Ep. 21: Jenna Tang on Taiwan’s MeToo Movement

We talked to the translator of a novel that helped launch #MeToo in Taiwan, about why both the movement and the book are having a second wind.

The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire, a digital business platform that also publishes The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to editor[at]chinabooksreview.com.

Transcript

Sometimes a book really can change the world around it, when the impact of its publication shifts the culture and the conversation too dramatically to ignore. That was the case with Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise, a Taiwanese novel which helped spark Taiwan's MeToo movement when it was published in 2017. The book tells the story of a teenage girl, Fang Si-Chi, who was groomed by her cram school literature teacher Lee Guo-hua, who lives in the same building as her. It's very likely based on aspects of the real experiences of the author Lin Yi-Han, who took her own life just months after the book came out.

Our guest this month is the book's translator, Jenna Tang, a Taiwanese writer and translator whose work is published in The Paris Review, Lit Hub, McSweeneys and elsewhere. We were delighted to be joined by Jenna at Asia Society in New York to tell us about the novel, its impact in Taiwan and how she came to translate the book into English.

Alec Ash: So Jenna, thank you so much for coming in today. This book, Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise, came out in English last year. But the original, 房思琪的初戀樂園, was published in Taiwan in February 2017. As I mentioned, the author Lin Yi-Han died by suicide in April of that year, at the age of 26. Could you just walk us through the context around this book? What do we know about Lin Yi-Han's story and what was the national conversation that it sparked after its publication and her death?

Jenna Tang: Yeah. First of all, thank you for having me here. And yes, this book was first published in traditional Chinese in 2017 in February. And after that it was translated into multiple other languages from East Asia including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and so many more. From what I know it has been translated to Polish, also soon Spanish and German.

So what happened back then? I don't feel like I am in full position to speak her own stories, because I'm not her. But, I would talk a little bit about my observation of the mainstream media back then. In 2017, when that book was published, I was actually in France doing my translation studies. And so I wasn't really in Taiwan to experience all the media attention about this book and all that. It wasn't until August, that same year that I went back to Taiwan, but the book was still being very vigorously talked about. There's a lot of violation of privacy for the author and her family instead of talking about the actual topics, like sexual violence of minors or sexual violence that could happen in educational settings in Taiwan. Instead of talking more about that, there was a lot of public outrage about who is actually the predator and where he is. And, if the accusation and the legal trial was going to carry through…there was a lot of that in the society.

And there was a name which was dug up, wasn't there, but as, as I understand it, no charges were formally made for lack of evidence or they were dropped?

Yeah, it was let go of. And somehow it didn't carry all the way through. So the predator to this day is still out there in the world. And so part of me was outraged. Um, and I didn't think about translating this book right away just because I was still a student and I was still preparing to apply for a master's program back then. But when I was in the train in Paris, I was browsing through a list of books that were popular back in Taiwan that were most often discussed back then. And so this book came into my radar. at a time and when I went back to Taiwan, I finished reading this book. It has been with me in some way, because it reminds me of how close I could be, with those kind of settings. And during the Me Too movement in 2023 in Taiwan, I saw my French teacher being accused of having raped 6 to 7 women in Taiwan.

And that happened, I don't know how the timespan worked, but the first time I met him I was 15. Nothing really happened to me back then, but I remember a lot of college girls in my French class, it was a small group class, and they somehow disappeared and I didn't know why. Um, and I was too young to know that could be something that could happen around me.

And do you think that the publication of this book did succeed in opening up that conversation, allowing that conversation to happen and what actually changed? I mean, I think there was a new law that cram school teachers have to register with their legal names, but has anything actually changed?

Yeah, so the law that you just mentioned is called the Law of After School and Continuing Education Number Nine, was being amended. That back in time, any cram school teachers, whether they're Taiwanese or international, they didn't have to register with their legal full name. And so they could just teach in the cram school system, without having their full legal information.

But after that law was amended, everyone has to provide like all their legal information, um, for safety and that was one of the biggest change this book has somehow made.

Mm-hmm. As you mentioned, there's been a new surge, a fresh wave of Me Too accusations in Taiwan over the last few years beginning in 2023, in part inspired by this Netflix drama series, Wave Makers, and then bleeding into, uh, campaign accusations, in the DPP. Why is it that the Me Too movement in Taiwan, which, perhaps was sparked with this book, sort of fizzled out and only had this resurgence more recently, and what's the state of the movement now?

