‘I Love Him’: A Suicide, a Student’s Diary, and a School’s Reckoning
Taiwanese author Lin Yi-han turned her pain into a groundbreaking novel about a teenage girl groomed by her tutor. Not long after its release in 2017, she died by suicide.
Years later, a student surnamed Fu read the book and saw her own life in its pages. In her diary, she wrote: “I became guilty, only able to repeatedly tell myself, I love him.”
This past January, she, too, took her own life.
After her death, Fu’s parents discovered alarming messages between her and her former high school teacher, surnamed Tang, along with diary entries describing his harassment and eventual sexual assault. They now believe Fu’s suicide stemmed not from academic pressure, but from years of abuse and the culture of silence surrounding sexual assault in schools.
In a Feb. 10 post to social media platform Weibo, Fu’s cousin, Nong Chunyu, publicly accused Tang of sexually assaulting Fu while she was a student. The post drew widespread attention in China, and Tang has since been criminally detained pending the results of an investigation.
The case has also renewed concerns about gaps in China’s safety net for minors. Between the power held by teachers over students’ futures and the difficulty of speaking out about sexual abuse, seeking justice remains a challenge for many survivors.
Troubling signs
Fu was 16 and in her second year of high school in the southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region when she first showed troubling signs, her parents and former classmates say. She began skipping school and harming herself, actions that alarmed her parents, who knew little about their daughter.
Divorced and occasionally absent from Fu’s life, Fu’s parents — Fu Jiaqiang and Liu Yue — say they received calls from Tang almost every other week about Fu harming herself at school. Despite their concern, however, Fu never opened up about her self-destructive behavior.
At the time, her father did not think too much about Fu’s behavioral problems. After all, she was still a straight-A student. He recalls people assuring him that, “Your daughter can make it to a top university, so don’t worry.”
“No one truly understood her behavior,” recalls Zheng Yu, a former high school classmate of Fu. The school’s rigorous academic schedule drove several students to drop out with depression, Zheng says, but few of their classmates questioned why. Only when someone showed obvious signs of abnormal behavior did others show concern, she says. Paradoxically, Fu’s frequent self-harm was written off as going too far, deterring her classmates from reaching out.
But Fu’s family no longer believes her depression was caused by academic pressure.
The popular teacher
Many of Tang’s former students recall him as a kind and good-natured teacher. “He would ask about my mental state when signing leave permits, which was different from other teachers,” said one female student.
While the school had a counselor available for students, most preferred to reach out to their homeroom teachers for support, says Xia Meng, Fu’s former classmate. “Appointments (with the counselor) meant waiting for days,” she says, adding that the counselor often cut sessions short and sometimes leaked private information to teachers.
Xia recalls a change in Fu’s behavior after they were placed in different classes halfway through their freshman year. Fu began walking alone, visibly withdrawn. In their second year, Xia noticed that Tang would frequently call Fu into his office, where he would close both the curtains and doors. Though several teachers shared the office, Xia once saw another teacher try to enter, only to discover the door was locked. After several phone calls, Tang finally opened the door, explaining he was having a heart-to-heart with a student.
The relationship between Tang and Fu was a topic of gossip among students. Zheng recalls hearing whispers that Tang and Fu had been seen kissing in a classroom corner during her second year. These observations gradually morphed into rumors of a consensual romance.
Warnings ignored
Calling out an unusually close relationship between a teacher and a student felt “deeply shameful” at the time, Zheng says, despite other allegations of inappropriate behavior by Tang made by other female students.
Several students recall Tang adding female classmates on the instant messaging app WeChat. Tang also inspected girls’ dormitories at night — unusual behavior for a male teacher that was written off as eccentric at the time but now appears more troubling, students say.
“We lacked proper sex education,” Zheng says. “In three years of high school, we had only one lecture about the topic, which barely covered menstruation and didn’t address gender relations.”
