BUSINESS, FINANCIAL & LEGAL
Gigi Chao took a stand when her father offered a fortune for a potential husband to turn her straight — and she remains firm in her fight for LGBTQ+ equality.
When her father offered a fortune for a potential husband to turn her straight, Gigi Chao made a stand for her sexuality and made headlines around the world. She’s since become a spokesperson for LGBTQ equality, especially in her native Hong Kong where she leads a marriage equality campaign, and made a truce with her father that’s seen her become executive vice-chairman of his hugely successful property company
“My father’s cash offer affected Sean more. She found it intimidating”
It’s the story that made headlines around the world: Gigi Chao’s billionaire father offered a huge cash reward (around £40 million) to any man who would marry her, even though she was already married to a woman.
Shipping magnate and property tycoon Cecil Chao Sze-tsung then doubled his offer in what was basically a bid to turn his gay daughter straight – prompting Gigi to pen an open letter, published in the Hong Kong press, asking him to accept both her sexuality and her wife, Sean Eav.
After the news broke in 2012, a few months after Gigi and Sean had a church ceremony in Paris, she told a reporter, “I’ll marry a man when he marries a man,” displaying a defiance and courage that earned her the top spot on the OUTstanding Role Models list here in the UK.
With all this in mind, it comes as something of a surprise to find out, eight years later, that Gigi still works as executive vice-chairman of her father’s property company, Cheuk Nang. But, she tells us, strong familial bonds in Hong Kong culture mean they’ve agreed to settle on a beg-to-differ solution.
Not that the 41-year-old businesswoman doesn’t address her sexuality outside the family home, too. Quite the opposite, in fact, as she’s become an eloquent spokesperson on LGBTQ issues, a leading member of the campaign for marriage equality in Hong Kong and an advocate for change in a society which, she tells us, has a long way to go.
How did it feel topping the OUTstanding role model list?
It was quite overwhelming, actually. I was very surprised to be named number one, mainly because it’s not very common to have lists of people who are out in the part of the world where I’m from. Being out as a celebratory concept is non-existent there, although in Taiwan they legalised samesex marriage 18 months ago, the first place in Asia where that has happened.
Where did you and Sean get married?
We had a church ceremony in Paris, so it was a religious ceremony but not really a legal one, because neither Sean nor I are French citizens. Even if it were legal in France, Hong Kong doesn’t recognise overseas same-sex marriages anyway. Ourselves and another gay couple [Vinci Wong and Kevin Chow, who wed in Vancouver last year] are, I think, the only out, gay married couples in Hong Kong, and we’re friends, so it’s good to have them to talk to.
Do you feel it’s important for you to be out and visible?
Yes, because our marriage ignited lots of discussion about the concept of homosexuality. In Hong Kong, there are a lot of court cases on transgender issues as well. There are transgender individuals who have successfully changed their gender overseas but upon returning to Hong Kong their gender change has not been recognised, and they’re not permitted to get married.
There’s a huge stigma attached to the whole subject. If we look at how far the UK, Europe and the US have come in the past ten years, since the handover, Hong Kong has not made a single baby step. One of the most common questions I get from people when they hear I’m from Hong Kong is: “So how’s it been since the handover, has there been lots of change?”.
In terms of LGBTQ issues, the answer is a firm “No.”
Did you ever consider not coming out? That perhaps it just wasn’t worth the attention?
No, because I’m a religious person and I do think there’s a certain calling to the issue. When things of this scale and calibre pop up, I believe there’s some sort of divine intervention and I’m playing some kind of role. When the news first broke, Sean and I were a bit daunted by the media onslaught and we wanted to divert the attention from ourselves as much as we could. But, slowly, I began to realise that it was almost irresponsible of me to not embrace the voice that’s been given to me to bring forth a positive message.
How did your father’s cash offer for a man to turn you straight affect you?
I won’t say I saw it coming, but I kind of forgave him almost instantaneously, because I knew this was the kind of thing he’d do – that he’d try to rescue the situation with money.
After I got back from Paris, I showed him the photos and told him what happened and, because he didn’t know I was gay, he was shocked and upset. He thought my mind had been poisoned or something. There was a good six months where he knew about it and nothing happened, but when Sean publicly announced we’d gotten married, my parents wanted to hide under the duvet. It’s taken a good few years, especially for my mum, to get used to the idea.
As for my father’s cash offer, it affected Sean more. She found it more intimidating and upsetting because tens of thousands of men – some quite strange ones – wrote in or waited for us at the entrances of our buildings and our home. I thought about it and decided my
response should definitely be to support her, first and foremost.
What reaction did you get from the public about your open letter to your father?
We received a lot of support from friends and strangers and the majority of anonymous letters we got were from inthe-closet gays and lesbians, who said “I really want to come out but I can’t do it to my parents.” I replied and said that there’s never a best time to come out and you should just do it as soon as possible.