Yeah. So, a lot of people asked if this book has sparked the Me Too movement right away in Taiwan. It actually didn't get picked up right away. There was the October 2017 American, Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein Me Too movement happening across social media and across many parts of the world. But, from my observation, the Me Too movement in different countries or different cultures get picked up very differently in a different timing. So in Taiwan's case, the 2017 publication didn't just spark Me Too movement just like that. However, in 2023, starting in May when the presidential elections, political campaigns from different political parties started, there were a series of sexual harassment incidents being exposed in the mass media in Taiwan. And that's when things started happening, a lot of name droppings from all walks of life. And so Taiwan is such a small island that from the north to the south, if we take a train that's just about two hours to arrive.

And so at the same time, like there are so many different industries like film, education, art, and so many more that are in some ways connected to political parties, in different ways. These things started to spread like wildfire. And that series of Me Too movement was the first, time that someone who identified as non-female, um, talked about their experiences being sexually harassed. And there were a couple more coming up. The word “Me Too,” in Taiwan is somewhat even to this stage used as a verb; that so and so is “me too-ed” or so and so “got me too-ed.” And somewhat the sexual harassment accusation or sexual violence accusation itself can also be used as political tools.

And so these accusations aren't just fizzling out. I mean in, some other Asian countries and also in China, there's, been Me Too accusations, which went nowhere, which just got swept under the rug. Taiwan is often held up as a more liberal country–you know, gay marriage is legal in Taiwan–for issues of sexual harassment and abuse, is it also more likely to have justice for the victims than perhaps other countries?

I'm not sure about other cases. So based on my touring experiences, I have been feeling rather disappointed in how Taiwan received this book. Because I feel like when I brought this book out in English, all that everyone asked me, the majority, unless we're talking about very specific communities who actually care about gender topics or care about LGBTQ+ topics, that they might ask more profound questions, or questions about how do we approach education or how do we build a safe place in educational institutions, it has to be very specific communities. But day-to-day life, the general public–a lot of people don't know what the Me Too movement is, and a lot of people are very deeply affected by the mainstream media. And our news can be as superficial as: “This building caught on fire this afternoon,” or “This actress is having this scandal going on.” Um, and so because of the mass consumption of media contents, both on TV and on the internet, social media and so on, there are just so many voices and sometimes people don't know which one to believe and what is actually reliable.

So many people are, somewhat, I don’t know if I can say emotionally manipulated, but somehow they're being deeply affected by the contents in social media and mainstream media and someplace that aren't necessarily accurate or true. So I feel like when I brought this book back to Taiwan, I'm being affected by so many more voices that aren’t always speaking to the truth and that makes things even more complicated. Um, versus when I brought this book to China, even though I've only been to one city to present this book, and that was in a university…But somehow I was having this conversation that, um, somehow the mass media didn't actually affect people who care about feminism and who care about gender topics in China because people know that they wouldn't believe the mainstream media there. And therefore, those conversations like this were affected in very different ways than how media affect Taiwanese audiences in Taiwan.

Has this book come out in mainland China at all, or was that not possible?

Um, yeah, this book came out in 2018 in China from a publisher called Motie. And it has been reprinted more than five times, I believe, and even in February when I visited China for the first time, bringing this book, I did see a lot of Fan Si-Chi’s First Paradise in simplified Chinese version. And I have been receiving more receptions from Chinese audiences than than many other international audiences. And there, there are a lot of interests, in China, especially the communities that care about feminism and gender topics, that are very eager to talk about this book. The level of popularity in China about this book has really grown to having me touring all across the U.S. and Canada to talk about topics, in the book and also about the translation itself.

Well it’s a universal topic. Let's talk more about the book then. Uh, it's gripping in the true sense of the word in that it takes a hold of you. I mean, we use the phrase a gripping read a lot in the books world, but it's not pleasant to be gripped, to be held like that. But this book really gripped me and I couldn't put it down, to see Fan Si-Chi not only fall into Lee Guo-hua’s grip, which happens very quickly in the novel, but then to slowly fall apart mentally. She starts to forget things, she becomes distant, basically goes insane by the end. So I felt the book was really about the effects of grooming and predation, not just the act of it.

Yeah. this brings us back to the word paradise. The title has “first love paradise.” So why did I translate that word le yuan in Chinese as “paradise?” It can also mean playground or amusement park. But the reason is part of the structure of this novel is based on John Milton's Paradise Lost. And so it makes more sense to put that word in there. And at the same time, I in the process of transition, I feel like the word paradise is also signifying how the survivors, who tell their stories in this novel, how they reimagine their mental health state or how they reimagine their own world after what they have been going through. I feel like paradise is a metaphor that can pretty much render that concept and render what these survivors in the story may be reimagining, their life later.

