Chinese-language platform forced to close over links to teacher accused of rape in Lin Yi-han case
- Authorities in Fuzhou step in after social media users see name of tutor investigated after writer’s suicide in 2017 being used by education company
- Lin took her life soon after the publication of her novel about a young girl being seduced and raped by her teacher
Education authorities in southeast China have ordered the closure of an online Chinese-language learning platform over its links to a Taiwanese schoolteacher once accused of raping novelist Lin Yi-han, who took her own life at the age of 26 in 2017.
Soon after her death, Lin’s parents accused Chen Kuo-hsing, a Chinese-language teacher at a cram school in Taiwan of sexually abusing their daughter when she was at high school.
The allegations were driven by the content of Lin’s novel, Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise, which tells the story of a teenage girl who is seduced and raped by a middle-aged teacher at a cram school, and which Lin’s parents said was autobiographical.
Although Chen admitted to having had an affair with Lin after she had left school, he denied ever raping her. An investigation was launched, but prosecutors concluded they did not have enough evidence to proceed with a case against Chen.
The latest controversy emerged over the weekend when a social media user posted a message saying Chen, using an alter ego, was the man behind “Chen Yi’s Chinese Language Class”, an online programme presented by E-Fly Foreign Language Training School in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province.
The post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service, sparked widespread condemnation, with more than 100,000 people forwarding, liking or commenting on it.