How about people in the business world? What’s the reaction been like there?
Construction is a very male-dominated industry and, as a woman, you constantly have to prove your salt in front of engineers, builders and so on. Perhaps the male chauvinism I’m up against prevents me from noticing any clear discrimination or homophobia. In some ways, I think being a lesbian is a positive in the business world, because people perceive you as quite approachable but at the same time with a strength that’s able to push things forward.
What persuaded your father to take the cash offer off the table?
I asked him, “Can you please put a stop to this nonsense?” There were people outside our offices, and our receptionists and secretaries didn’t get any work done because of all these offers. He was, like, “Let’s keep these offers there just in case…”, but he eventually declared, “It’s all over.”
You work with him. How’s your relationship now?
We have a very good relationship. I enjoy working with him and he with me. I see him at the office on weekdays and we talk every day, but we don’t really talk about our respective private lives. We have an enjoyable and a close relationship; we just have different points of view on many things.
Is respecting parents’ wishes and views part of your culture?
We have very strong values. In some ways there’s no such thing as a Chinese individual – we’re all part of a family. Chinese New Year, which is all about family, is a particularly embarrassing time for Chinese LGBTQ people because they have to lie when asked by their parents, “When are you going to get married and have kids?”, as if procreation is the only path to happiness. It’s a difficult point to get across – that lives can be diverse and happiness can be sought in other ways rather than just straight male-female
“I’m lobbying for the recognition of same-sex marriages [in Hong Kong]”
relationships and procreation.
Have you experienced homophobia from outside your family?
We get it quite a lot in blue-collar circles. Sean and I go hiking a lot at weekends and we get random strangers staring at us and going, “Oh, they’re lesbians.” We ignore it, but it affects Sean more. I’m thick-skinned, but she’s more sensitive about these things, particularly because she looks a little more masculine. If she goes to the bathroom she gets women screaming at her, “Hey, this is the Ladies.” She has to pitch-up her voice and go, “Hey, I’m a girl”. That’s why we sympathise with the whole issue of transgender bathrooms in the US, because she’s always looking for a disabled toilet to use when she wants that privacy.
Does homophobia make you more determined to stay strong as a couple?
It does, yes. To know that we’ve got beyond these onslaughts of craziness has definitely made us stronger as a couple. In hindsight, I think if we’d never come out and announced our marriage it would have been like it had never happened. I think the whole point of marriage is to make a statement. It’s a rite of passage that two people have chosen to become one entity and live our lives together, and if we just kept that secret then there’s no point doing it.
How is life in Hong Kong for gay women? And have you ever considered leaving?
I’m sure there are still bars. I’ve been to them once or twice but that’s just not my scene. In terms of leaving, we think about it all the time, actually, but it’s going back to this Chinese value of being there for the family. With both Sean and I, our parents are in Hong Kong, they’re getting on in years and we want to spend as much time with them as possible. My parents were never married and my mum lives on her own, and I have this sense of responsibility that I need to look after her and my father, too.
I guess the point I want to make is that in the UK you have a welfare state, but the whole welfare system in China and Hong Kong depends on people having children to look after the elderly, which is a particular problem for the LGBTQ community, because it’s illegal for us to adopt or find surrogacy.
What would you like to see change in terms of LGBTQ rights?
What I’m lobbying for is the recognition of same-sex marriages, the first step being the recognition of same-sex marriages from overseas. If you’re legally married
here in the UK, say, and you went to Hong Kong, your husband or wife would have no status. They wouldn’t be able to get a job and they’d be completely dependent on you as a ‘friend’.
If you wanted to adopt, you’d have to find loopholes in different countries and, again, it’s very complicated legally. Everything is pitched against you to have a dignified family life in Hong Kong. So, I’d like to see same-sex relationships recognised and, perhaps, a de facto status where people can at least co-habit, whether gay or straight, and have certain rights, with surrogacy and adoption legalised for co-habiting couples, too.
What advice would you give to LGBTQ people who are considering a career in business?
If I was addressing my younger self, when I’d just graduated from university and was about to embark on a business career, I would say to come out as soon as possible and find your grounding and your strength from that. As the anthropologist Joseph Campbell said, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are”. That is a particularly potent mantra for the LGBTQ community to know and to embrace – to seek one’s true purpose by living it each day.
What do you feel about the Community Business organisation in Hong Kong stepping up to support LGBTQ inclusion?
They do it in a soft-focus kind of way, and I think that’s the best way to go. When we turn on the news, we see that everything is so politicised that it becomes almost argumentative to try and push things forward and provoke discourse. So singing the praises of how LGBTQ inclusion is good for business leaders – to have integrity, to be honest and stand for these values, which being out is all about, is a good way to go.