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One blogger with the username Pingping Anan Yongfu recounted her experience: “I’ll never forget being dragged away in front of everyone, stripped for the examination, my heart was pounding, I was scared to death.” Her since-deleted account was just one of many on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The writers first posted their work on a Taiwan-based platform called Haitang Literature City, better known for danmei stories — stories of romantic or sexual relationships between men, often in fantasy or historical settings.
These writers are being charged under China’s pornography law for “creating and distributing pornography.” They could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison if found guilty. Laws that explicitly criminalize gay erotica while treating heterosexual work with more leniency — even when sexually explicit works by famous Chinese authors are widely available — have ensured that there is almost no gay erotic content in the public domain within the country.
Fear, Shame, and Social Fallout
Detained writers detailed the emotional and social cost in numerous accounts. One woman described how she had been yanked out of college class by police in front of her classmates, and then searched in her dorm. “I earned my way word for word,” she wrote. “But people were all over me like I’d stolen it.”
Another young writer, now just 20, wrote, “I have done a whole lot of bad shit for being so young.” A third wrote, “I am being haunted by every word I ever wrote.”
Dozens of lawyers volunteered free legal help in response to online confessions. Paging through the decisions, the criticism continued: Some legal scholars said that the line of reasoning in one decision led them to worry that anything seen 5,000 times can be categorized as “distribution” under anti-obscenity laws — a low threshold for criminalization.
Hashtags including #HaitangAuthorsArrested briefly went viral, drawing over 30 million views before they were censored. Legal notifications, user accounts, and whole news stories are now gone from public sight.
The investigation, which is continuing, is thought to come under the authority of the police in Lanzhou, but some arrests have taken place in cities well beyond their jurisdiction. Some authors say they have been forced to fly to Lanzhou at their own expense to be interrogated — when their royalties barely covered the cost of travel.
The Ascendance and Perils of Danmei Fiction
Danmei, which takes its name after the contraction of a phonetically transcribed form of “Chinese Manhua” has been an integral part of Chinese internet culture since the 1990s, influenced by Japanese boys’ love of manga. While danmei itself is focused on men-born men, however, danmei space provides an area for female authors to explore themes of vulnerability, emotional depth, and even gender role reversal (all of which are not only subversive but taboo in traditional Chinese society).
One writer suggested that danmei also becomes an escape from the burden of societal gender norms IRL. “In these stories, men could be pregnant, and they can be sensitive. It “takes me out of the fear of real-world things that are destructive in a relationship.”
Some danmei do have extreme or violent content, but the community feels that age-restricted material is something that all adult content in China deals with. Many of the authors discovered the genre while still under 18 years old, as young as 11.
The government’s recent push is viewed by experts as part of a wider effort to promote traditional family values. In an era of declining marriage and birth rates, the authorities see danmei as encouraging women from motherhood.
An author was jailed for 10 years in 2018 for selling 7,000 copies of her danmei novel. Another celebrated author was sentenced to just under five years last year after receiving 1.85 million yuan for her writing.
The most recent crackdown has left writers afraid that their creative careers are over. One author had her 300,000 views and 4,000 yuan in royalties used as evidence against her.
Still, even at this risk, some writers remain unrepentant. A handle by the name of Sijin de Sijin tweeted on Thursday: “If I were to go back, I’d still have had written. And I will keep writing.” “I hope that the law sees past the letters to the girl who skipped meals to save money, who sold her hair to buy a pen, who believed that her mind could change not only her destiny, but also that of the country she loves,” she added.
Danmei has not only published major adaptations into film and TV shows in China and a fan base. For now, though, its creators confront a sobering reality — the revenge of fiction in real-life punishment.
