Translated from 李宇琛：兰州警方跨省抓了一群写小说的女大学生
Translator’s note: China Digital Times (CDT; Chinese: 中国数字时代) is a California-based 501(c)(3) organization that runs a bilingual news website covering China.
[404 Archive] Li Yuchen’s Chronicles of the Absurd | Lanzhou Police Cross Provinces to Arrest a Group of Female College Students Writing Novels
June 1, 2025
CDT Archive Card
Title: Lanzhou Police Cross Provinces to Arrest a Group of Female College Students Writing Novels
Author: Li Yuchen
Date of Publication: June 1, 2025
Source: WeChat public account “Li Yuchen’s Chronicles of the Absurd”
Category: Deep-Sea Fishing
CDT Collection: Citizens’ Pavilion
Copyright Notice: This work belongs to the original author. China Digital Times archives it only to counter internet censorship in China. For detailed copyright information, see our notice.
Written by Li Yuchen
Haitang Literature City, a platform established in 2015, has its servers located in Taiwan.
Its name may sound a bit artistic, but it is actually a hidden enclave tailored for female readers, where danmei (boys’ love) and R18 content abound.
The writers call themselves “taitai” (“Misus”, readers call writers that, I don’t think writers use this word to self-allude – translator’s note), and their works are referred to within the circle as “producing food” (“产粮”).
This jargon, like the slang of a small online subculture, has quietly developed in a corner of the internet, maintaining a seemingly peaceful alternative literary ecosystem. Everything changed in the summer of 2024:
Police in Jingxi County, Anhui Province, launched the first wave of the crackdown.
Their target was these authors on Haitang Literature City, charging them with the cold and clear-cut crime of:
“Producing and distributing obscene materials for profit.”
These danmei works aimed at female readers face a murky and controversial line when judged under the law as “obscene.”
When it comes to literary creation—especially adult-themed writing—the boundary between art and criminality is blurred and hotly debated.
What constitutes prurient, morally corrupting “obscenity”? What counts as creative writing that expresses character, narrative, and thought? Should sensitive subject matter or explicit descriptions automatically be equated with illegal pornography?
Love stories between men and women—or between men—may be seen by some as dangerous, by others as just a pastime for young people. But once labeled “obscene,” the consequences are no joke.
But who draws that line?
Do the police go by how explicit or vulgar the language is? Or do they also consider if there’s character development, some semblance of plot, even just a little emotional depth?
Shouldn’t the legal measuring stick also have more nuanced gradations when it comes to colorful text like this?
Without clear standards, if all it takes is a few catch-all labels and a signed expert report, writers must seriously wonder if what they type today could handcuff them tomorrow:
Can literature still survive?
And danmei itself—it’s always been a niche interest with its own logic and language. Does any of that hold up in court?
The core issue of legal definition—crime or no crime—strikes at the heart of how the law understands and respects the boundaries of literary freedom.
This has become a multi-province operation, and some of the arrested are well-known within the writing community.
In Jingxi, money appears to determine the severity of punishment:
According to media reports, authors involved with less than 250,000 RMB (approx. $35,000 USD) earnings could receive suspended sentences if they actively “returned” any earnings. But top writers like Yunjian, even after returning profits, were sentenced to 4 years and 6 months. Another writer, Ciqi, who couldn’t return the money, received a 5.5-year sentence.
Behind the cold numbers lies the heavy price of personal freedom and future prospects.
But the storm didn’t stop with Jingxi.
In the first half of 2025, police in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, launched an even larger-scale operation.
Described by some online as “deep-sea fishing”, this enforcement wave is said to involve 200 to 300 authors, according to insiders.
Multiple divisions under the Lanzhou Public Security Bureau—including the Chengguan, Lanzhou New District, and even the Forest Police—participated.
Some online voices speculate that these actions may be related to local governments’ fiscal income goals.
This sweeping cross-provincial crackdown has sparked broad debate over jurisdictional authority.
Haitang Literature City is a platform hosted in Taiwan, with users across China. So how are Chinese police legally justified in investigating and arresting authors across various provinces? Is it based on territorial jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, or the more complex rules of cybercrime jurisdiction?
With no clear legal precedent or judicial interpretation, this kind of extraterritorial law enforcement raises serious questions about its legality and appropriateness.
Unlike in Jingxi, where monetary gains determined sentencing, the Lanzhou cases involved many authors who made little or no profit.
Some wrote entirely for free and earned nothing.
One such author told her lawyer that the authorities believed that even free stories generated web traffic, which counted as contributing to the site’s profit-making activity—thus meeting the threshold for the same crime.
Another writer, according to her interrogation record, had only received two Haitang coins (a negligible virtual tip). The police acknowledged this, but she was still sent to the prosecutor’s office in June—because she was part of a “batch processing” case.
“Chengguan Division is especially strict,” one source said. “They even detained authors who barely made any profit, and denied them bail.”
On May 31, 2025, Weibo user @你才屁咕瓣 observed the scope of Lanzhou’s more sweeping and aggressive tactics:
“The authors who got arrested posted on Weibo—this is still deep-sea fishing. Now they arrest people regardless of profit, click rate, or whether the stories were free. Even free authors are detained. And triple repayment is required.”
