Nearly 18 months ago, a 26-year-old peasant woman from Shaanxi started posting her photos and lovelorn prose on the bulletin boards of Peking and Tsinghua university websites.
'Sister Furong' (lotus), as she is affectionately known, has since become one of the mainland's most famous online celebrities, with millions of university students and other young people swapping her photos and keeping track of her latest developments.
The mainstream media finally caught up earlier this year when Sister Lotus made it to the front pages of many serious news weeklies and was the subject of commentaries and editorials even in such staid newspapers as the China Youth Daily.
It is a pity her story has not piqued the interest of the overseas media, which is always keen to track social and cultural changes taking place on the mainland. Sister Lotus' rise to stardom should also be an interesting footnote to anyone studying the power of the internet, particularly in a communist country where traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers are tightly controlled by the government.
The woman, whose real name is Shi Hengxia, began to post photos of herself in various poses - sometimes scantily clad - on the internet bulletin boards at the end of 2003.
At first, it appeared to be no more than a brazen attempt to win 15 minutes of fame. Going by her photos, Sister Lotus is an average-looking woman seen in some over-the-top poses. But she proved to be an instant hit, with reports saying thousands of top-flight Tsinghua and Peking students were waiting online for her to post new photos. Sociologists and the official media are still at a loss as to why she has become an iconic figure to millions of young Chinese.
One Tsinghua university student said looking at her photos and talking about her had helped ease the dreariness of campus life.