The officers knocked on the door early in the morning. Moments later, a young woman sat, handcuffed, at her living room table, and answered the police officers' curt questions before they took her to the police station for further interrogation. "What does it feel like, for you, to write that?" they asked, while also questioning her about her sexual orientation and practices. The focus of their aggressive investigation was danmei, literally "indulging in beauty," a literary genre mainly written by women – such as an author that Le Monde interviewed, who requested anonymity – which features stories of romance between men, and often includes sexual scenes, with a certain level of explicit description.

Inspired by a Japanese trend, "Boys' Love," these novels have attracted a growing number of female Chinese readers, and have also begun to see success in the West. However, the Chinese authorities disapprove, in a country where erotic content is banned by law.

Over the past year, dozens of women authors who have written danmei e-books have been arrested in an unprecedented wave of repression, as the Chinese authorities have grown increasingly wary of foreign influences or anything they see as undermining their traditionalist vision of society.

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