Right, in the book, there's paradise, then paradise lost, then paradise regained. And it really is. I felt it was that crushing sense of this idealism of, um, Fang Si-Chi and Liu Yi-Ting, the other character. They were 13 years old when they met Teacher Lee. They were both romantics. They liked literature and the title speaks to that seduction. In the translator's note, you write, “for Fang Si-Chi, her grooming became a love paradise. A place that existed only for her and somewhere she would always be destined to return to. It is not just a paradise of love, but a paradise born of a love for literature that speaks deeply from within her.”

So to you, how does literature play a role and the way that Teacher Lee seduces these impressionable young girls with, classical Chinese references and literature and so on, and of gets them in his thrall?

Yeah, there are many, many ways to look at literature in this novel. That there's definitely love for literature, um, but also the author herself is so well read in classical Chinese, and also in contemporary Chinese or Sinophone literature, that she's able to intentionally misuse or misquote or just excerpt some quotes from classical references or from other literature. In many ways, we see. That, um, the main character, Fang Si-Chi, is in love with literature, but in one aspect, she feels like literature is deceiving her, that they're betraying her in some ways. Because of her love for literature, she allows some kind of access for Teacher Lee to groom her. And Teacher Lee as one of the main perpetrators in this novel, he also misuses a lot of literary references from both Western literature and Chinese literature to his own advantage. And so when he was having conversation with Fang Si-Chi, when they spend time alone, I used a lot of italicizing in their conversation, to show that there's perhaps another meaning in what teacher Lee was saying.

And there's a certain logic that works between these two characters and in Fang Si-Chi herself as well. Um, and literature itself is also a way that she's seeking, to heal herself. Perhaps literature is something has found momentary healing in when she has to deal with her mental health issues. And so literature in this novel plays so many different roles. Like it is an object that seems to deceive the survivors, but it is also a tool for perpetrators to use it to their own advantage. It's also something that heals a lot of people and these different dimensions are playing among different characters and how they perceive literature in different circumstances.

Mm-hmm. Her place of escape from the place from which she cannot escape.

Yeah.

How difficult was it for you to translate all of these classical Chinese literature references in, in a way that conveys all of that?

It was, I would say it's really difficult. Um, I first had to research a lot of these references 'cause sometimes they're being excerpted from some Chinese poems or, from other references. Had to find someplace, had to find the full text to see what it originally means and how it's being used in a logic of Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise. So it was a lot of research and the easiest way for a translator to work on that is to just talk to the author, but I couldn't. So that added to the challenge. I had to consult other readers read from Chinese who had read this book to see what are their takes in those parts. And we discuss a lot, just how do you read this part. Sometimes people have unanimous answers with me. And sometimes people have their different perspectives, just how to read different parts of these references. And so I try to gather all these perspectives together and come up with my own or what might make sense to a logic of the narration. It was a lot of work and of course I cannot, there are a lot of things I cannot just speak for Lin Yi-Han. But I try my best in this way to seek out support from my language community.

Let's talk about the more peripheral characters in the book. Liu Yi-Ting is Fang Si-Chi’s friend. She's too young to understand what's happening to Fang Si-Chi. She's even jealous of her relationship with Teacher Lee's “girlfriend” because they both had a crush on him. But, the parents, they're really blind, and their marriage is also an abusive one. What did you take away from a book as a reader in, in terms of these people existing around the edges of abuse?

So, I personally find Fang Si-Chi and Liu Yi-Ting’s friendship very realistic. There, there's so many friendships like that and Liu Yi-Ting being the one left from the twins of souls. And I-wen and Qian Yi-wei were another pair. They're almost like some parallel to Fang Si-Chi’s experiences of being sexually abused, but in very different ways. There's more domestic violence involved in I-wen’s case. A side notice that I spell I-wen’s name as I-wen. Um, and that was very intentional because if I spell it in very standard Roman Pinyin, it can easily be Yi-Wen and that's only one letter of difference between her and Yi-wei. And I didn't want English audiences to confuse these two characters 'cause they're so distinct. And so I wanted to give herself back to her since she has lost a lot of herself, um, along the process of abuse. Um, so I put an “I” for her, in order to distinguish her and in order to give her identity back to her.

That was part of the intention when I translated and how I played with names. And, these parallels, a lot of times, like Fang Si-Chi was spending a long time with I-wen as well. They read literature together. They spend time in the jewelry shop. There was always something they were trying to communicate with one another, but maybe they have communicated or maybe they never communicated, but they could, they could feel it from one another. I-wen’s and Fang Si-Chi’s experiences somehow reflect how sexual violence can take place in different stages of life and how they support one another, and how these kinships become a support system among the community.

