By Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, written by Taiwanese author Lin Yi-Han and translated by Jenna Tang, is an intense and uncomfortable read.
The story is full of pain and trauma, and is said to be of an autobiographical nature.
It is widely recognised as the most influential book of Taiwan’s #MeToo movement.
As Lin described in an interview eight days before her death by suicide at the age of 26 in 2017, the story can be summarised in one “direct and brutal” sentence:
“Over many years, a teacher used the power of his position to seduce, rape and sexually abuse female students.”
And that is what happens to 13-year-old Fang Si-Chi, who loves reading and learning, and whose parents are rich and strict yet unsuspecting of all figures of authority.
When a revered literature teacher offers private tutoring for free, Si-Chi’s parents happily accept.
After all, he is a long-term resident in their upscale apartment complex.
Si-Chi’s story is a harrowing account of sexual violence and sexual grooming, but it is also a fierce attack at the power structures that allow it to continue happening.
One of the most haunting paragraphs in the book is from the teacher and serial predator himself:
“Lee Guo-Hua 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 the girl would actually think it was her fault. A sense of guilt would chase her back to him.”
Equally chilling is the scene when Si-Chi informs her mother that “a student in her school” is having a relationship with a teacher. Her mother quickly passes a judgement: “Already a seductress at such a young age.”
When Cookie, another girl in the story, reveals what Teacher Lee has done to her, she is immediately dumped by her boyfriend: “How can I still be with you when you’ve been dirtied?”
When Hsiao-Chi, yet another girl in the story, tries to expose Teacher Lee online, she herself is condemned: “So how much money did you take from him?” “Homewreckers should go to hell.”
“That teacher’s wife should be pitied.”
And when Si-Chi’s literary mentor I-Wen gets married, she cannot know that one day her beloved husband will wake up from his drunkenness to find himself in a pool of her blood.
“He thought about the night before, when he came back home and kicked I-Wen fiercely.”
As translator Tang explains: “The idea of sexual grooming…is central to what this novel wants to bring to our attention. It is the idea of a monster trying to make sense of the world for those who didn’t understand what situation they were in, and therefore, through its crooked logic, that monster convinces its audience that certain sentiments, certain emotions, exist for a reason.”
Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise is Lin’s only novel. Trigger warning.