Now about this issue of jurisdiction:
Haitang’s servers are in Taiwan—across a strait from China.
China police reaching across provinces and beyond—how far is too far?
What law gives them that authority? Is it enough that the authors are based in China? Or does the internet’s borderless nature mean you can be arrested wherever you are?
This isn’t something you can dismiss with “the internet isn’t above the law.” If foreign servers and data are involved, how is the evidence obtained? Do they ask politely for cooperation—or is there some other trick?
If the evidence chain is flawed, the whole case could collapse like a sandcastle. Due process sometimes matters more than the outcome.
One of the most troubling issues in Lanzhou is their interpretation of “for profit.”
At least in Jingxi, there was a monetary threshold. In Lanzhou, some authors earned nothing, or mere pocket change—and still got dragged in.
The reasoning?
“They brought traffic to the site, which was part of its overall profit-making activity.”
Sounds clever, right? But under criminal law, “for profit” typically means the individual personally gained financially. So if you help your boss make money, does that mean you’ve also committed a crime?
By that logic, a waitress in a restaurant that evades taxes could be charged with “profiting from tax evasion.”
If this precedent holds, it opens the floodgates for “pocket crimes”—vaguely defined offenses that can be applied arbitrarily.
Especially for those who wrote as a hobby, for free, without any intent to profit—being punished alongside those who made serious money—is that fair or legal? If they didn’t want money, and didn’t get any, can you really say they “profited”?
This storm has ruthlessly swept up many young women, including college students and recent graduates.
A female university student, currently studying at a top-tier “985” university, with the Weibo username “世界是一个巨大的精神病院哈” (per her May 29, 2025 post):
Shortly after receiving a notice of her provisional acceptance into a graduate program, she was taken away by the police at her university.
She described in detail the humiliation and fear she felt at the time:
Her friends watched helplessly as the police followed her to the dorm and searched her personal belongings. The sense of having “completely lost face” was etched into her memory.
She had pleaded with the police not to notify her parents and said she would handle it herself, but—
In an attempt to get her expelled from her undergraduate program as well, the university directly contacted her family.
Her mother, who had never flown before in her life, took a plane for the first time just to come from their hometown to pick her up. In the end, although she managed to retain her undergraduate degree, her graduate admission was mercilessly revoked, and she was:
Forcibly sent home by the school.
She admitted she came from a poor background and had relied on student loans to finish her degree. One reason she began writing was to save money to travel to places she had always dreamed of—like western Sichuan and Tibet.
Poverty had always cast a shadow over her life, making her feel inferior in social situations. Writing seemed like a way to seek solace and self-fulfillment amid a harsh reality.
But this sudden upheaval made her realize that having a criminal record would severely impact her chances of employment in her intended professional field:
“Even with a degree, it’s like the education was for nothing.”
====
Weibo user Turi_A, on May 30, 2025, wrote of her despair:
“Heading to Lanzhou next week, feeling utterly hopeless… One phone call from Lanzhou, Gansu shattered my dreams completely…”
The next day, she added:
“Every day I can’t sleep until 4 a.m., flipping through legal codes looking for a defense.”
Her words brimmed with fear of the unknown and a primal will to survive.
====
Another author, “似锦的似锦” (Weibo, May 30, 2025), shared her emotional turmoil after receiving notice from the Lanzhou police:
“In the past 20 years of my life, I never imagined my first flight would be to a police station in Lanzhou.”
To save money, she carefully compared options and chose a cheaper red-eye flight. Looking out the window, the smallness of the cities and mountains below made her realize just how insignificant she felt.
She had started writing simply out of passion, and hoped to relieve some of the financial burden on her struggling family.
However, when her once-ignored posts accumulated over 300,000 views, the 4,000-plus yuan (~550 usd) she earned in royalties became cold, hard evidence in the charges against her. It felt like the whole world suddenly froze on a sunny day.
She had once naïvely believed that writing could change her fate. But now:
“The future of my words is prison.”
“All I can hope for now is that the law will see the girl between the lines—the girl who starved to save money, who sold her hair to buy a fountain pen, who believed words could crack the wall of fate—and give us all a fair outcome.”
====
An author, shared by Weibo user “高级姊” on May 31, posted a gut-wrenching plea before the Dragon Boat Festival. Her words captured the humble hope for justice shared by many writers.
Weibo user “莫若逆爱之轮回”, the sister of one of the accused, wrote on May 31, 2025, about the agony their whole family was going through:
“Another sleepless night. Tomorrow is the Dragon Boat Festival. We’ve already missed three holidays together. So much information, and I still can’t help you.”
She described her sister as:
“Someone who worked part-time throughout college to support herself. She valued money too much, and that’s what led her to make a mistake.”
She couldn’t understand the sudden catastrophe:
“Everything’s ruined. It feels like we completely squandered a winning hand. Why is this so cruel? We were patriotic, loving, hardworking people, always full of hope for the future. We were children raised under the red flag! Did this really hurt anyone? Did it really have to cost so much?”
“It happened on April 1st at 3 p.m.—I’ll remember that time for the rest of my life.”
