin’s life story, find it difficult to continue reading. The English translation is mostly true to the original text, though some wording gets softened. For example, “史诗般的诱奸” is translated as “the seduction of the epics,” which, while literally accurate, drops a key word from the original—the character 奸 (jiān), which means rape.

Still, the essence of the original text remains intact. Through the translation of Jenna Tang, the hubris of a serial child molester is laid bare. Watching him normalize and romanticize his relationships with multiple young girls—intentionally twisting the meanings of classic literary works, which Si-Chi holds dear, and telling the girls that their beauty is their fault—is heartbreaking.

One of the last straws that eventually breaks Si-Chi is when Lee says his favorite thing about her during their “love making” is “Your timidity and you faintly coming out of breath (娇喘微微),” a phrase used to praise the delicate beauty of Lin Daiyu from Dream of the Red Chamber. When pressed on whether this is what all these classics meant to him, Lee immediately replies, “Dream of the Red Chamber, The Songs of Chu, The Records of the Grand Historian, and Zhuangzi all mean this [sex] to me.”

Literary references, especially to ancient Chinese texts like this, are pervasive throughout the book. It can, at times, be hard for someone not familiar with the language and culture to immediately grasp, but the point the author Lin tries to make through these references is hard to miss. “What truly pains me the most in this entire story is how someone who truly believes in the Chinese language could betray this vast and rich cultural context that has existed for over 5,000 years,” Lin said in an interview in April 2017, eight days before her suicide. “We believed that the so-called ‘true intellectual’ should be shaped and refined through countless trials, but he ultimately ends up reduced to nothing more than the pursuit of physical desires.”

Si-Chi’s internal struggle with guilt and her own identity is also painstakingly detailed in the novel. She describes how terribly alone she feels during the five years of abuse and how everyone in her life fails to protect her from the pain and harm. When she eventually breaks down, her parents send her to a mental health center and move out of their building in fear of losing face in front of their neighbors.

It is precisely this societal mindset that emboldens real-life predators. As Lin writes, “Lee Guo-Hua discovered that there would always be young girls who supported, admired, and loved him. He discovered that social taboos about sex were all too convenient for him. After he raped a girl, the whole world would point at her and tell her that it was her own fault. And then this girl would actually think it was her fault. A sense of guilt would chase her back to him…The final thing that had made Lee Guo-Hua take this step with determination was Fang Si-Chi’s self-esteem. Such an exquisite child would never talk about it with anyone. That would be too filthy.”

In the aforementioned interview, Lin said, “I am certain that things like this would continue to happen, both in Taiwan and around the world. Even now, at this very moment, they are still happening… What I set out to do was not literary reportage—I had neither the intention nor the ability to change the reality of society.”

Lin’s tutor, Chen Guoxing, who the character Lee is allegedly based on, saw the criminal case against him dropped. He only admitted to having an extramarital affair with Lin after she turned 18. Prosecutors repeatedly requested Lin’s diaries, notes, and computer files during their investigation, but the family refused to provide them. Lin’s parents chose not to file a civil suit. The English version of the book has also removed the dedication page in the Chinese versions that reads “For ‘the younger sister who awaits an angel,’ and B [allegedly referring to Lin’s husband]. Based on a true story.” On the copyright page of the English version, the publisher notes that this is “a work of fiction” and “any resemblance to actual events…or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.”

While Lin said she couldn’t change reality, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise has made a difference in social discourse. Victims of abuse have felt encouraged to speak up and seek justice. And on the fourth week after Lin’s death, authorities passed laws mandating cram school teachers use their real names and provide a clean criminal record showing no history of sexual offenses.

The cousins of the 23-year-old from Guangxi are speaking up and getting their voices heard. Their case encouraged another young girl from a Nanning high school, also in Guangxi, to report her married physics teacher surnamed Zheng to authorities. Zheng has been expelled pending police investigation.

All this is a useful reminder that while Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise is classified as fiction, for Lin and many others, the story is all too real.