Hong Kong billionaire offers £40 million marriage bounty for lesbian daughter
A businessman from Hong Kong has offered a $65m (£40.2m) dowry to any man who can win the heart of his lesbian daughter.
Cecil Chao announced the financial reward after his daughter, Gigi, married her same-sex partner of seven years in France earlier this year, according to the South China Morning Post.
Comments posted on the website of the newspaper were widely hostile to his “marriage bounty”.
“How humiliating for this poor girl,” wrote one reader. “Mr Chao needs to come out of denial and just be happy that he has such a beautiful daughter who appears to have found happiness with a partner whom she loves.
“Cecil, you sound like you’re selling your daughter,” commented another.
Same-sex marriages are not recognised in Hong Kong, where homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1991.
Mr Chao is well known in Hong Kong’s social circles and regularly appears at public events with his latest young girlfriend.
“I don’t mind whether he is rich or poor. The important thing is that he is generous and kind hearted,” 76-year-old Mr Chao was quoted as saying.
“Gigi is a very good woman with both talents and looks. She is devoted to her parents, is generous and does volunteer work,” he added.
The Facebook profile of Ms Chao, who is a University of Manchester architecture graduate, reads: “Helicopter Pilot. Social entrepreneur. Creator of expressions in colour and emotion.”
It also describes her as an executive director at her father’s Hong Kong-based property firm, Cheuk Nang.
According to the Telegraph. Mr Chao’s controversial move to recruit a husband for his daughter appeared to contradict a description Ms Chao gave of her father in a 2007 interview.
“My father took a hands-off approach in parenting. I see him as a friend more than a father,” she told HK Magazine. “My parents never pressure me with high expectations.”
