Written by Linshan Jiang.
Image credit: Metoo image by Lum3n.com / Wikimedia Commons, license CC0 1.0.
This is by far the hardest review to write, not because I have too little to say but because I have too much. The discussion of this novel should not be a monologue by myself but a polyphony of multiple readers. Go to Google. Go to Facebook. Go to Weibo. Go to Douban. Read everyone’s comments on the novel, think about them, act for yourself, and help others.
But this is my review. I have read and taught Lin Yi-Han’s Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise since the publication of the simplified Chinese version in February 2018. As a story of a teacher raping his underaged female student as well as domestic violence, I have endured the self-torture of returning to the crime scenes many times. As always, it is not an easy read. To write this review, I reread the whole novel again. I have to stop multiple times to breathe and then come back to the novel. This said, I still remember the first time I read the book in March 2018 in my little dorm; I was crying from beginning to end. I finished it within a day and started to recommend this novel to everyone around me, cautioning them that it is an emotionally challenging read. I also wrote about this book on my Douban account on March 8, 2018:
“Reading this novel makes me realise what I am researching and why I am focusing on this particular topic. Because I can only write, and this is the only capability I have. Compared to all the happy subjects in the world, what I really should do is to help those who cannot speak for themselves and those who have already spoken up but never be heard. I can only do so much, and I feel helpless. Despite all this, I can only persist in doing this research.”
My research partly focuses on the sexual violence of World War II, especially in the Asia-Pacific context. The specific context of the war seems to justify why sexual violence is rampant. However, Lin Yi-Han proposed in an interview by saying that “the largest massacre in human history is the kind of rape that happened to Fang Si-Chi” (人類歷史上最大規模的屠殺，是房思琪式的強暴). The kind of sexual violence is so daily, so common that everyone knows but minimises its gravity. Many scholars have pointed out that this circumstance is deeply entrenched within the Confucian patriarchal system of East Asian society, the universal rape culture of victim-blaming, and public indifference. In Chinese, we call a “survivor” (倖存者), meaning “lucky enough to live,” but what does this “lucky” even mean and what does “living” even mean after sexual violence?
After experiencing sexual violence, Lin Yi-Han wrote this novel, which is based on her own story. In the interview, she emphasised the disgrace of this writing because it is not beautiful in the conventional sense of literary aesthetics, as well as the uselessness of writing because she still had to struggle to live. However, she experiments with language and meaning-making by distorting traditional literary expressions and stating the blunt process of rape. One of the most typical parts is how the Confucian guiding principles of being “gentle, kind, courteous, restrained, and modest” (溫良恭儉讓), often murmured by the perpetrator Lee Guo-Hua in the story, are distorted by the protagonist Fang Si-Chi as “The bodily fluids were warm; sprouts and weeds of energy; menarche to be congratulated; condoms saved—life was given” (See the English translation by Jenna Tang, p.214 and the 2024 simplified Chinese version, p.203: 溫暖的是體液，良莠的是體力，恭喜的是初血，儉省的是保險套，讓步的是人生). The protagonist’s interpretation of Confucian principles reflects what the perpetrator has done to her and what she must endure. She has learned a lot about Chinese and foreign classics, which can be deeply patriarchal, but she manages to appropriate the language for her own use, even though she might have done them without realising it.