Fu’s father says he had suspicions about Tang. Once, Tang’s appearance in a classroom prompted Fu to self-harm. Another time, the sight of Tang made her smash her phone. Fu Jiaqiang asked his daughter if Tang had done anything inappropriate, but Fu did not answer. Without concrete evidence, he set aside his suspicions — a decision he now regrets.
Fu Jiaqiang recalls a particularly telling moment that occurred when he brought Fu to school one day. Tang was waiting at the gate, and upon seeing him, Fu pulled up her hood. Tang came over, lifted her hood, and stroked the girl’s hair. “I regret not taking it seriously,” Fu Jiaqiang now says, adding that he thought Tang was simply showing concern for the girl.
By Fu’s third year in high school, the rumors of a sexual relationship between herself and Tang had reached her mother. Fu’s elementary school classmate sent Liu screenshots showing conversations in which Tang called Fu “sweetie” and “babe” and suggested something seemed “off” between the two. Liu confronted both Fu and Tang, but Fu remained silent, and Tang denied everything. Liu says she was occupied with her daughter’s worsening self-harm problem and her academic needs, and she did not push the matter further.
A crisis moment
In September 2019, at the start of her final year of high school, Fu was diagnosed with severe depression. Her parents arranged medical treatment, but Fu insisted that she was not sick, and stopped taking her medication after the second visit.
One evening, when Liu tried to talk to her daughter, Fu turned away and covered herself with a blanket. Liu sensed an emotional knot in her daughter that couldn’t be untied, but she says she eventually grew accustomed to it.
Fu’s worsening mental state culminated the following spring, during China’s college entrance exam. Fu tore up her admission ticket and refused to take the exam. Later, Liu learned that on the first day of the exam, Tang had berated her daughter for dawdling on the way to the exam shuttle.
After Fu abandoned the exam, the school cut off contact. Only Tang reached out, asking Liu to collect Fu’s packed books. “Why did she suddenly stop taking the exam?” Liu demanded to know. “I don’t know either, just come and pick up her stuff quickly,” Tang replied.
When Liu arrived at the school, Tang refused to speak to her. Standing at a nearby intersection holding two large bags of Fu’s books, she remembers despair washed over her: She had been so focused on her daughter’s path to university and her grades that she had blinded herself to everything else.
Breaking the silence
A few people close to Fu say she eventually began to open up about what Tang had done. In 2021, she told a classmate that “the painful period” began in September 2019, when Tang repeatedly assaulted her in his office and car. She said she had documented the incidents in her diary, trying to convince herself that she had developed feelings for Tang.
In 2020, Fu met Du Jun, who would later become her boyfriend. She told Du about Tang’s repeated assaults during her high school years, and said she had stayed silent out of fear of the consequences if her parents reported it to the police. She also worried that no one would believe her.
Fu’s behavior is common among minors who are victims of sexual abuse, says Li Ying, a lawyer who specializes in cases involving minors. The power dynamics between teachers and students can confuse young victims, as the teacher inherently represents authority and pressure.
“Victims often rationalize their abuse as consensual to cope with trauma, which later becomes a source of self-blame,” Li says. “They feel they weren’t brave enough.”
A tipping point for Fu was a video of Tang that circulated online in early 2023. By then, Tang had become well known locally, both for his shelf of teaching awards and his popularity among students. Enraged, Fu commented on the video: “Tang did disgusting things to a female student in high school. I know because the person was me.” The comment was dismissed by the uploaders and disappeared from the video soon after.
Fu wasn’t ready to give up, however. With Du’s help, she tried posting on microblogging platform Weibo and in a WeChat group for alumni. But the Weibo messages were removed, and the group chat was shut down by Tang, who had administrator privileges.
Still, the accusations caused a stir within the school community. Some suggested Fu was mentally unstable and held a grudge against Tang. Others gossiped that the pair had been in a relationship that Tang wouldn’t acknowledge. Tang eventually addressed the allegations at a school assembly, asking students not to spread “false rumors” about teachers. After two weeks without further developments, the school gradually forgot about Fu’s accusation.
