The First Intimate Contact

The First Intimate Contact was originally a work of online literature published in installments on a bulletin board system and was later released in print. ==Plot summary==

The First Intimate Contact tells the story of as young man who finds love through the Internet, the love interest dies to a fatal disease. The protagonist (who shares the same name as the author) meets and falls in love with a girl, FlyNDance, on the Internet. They eventually meet up in real life and become a couple, going out by day and chatting online by night. After some time together, however, FlyNDance is diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (erroneously translated as erysipelas in the English translation), which symbolically causes a butterfly-shaped rash to appear on her face. The disease proves to be fatal and the novel ends with the protagonist finding and reading a letter FlyNDance had written for him before she died. ==Influence==

The romance story helped establish a model of publishing online to develop popularity in order to get a literary work published in print and adapted to other media. The First Intimate Contact inspired other works of online literature, including Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu by Hao Qun (Murong Xuecun). Soon after the complete novel was released online, an anonymous Singaporean language localization was written in English and circulated around the Internet under the name Dolce Vita. This version is considerably shorter than the original and takes place in Singapore instead of Taiwan. ==References==