But also no one saw what was happening to Si-Chi and I-wen’s own abuse distracted her from asking. There was no support in that sense.

Yeah. and that was part of the end of the story where I-wen was talking about what if she had discovered earlier, what if she was a little less distracted and she could have saved her in some ways. And at the time, the only, the only access, um, for anyone to help Si-Chi was for her to speak up, but she couldn't. Partly because of, that was an experience of grooming and her consent has already been given in some ways, um, without her realizing that maybe she didn't actually want to do it. And that talks about a complication of sexual grooming, that it involves so much of emotional manipulation. And I was sharing with other audiences before, talking about what sexual grooming actually is. And the main thing is about emotional manipulation that makes the survivors give their consent without actually meaning to, or that there were so much complications that involves–for example, there's a series that's called Baby Reindeer from the UK that was talking about an aspiring comedian who hoped to be successful.  And during his pursuit of his career, he was actually groomed by someone who was much more established in the field. But because of his love for comedy and because of his love to further his career, that somehow inadvertently allowed that to happen.

Mm. Lee Guo-hua, the Teacher Lee character. I felt he was the least fleshed out. Partly because he was, he was just a straight monster, and even his interior monologue is a lot about his plan, uh, to abuse Si-Chi and other targets, insulting them and slurring them in his mind. What did you think was, Lin Yi-Han's thinking behind that? Just sort of straight up almost 2D at times, villainous portrayal of Teacher Lee.

Sometimes in literature, that's just my guess that maybe sometimes having enough of violence in the narratives presented to the readers would actually testify what survivors have been going through both mentally and physically in the past. I think part of what the author was trying to do is to use the violence to accentuate the survivor's voice. A lot of people compare this book to Lolita. But the main difference I would say is that Lolita was narrated by Humbert Humbert, who is not a survivor. And for Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise there was a big chunk of paragraph where, uh, the author was playing with the idea of Lolita. That was part of Teacher Lee’s re-imagination of his relationship with these little girls. The author was trying to show that dirty re-imagination of how Lolita is being inserted in this context.

Teacher Lee talks about the, the island of Lolita in the novel. It's directly referenced.

Yeah. Yeah, so overall, I just, I think the Lolita referenced inside the novel itself is a reinterpretation of it, of how this book and how survivors’ voice, interact with how people talk about Lolita, the story itself.

Because it's focused on the survivor's perspective, not the abusers, of course.

Yes.

You write in your translator's note, “translation pulls the translator so near to the story that the process itself is a felt experience.” For you, what was that emotional experience of translating the book, given that what you are inhabiting is so traumatic?

Yeah, that makes me, that process makes me think a lot about my friends who disappeared since I was in childhood and teenage-hood. And that could be because of such a reason. I couldn't really speak to their experiences, but the book itself reminds me of those times and of why they disappeared or why they're no longer near us. And so it's a huge reminder of all these experiences. And when I translated a novel I did an experiment that, uh, there are some prose pieces from Lin Yi-Han that she wrote about how she closed herself in the closet, and cried for, for days or for weeks. And I did this physical experiment of closing myself in the closet to see how, how my translation text would be after I do that. or if there's any emotional impact on myself. I wouldn't recommend it at all. It's horrible. It's claustrophobic and especially having delved myself into the story so deeply, I feel like in some ways I'm always more or less being affected emotionally by the story, especially when I was still translating a novel, I was constantly thinking in a logic of the narration. that sometimes like when I encounter something, like a line in the book just popped into my head. That was very emotionally challenging back at the time, but like, I never regret doing that. Because I think this book means a lot to me, and I'm sure it means a lot to a lot of other readers.

The whole experience of reading the book is very claustrophobic, which is a testament to your skill as a translator. Literature, and the romance of books like this, in a way is what got Fang Si-Chi in trouble in the first place. But do you think that literature in this book can make a real difference to change people's minds and hearts and, and maybe prevent some, any, even one such instance from happening in the future?

Yeah, I think this book definitely opens up a lot of conversation, not just in Taiwan. The book actually had a new edition coming out in traditional Chinese just two months ago in March this year. It added in Lin Yi-Han's wedding speech and her other launch interviews when she first published this book. So there are more, more of her perspectives, being added into the novel itself. for people to open up conversations in Taiwan. And currently there, there is a whole series of talks about feminism, sexual violence, because of that re-edition, published in Taiwan. And I do think even though as small as it sounds, but how do we open up conversations? I find this book compelling in a way that it's able to connect with other sexual violence narratives from around the world. For example, Shiori Ito’s Black Box Cho Nam-Joo’s Kim Ji-young: Born in 1982, and there are so many other books that can be connected to this book. Chanel Miller's Know My Name. And there are so many other books, from Latin America, that is also talking about sexual violence.