====
Weibo user “冰冰棒棒丷”, on May 29, 2025, described the moment she was taken away by police. She recalled being in her pajamas, spacing out at home, when a knock came at the door:
“The moment I saw them, my legs gave out. I was completely stunned. I never imagined I’d live to see the day where I was dragged down by every word I had ever written.”
She admitted her past wasn’t pretty. Writing had been her way of “creating a beautiful life for myself to trick myself into staying alive.” She considered each of her characters like her own child, but was now forced to “confess my crimes, and theirs,”—each word “like a knife carving into my chest.”
In desperation, she even spoke to an AI chatbot to summon the strength to go on. Despite everything, she remained defiant:
“This incident didn’t break me, and nothing in the future ever will. I will prove with facts that I cannot be broken, I cannot be killed, and nothing can crush me.”
She vowed to give her “children” a proper ending in a “legal, non-explicit” way.
====
Another writer, “记得披马甲”, documented her “one-day tour of Lanzhou” on May 16, 2025, and the financial distress that followed.
She wrote that her total income from over a year of writing was precisely 21,313 yuan (~2967 usd)—a figure the authorities had calculated exactly.
To raise money for a potential fine, she sold her tablet and gaming accounts, leaving her with just over 300 yuan. She expressed profound confusion and helplessness:
“I don’t even know what I’ve been doing all this time. I shut myself off for months.”
“I’m graduating this year. I’m only 20. So young, but already ruined too early.”
She said part of her reason for posting was to seek compassion and loans, offering all the evidence she had and expressing a willingness to return the money to reduce her sentence.
====
Another blogger (May 30, 2025) wrote trembling words about the humiliation and fear she experienced when detained:
“I will never forget it: being taken away in broad daylight, stripped and searched in front of strangers, forced to wear a printed vest for identification photos, shaking with fear in the chair as my heart pounded.”
She described herself at that moment as:
“Like a broken, out-of-control faucet. Tears streamed nonstop from my eyes. My palms were soaked by tears and I had to use the backs of my hands, my wrists, even the hem of my wrinkled shirt to wipe them away.”
When she finally got home that night, her parents didn’t scold her. They just quietly reheated her food.
After the lights went out, through the thin wall, she clearly heard her parents sighing, unable to sleep from worry. She could only “bite her pillow to keep silent, crying all over again.”
====
In response to the collective plight of these young female writers, the legal team “Sisyphus Criminal Defense”(“西绪福斯的刑辩”) issued a statement via their official WeChat account on June 1, 2025:
They acknowledged the widespread concern over the “Lanzhou Distant-fishing Haitang Writers Incident.” The statement noted that some authors are now facing criminal charges—most of them young, poor, and vulnerable. Confronted with overwhelming state power, they are defenseless: some have lost graduate placements, others were expelled from school, and some have even exhibited signs of self-harm—heartbreaking outcomes.
This team, made up of criminal defense lawyers volunteering from Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities, committed to offering legal aid to eligible authors and their families, including legal consultation, procedural guidance, and criminal defense services.
Rewinding to late 2024, one of the earliest detained Haitang authors in Jingxi, Anhui—username “Qingjue Will Look Forward”(“轻觉会向前看”)—was sentenced after nearly five months of investigation and prosecution: one year and five months in prison, with a two-year suspended sentence. In her post-verdict reflection, she wrote:
“What tormented me for nearly five months has finally come to some kind of end. Though I won’t be truly free until two years later, being outside already feels like a blessing amid the misfortune.”
“A blessing amid misfortune”—perhaps these five words capture the most humble and painful hope buried in the hearts of many authors caught in this storm. They once crafted stories of love and desire through keyboards in the virtual world, never expecting that the rules of the real world would so ruthlessly and coldly drag them into the abyss.
Traffic, money, KPIs, and the blurry boundary of “obscene materials”—a term interpreted differently in different cases and regions—formed the complex backdrop of this manhunt.
Keyboards may still be clacking in the shadows, but the words they produce now are likely written with less courage. The executioner’s blade hovers above, and the fish caught in distant waters still thrash in the net. What once seemed like a utopia now appears to be a field of chives waiting to be harvested.
One by one, those young souls—so vivid, so full of life—are being dragged into the mire.
Their cries, their defenses—how much resonance can they stir in an iron chamber? Do their fates, their stories, their meager literary dreams truly deserve to be ground to dust, stepped on by bystanders, dismissed with a cold “you had it coming”?
No. They are the symptoms of a deeper illness.
An illness where notions of filth, money, and boundaries have all become muddled and manipulable. If someone says you’re filthy, you are. Arguing is useless. If they say you made money, then even site clicks count against you. If they say they’ll come for you, no matter how far you run, they will.
Is this justice? Or just someone’s house rules?
If even these ink-born joys and sorrows are to be torn apart alive, what hope does the silent majority have? Must we wait until the onlookers become the next victims before we finally awaken from our apathy?
This storm isn’t just a tragedy for a few female university students.
Behind it lies a deeper, colder chill.
If we don’t face that chill head-on and disperse it, stories like this will only keep repeating—under new names, in this very land.
Written on June 1, 2025.