‘I’m so lucky’ says lesbian whose dad offers $78m to wed
‘I’m touched’, says woman now fending off 1500 romantic offers. By Joyce Man in Hong Kong.
A HONG KONG billionaire’s daughter has been bombarded with marriage proposals, and even nude photographs, from as far afield as Oklahoma, Nigeria and Bulgaria after her father offered $78 million to the man who could woo her.
Gigi Chao, daughter of property tycoon Cecil Chao, entered a civil partnership with her girlfriend of seven years in a ceremony in Paris five months ago.
But her 76-year-old father has said reports of his daughter’s civil ceremony are ‘‘false’’. He announced the dowry this week.
Gigi Chao, 33, said she had received about 200 proposals and that the number following her on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook had jumped by 1500 since her father’s announcement.
‘‘It’s ridiculous. I can’t sort out the serious proposals from the half-hearted ones. I can’t make head or tail of it,’’ she said.
Chao, an executive director of her father’s company, Cheuk Nang, said they ranged from gentlemen looking for love and asking her out on a date to those who have attached nude photos of themselves or provided information about their finances.
‘‘Some of them had obviously done their research, you know, gone on my Facebook and looked at my background,’’ she said. ‘‘Some of them are quite poetic.’’
But far from feeling angry at her father, she said she was ‘‘touched’’.
‘‘At first I was entertained by it, and then that entertainment turned into the realisation and conviction that I am a really lucky girl to have such a loving daddy, because it’s really sweet of him to do something like this.’’
She knew her father would go public to deny the union, but believed the offer of a reward was an afterthought.
Chao said she loved her father and they had a good relationship. ‘‘It’s not that he can’t accept me,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s that he can’t accept how society would view me and the status that it would incur. Marriage is still a form of social status. I do understand him. I understand why he’s doing this.
‘‘But I don’t appreciate getting 1500 emails.’’
Chao, who also runs a model management and PR firm, met her partner, Sean Yeung, while they were working together.
Chao, who has dated men and women, said she had always been open and honest about her relationships to her family. But, when she told her mother about a relationship with a girl when she was 16, her mother ‘‘banged her head against the wall, literally’’.
Her father is somewhat unconventional himself. He made headlines in 2003 when his Rolls-Royce caught fire while he and his girlfriend were inside. The tycoon has never married and once claimed to have had ‘‘intimate relations’’ with about 10,000 women.