From Roto-Reuters:
Suitors bombard tycoon's 'gay' daughter after marriage bounty offered
The newly married lesbian daughter of a Hong Kong tycoon who offered a $65 million "marriage bounty" to any man able to win her love, on Thursday said she'd been flooded by marriage proposals but harbored no animosity towards her father.
That's either very mature and magnanimous on her part or she thinks she has to play nice to inherit the whole company someday.
Since Hong Kong property
billionaire Cecil Chao, known in the tabloid media for his prolific
womanizing, dangled a $65 million reward for any man able to lead his
daughter, Gigi Chao, down the aisle, she says she's been bombarded by
marriage proposals from strangers, date requests, and even an offer from
a Hollywood film producer to buy her story.
"War veterans from the U.S., someone from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, from Istanbul, South America, Portugal, really just from all over the world," said Chao, sifting through emails on a white Apple laptop in her father's high-rise office tower.
One suitor from the United States wrote: "I'm interested in your offer to wed your daughter, who also happens to be gay. I am a male person, who also happens to be gay."
Another put up his brother, a body double to George Clooney in the 2008 sports flick "Leatherheads" as a potential mate: "He could be the picture perfect date that your father craves."
"I've tried my best to respond to well-meaning ones ... but most of them I just try not to open," added the frizzy-haired Chao, who was wearing a silver ring after what she called a "church blessing" with her girlfriend in a Paris church.
Gigi said her billionaire father, who drives a Rolls Royce and flies a helicopter but had a poor early childhood in Shanghai, had been upset when his daughter's longtime lover revealed the couple had wed in Paris in April, leading to his impromptu HK$500 million "marriage bounty" offer to any man able to set her straight.
"I wasn't angry at all. I was
really quite touched, very touched and very ... how should I say?
moved, by Daddy's announcement," said the 33-year-old.
"I mean, it's really his way
of saying 'baby girl, I love you. You deserve more,' basically," added
Chau who works as an executive director in the family firm Cheuk Nang
Holdings.
Wow. Really?
Wow. Really?
Gigi sounds pretty cool for someone suffering from same-sex attraction disorder.
Her 76-year-old father, rarely seen without sunglasses and brand-name clothes, has never married but has boasted of bedding over 10,000 women including models and starlets.
That explains it. Citizen Chao gets what he deserves. Put away the checkbook, pervert.
BTW, Wilt Chamberlain is not REPEAT NOT a role model, kiddies.
Hong Kong, a freewheeling
city that reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, retains a
traditional Chinese social fabric but is considered relatively tolerant
of alternative lifestyles compared with the rest of Asia. It
decriminalized homosexuality in 1991.
It has gay social venues,
film festivals and gay pride parades, making it a bastion of liberalism
compared with China, where homosexuality was defined as a mental
disorder until 2001.
"I'm not able to generalize
about the experiences of all people in the gay community, but I think we
in Hong Kong at the moment, are in the middle, we're not punishable by
death for being gay, but it's not celebrated and obviously never
encouraged," said Chao. "I think change is overdue."
Some hope the comedy value of
the whole high-profile father daughter drama could help start a
constructive dialogue about gay attitudes in the region.
"Starting a conversation with
humor always makes people less aggressive," said James Gannaban, the
organizer of an annual Mr. Gay Hong Kong pageant, in a local gay bar.
"If people are less militant about issues, then there is greater
opportunity for conversation, if we start off with a smile."
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