CHINA HAS its own “Belle de Jour”, as the microblog of supposed sex worker Ruo Xiaoan, which had more than 250,000 followers, has been exposed as having been written by a 31-year-old male editor seeking fame.
Far from being a 22-year-old prostitute, who had over 3,000 clients since she was just 15, the author of the blogs is a married man with a family who lives in Hangzhou in eastern China, and whose surname is Lin, the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau said on its website.
So well written were the microblog entries that the character became known as “China’s most educated prostitute”.
Mr Lin has been charged 500 yuan (€57) for causing a public nuisance and for “cheating the public”. He had been a busy sex blogger, posting 401 entries on his Sina Weibo account, and some entries about Ruo Xiaoan were reposted as many as 10,000 times.
He told the police he only did it because he wanted to get famous online. The comments online have been generally supportive.
“There are many writers like him on the internet, but he was fined because he used Weibo, his writing is excellent and Ruo Xiaoan as a creation is a success,” wrote Kawei-Rabbit.
Mr Lin’s microblog has been permanently shut down. The government is currently trying to stop Sina Weibo and other Weibo networks being used as platforms for dissent or for other socially unacceptable activities in China.
LingLuan Sister wrote how she loved reading about Xiaoan and said she had left lots of comments.
“Now I see that ‘she’ is in fact a man, is married, and has a son.
“Maybe it’s not too bad what happened, though.”
It was Mr Lin’s decision to compose a list of Xiaoan’s top clients, which included policemen, university professors and local celebrities, that started the hunt for the author.
Mr Lin was tracked down and found by mobile phone triangulation, and reportedly was caught in flagrante delicto composing another steamy entry for his literary heroine.
His creation has been compared to literary greats in the tradition of fictional prostitutes through the ages, ranging from Fanny Hill to Suzie Wong to Séverine Serizy aka Belle de Jour.
This appears to be no accident – Mr Lin apparently translated sex scenes from foreign-language texts, including The Secret Diary of a Call Girlby Brooke Magnanti, who wrote under the pseudonym of Belle de Jour.
The news came on the same day as the government said the number of internet users in China had surpassed 500 million.