Lin Jun, the victim of Luca Rocco Magnotta, wrote one last Facebook entry before his disappearance. It was a photo of a park, with the words: “It’s too, too, too beautiful.” Montreal in the Spring is indeed beautiful.
The Globe and Mail, Canada’s National Newspaper, which is national because of its circulation and not much else, did an in depth look into Lin Jun’s life. By in depth, I mean they looked at his internet history. At the moment, they don’t have much else.
“Mr. Lin was clearly very lonely, and somewhat narcissistic.” This is an old media view! He was a fully internet-saturated person, and people like that let it all hang out. As evidence, they point to his use of the online user name of Justin Rain, an actor from the Twilight series. Again, there are millions of people who use fake names on the internet.
And one more thing, and I hope I’m not the only one who figured this out. At one point, Lin Jun posted a photo of an empty subway car, with the caption: ‘The Midnight Cannibalism Train.’ This was not a morbid foretelling; this was not even the morbid musing of a depressed and lonely man. It was a reference to a Clive Barker short story (now a movie as well) called ‘The Midnight Meat Train’. It’s a story about a butcher paid by New York City for a most unusual job: to hunt the subway and prepare human victims for the Lovecraftian humanoid monsters who were New York’s original founders. The action starts in an empty subway car. Not only that, but the author, Clive Barker, is gay, as was Lin Jun. In all likelihood, Lin Jun was a gay man who liked to read spooky stories by the world’s most famous gay horror writer.
He came from Wuhan, and later Beijing, and studied French. He wanted to move to Quebec, and by Quebec, I bet he really wanted to move to Montreal.
China can be a homophobic society. My guess is Lin Jun had been reading about and pining after Montreal for years. It’s a large, highly urban city with cheap apartments. It’s proudly French, and the French don’t give a hoot how you lead your personal life. I know many people who have fled the well-meaning but restrictive societies of the Maritime and the Prairies to live in Montreal and not have to account for how they live their lives. Montrealers love to argue, to stir up shit against their provincial government, and they love to make love and they love to party. Most importantly, the French are accepting. As long as you make an effort to learn their language. During prohibition, New Yorkers used to visit Montreal to have fun. When taking an entrepreneurial course in Montreal, Lin Jun was asked of his life’s goals. One of them was ‘to find love.’
Lin Jun may have seen this in his future: Montreal, a good job, a man to share his bed; and a life lived utterly in French – in his work, his home and love life, while shopping for his groceries.
He seemed like a nice person who, at 33, had chosen not to let life get him down. He sounded optimistic and kind. It sounds like he made one bad choice: he chose to meet the blue-eyed devil whom he probably saw on a dating site. We’ve all make mistakes. We shouldn’t have to die because of them but sometimes we do.