Patriarchy is so overwhelming in the whole story, including the perpetration and the ignorance among individuals and the larger society. Amid this toxic atmosphere, the most precious part of the novel is the female friendship between the protagonist, her soulmate Liu Yi-Ting, and their neighbour Hsu Iwen. In the interview, author Lin Yi-Han mentioned that Yi-Ting and Iwen are paired with the protagonist, with Yi-Ting being the one who the perpetrator does not destroy and Iwen being the one who might be the grown-up version of the protagonist. However, the protagonist can be neither Yi-Ting nor Iwen because of the violation. Several scenes in the novel suggest that the protagonist could be saved, but due to the lack of sex education and understanding of what love actually is, Yi-Ting turns against Si-Chi when Si-Chi reveals her relationship with the perpetrator. Iwen, on the other hand, is depicted in a few scenes where she and Si-Chi are alone, but Si-Chi, noticing Iwen’s suffering from domestic violence, feels too overwhelmed to share her own story. Iwen also hesitates because she is dealing with her own trauma. This shared understanding and connection among these two women is vulnerable and shaky, ultimately failing Si-Chi. However, after Si-Chi becomes mentally ill, Yi-Ting discovers the hidden secrets through Si-Chi’s diary, the so-called “evil or dark side of the world,” and shares it with Iwen. Although the author does not consider her novel a book of accusation or testimony, I find the most powerful statement by the character Iwen, who tells Yi-Ting:
“You can write everything down. But, writing isn’t for salvation, sublimation, or purification. Even though you’re only eighteen years old, even though you have a choice, if your fury is always present, that’s not because you’re not charitable, kind, and empathetic enough. Everything has its reasons; even rape and contaminating others have their own psychological and sociological excuses. In this world, being raped and humiliated doesn’t need reason. You have a choice; think of it like synonyms—you can let it go, step over it, and walk out of it. But you can also remember that it’s not that you weren’t forgiving enough, but that no one should ever be treated this way. Si-Chi wrote everything down before ever knowing her end. She doesn’t even know that she is gone. But her diary is so clearheaded; she has helped so many people—people like me—who couldn’t accept all this to learn acceptance. Yi-Ting, I ask you to please never deny you’re a survivor, the twin who continued to live. Whenever I visit Si-Chi and read to her, I don’t know why I keep thinking about the scented candles in my house: the tears from those fat, white candles always reminded me of the word incontinence. Then I’d think, Si-Chi, she has really loved before. Her love simply lost control. Tolerance isn’t a virtue, and taking tolerance as a virtue is a way this pretentious world tries to maintain its depraved sense of discipline. Rage is a virtue. Yi-Ting, you can write a book about rage. Think about it: your readers will be so lucky to read what you write. They won’t even need to experience anything to learn this world has a dark side” (See the English translation, pp. 230-232. Emphases added by the translator.).
「你可以把一切寫下來，但是，寫，不是為了救贖，不是昇華，不是淨化。雖然你才十八歲，雖然你有選擇，但是如果你永遠感到憤怒，那不是你不夠仁慈，不夠善良，不富同理心，什麼人都有點理由，連姦污別人的人都有心理學、社會學上的理由，世界上只有被姦污是不需要理由的。你有選擇──像人們常講的那些動詞──你可以放下，跨出去，走出來，但是你也可以牢牢記著，不是你不寬容，而是世界上沒有人應該被這樣對待。思琪是在不知道自己的結局的情況下寫下這些，她不知道自己現在已經沒有了，可是，她的日記又如此清醒，像是她已經替所有不能接受的人——比如我——接受了這一切。怡婷，我請你永遠不要否認你是倖存者，你是雙胞胎裡活下來的那一個。每次去找思琪，唸書給她聽，我不知道為什麼總是想到家裡的香氛蠟燭，白胖帶淚的蠟燭總是讓我想到那個詞——尿失禁，這時候我就會想，思琪，她真的愛過，她的愛只是失禁了。忍耐不是美德，把忍耐當成美德是這個偽善的世界維持它扭曲的秩序的方式，生氣才是美德。怡婷，你可以寫一本生氣的書，你想想，能看到你的書的人是多麼幸運，他們不用接觸，就可以看到世界的背面。」(See the 2024 simplified Chinese version, pp. 221-222)
“Rage is a virtue.” “Write a book about rage.” This is the most powerful message I learned from Lin Yi-Han’s novel. As Audre Lorde once wrote in “The Use of Anger” in response to racism:
“Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives.”
Lin Yi-Han’s novel may not be the best sourcebook for people to learn how to defend themselves against sexual violence, but a beautiful and powerful testimony against one of the cruellest crimes in this world. It fills me with anger. It fills me with the strongest urge to remember, to never forget, and to act. My action is to keep teaching this novel and let more people know about it. And, hopefully, one day, I will be daring enough to call out the harassers. As one of the most iconic #MeToo novels in the Chinese-speaking world, Lin Yi-Han and Fang Si-Chi have inspired many other survivors to fight for themselves and speak for themselves in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan since the novel’s publication in Taiwan in February 2017. With the English translation coming out in May 2024, I long for the anger to spread as far as it can be.
Linshan Jiang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. Her research interests include modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies. Her primary research project focuses on female writers’ war experiences and memories of the Asia-Pacific War, entitled Women Writing War Memories.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘The #MeToo Movement One Year On.’
Taiwan Insight 