What I was trying to do in my tour and in my different talks is to connect this book with other literature from around the world. And I think by opening up the conversation, it's not just talking about sexual violence with a specific topic under the big umbrella term sexual violence. It's also to connect those narratives from around the world to open up more different perspectives and for people to, to find it “normal” to talk about it. That is no longer hindered by, not just censorship, but also cultural taboos. Because in Taiwan, I can really feel like there's a lot of cultural taboo in talking about rape and in talking about sexual violence, that people talk about it saying that it's too sensitive, like it's too much to talk about. But the thing is, the less we talk about it the more it hurts if it ever happened.

Well, it's great that the book is having a second wind and continues to commemorate Lin Yi-Han's memory. Uh, we're delighted to bring more attention to the English translation. In fact, this book was shortlisted for our new book prize in its inaugural year, the Baifang Schell Book Prize, which we administer at China Books Review here at Asia Society. And it was shortlisted for the Award for Outstanding Translated Literature. From Chinese language, along with four other titles, uh, including another book from Taiwan, Taiwan Travelogue, which we talked about at our, uh, book club. Do you think that literature from Taiwan is having a bit of a renaissance?

I think there are definitely more attention, um, about literature from Taiwan, probably because of censorship in China, that there are so many other layers of things to break through for Chinese literature to come into other languages or even to be published in the first place. And I saw that a lot of Chinese authors or like feminist authors like Sheng Keiyi were published, but overseas rather than published originally in China. And of course there are so many other different circumstances. A lot of Hong Kong authors or the Chinese diaspora, if the authors write in Chinese, a lot of them go to Taiwan right now. So there's this whole trend of being published in Taiwan and a lot of other communities from this Chinese speaking world coming to Taiwan for publication. And Taiwan is such a small place, like a lot of different kinds of literature from Taiwan are still rather underrepresented in the English speaking world.

So I think many more books being published year by year. Still not in great numbers 'cause it's difficult to push books out to another language. But I do see that it's slowly getting more attention and that people are interested and curious about what other literature hasn't been translated into, say, English or other major languages from around the world. Um, I hope to see more, but I guess for Taiwanese literature we need to establish a community together to bring these books out and not just…It's great that, um, the Taiwan government is supporting a lot of books to be introduced into other languages, and–

They supported this translation, right?

They supported a tour, and they did support like part of the publication itself. But I hope that there, there will be more voices that support the topics as and it's not just, you know, like throwing money to a book and let it go as far as it can. Um, sometimes it feels more passive. But I hope to have more active conversations for people to engage in. And that are initiated from the government and not just initiated by people who already work in the field.

Well, we hope that too. You are a writer as well as a translator. Uh, can you tell us, are you writing anything right now?

Yeah, I'm currently working on a travel memoir, uh, which I don't know the title of yet. It's going to talk about my experiences traveling across Latin America. Why I started learning Spanish when I used to major in French and I spent a lot of years in English, did my MFA in New York and so on. But I thought the experiences of traveling across Latin America, pursuing my reimaginations of the worldly wonders, like the nature in different parts of Latin America, different countries, and how I find myself and find a connection with the language on my own without any formal education, is something I want to talk about. And also this concept of living in the other side of the world; what does it, what does it look like to live there on my own for a couple of months and to actually witness and see those natural wonders that I've been dreaming about since I was little?

After working on Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise…it was very heavy and a lot of conversations were heavy. I wanted to bring something with a lot of joy and with a lot of celebration of how I love languages and how I love nature, how I love talking to people who live on the other side of the world to potential readers in the future. So it's probably gonna be like an essay collection, slash memoir, still working on it. Um, but I wanna document those very meaningful moments for myself, as someone who really loves traveling and loves literature.

Wonderful. It sounds like San Mao’s stories from the Sahara. Well, we all look very much forward to reading that when it comes out. Thank you so much for coming on the pod.

Thank you so much for hosting.

That was Jenna Tang talking about Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise. There's so much more we didn't get to cover here. So do go buy and read the novel yourself. You can also read a transcript of this conversation at chinabooksreview.com, alongside reviews, essays, excerpts, book lists, and more. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials to not miss a beat. This has been an episode of the China Books podcast. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and drop us a rating if you like. China Books Review is a project of Asia Society's Center on U.S. China relations and the Wire China. Write to us anytime at editor@chinabooksreview.com. I'm Alec Ash wishing you absorbing reads this coming month. See you next time. ∎