Tragedy
After ripping up her college entrance exam ticket, Fu eventually transferred to another school and retook the exam, gaining admission to East China Normal University in Shanghai in 2021. Far from home, she struggled to adapt to university life, and soon requested a one-year leave of absence to undergo treatment for depression.
Her mental health continued to deteriorate, however. By 2022, her doctors had diagnosed her with schizophrenia in addition to depression. She was experiencing hallucinations and suicidal thoughts. Her condition worsened after her allegations had no effect on Tang’s standing.
Li, the lawyer, says many survivors of abuse experience “secondary trauma” when schools treat their accusations as scandals to be silenced. When Li reports such cases to school administrators, she says most show no intention to follow up and prefer to brush the incident under the carpet.
Social stigmas surrounding sexual assault also play a major role in survivors’ struggles, Li adds, noting that victims face skepticism from strangers and even family members for not resisting abuse. This doubt exacerbates their own sense of guilt and makes it harder for them to reintegrate into society.
After dropping out of university, Fu found a job as a café waitress. But an unpleasant experience with a customer and delivery staff prompted her relapse into self-harm, costing her the job. She made multiple suicide attempts before eventually taking her own life in January 2025.
After Fu’s death, her cousins discovered evidence of Tang’s assault among her belongings, including a letter of self-criticism dated April 2018 in which she apologized to Tang for taking leave without permission, five diary screenshots, and four chat records between Fu and Tang. These records, some of which date back to 2017, made Fu’s family reconsider her decline, which they now believe was due to Tang’s behavior rather than academic pressure.
On Feb. 10, Nong accused Tang of rape in a viral post on Weibo. This time, the accusations could not be swept under the rug, and within hours Tang had been relieved of his duties and put under investigation by local authorities.
A loophole in the system
Obtaining a conviction won’t be easy, however. According to Li, gathering enough evidence to convict is extremely challenging in cases of sexual assault involving minors. Criminal prosecution typically requires a complete chain of evidence, including medical documentation, witness testimony, and physical evidence. Though victims’ diaries and chat records can be entered as evidence, under Chinese law they must be corroborated by other proof.
Still, Li says that matters have improved in recent years. In 2020, China established a mandatory reporting system for cases of minor abuse — school staff, healthcare workers, and local organizations in close contact with minors now must immediately report discovered or suspected abuse. China’s Criminal Law was also expanded to include a definition for “consent.” And in 2021, legislators criminalized “sexual abuse by persons with a duty of care.”
But public attitudes have lagged behind legislation, Li says. Investigators still ask victims questions such as “Why didn’t you resist?” or “Why did you wait so long (to report)?” which can be traumatic for survivors. She hopes the judicial authorities will create a more protective, trusting environment for minor victims.
Zhang Yuzhe, head of the “Girls Protection” team in Guangxi, which works with survivors, emphasizes the need for better education in schools and more communication between parents and educators.
That may be easier said than done. A survey conducted by Zhang’s team of 300 parents in the countryside and small towns showed that most still delegate education entirely to schools, while schools prioritize academics over students’ mental health and struggle to implement sex education and counseling programs.
“Good education might not show immediate results,” Zhang says. “It’s a long and silent path.”
(Due to privacy concerns, Liu Yue, Fu Jiaqiang, Zheng Yu, Xia Meng, and Du Jun are pseudonyms.)
Reported by Feng Rui and Chen Xinyi.
A version of this article originally appeared in Original (Jiefang Daily). It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.
Translator: Chen Yue; editors: Wang Juyi and Elise Mak.
In China, Shanghai’s 24-hour mental health hotline can be reached at 962525. In the United States, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached for free at 1-800-273-8255. A full list of prevention services by country can be found here.
(Header image: Shijue/VCG)
