MCLC: 500 million marriage proposal

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Thu Oct 4 08:39:34 EDT 2012


MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: 500 million marriage proposal
***********************************************************

Source: Asia Times (10/5/12):
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/NJ05Ad01.html

Hong Kong's $500 million marriage proposal
By Kent Ewing 

HONG KONG - As Hong Kong's increasingly assertive gay community last week
launched Pink Season - a two-month-long festival intended to celebrate
LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) lifestyles in the city -
organizers received a huge if inadvertent boost from an aging tycoon who
is also a noted playboy and homophobe.

Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, the 77-year-old owner of property developer Cheuk
Nang (Holdings), also chose last week to make his public offer of HK$500
million (US$64.5 million) to any man who could win the hand of his openly
lesbian daughter, Gigi.

The tycoon, who boasts that he has slept with 10,000 different women,
announced his extravagant marriage bounty after reports from Beijing a
week earlier quoted Gigi, 33, as saying she had "wed" her same-sex partner
of the past seven years, Sean Eav, five months ago during a holiday in
France. 

Her revelation created some confusion, as the laws of France do not allow
same-sex marriage, although civil unions are sanctioned. But such fine
distinctions appeared to matter little to the elder Chao, who dismissed
"false reports" of his daughter's union with Eav and said of his HK$500
million manhunt: "It just offers her one more choice in life. She is in
charge to make the final decision. People have been mistaken in thinking
that I would pick the man for her. How is it possible? It's not Romeo and
Juliet, and I won't stop her from seeing anyone."

As for Gigi, executive director of Cheuk Nang and a well-known socialite
in her own right, she is taking Daddy's eccentric behavior in stride.
Saying she was "touched" by his offer, she would neither confirm nor deny
a civil union with Eav. Instead, she asked the Hong Kong media to pass
along birthday greetings to her father, who turned 77 last Saturday.

"Please wish him a very happy birthday," she said. "His baby girl will
always find him the most handsome man in the known universe and
irreplaceable as a father and love him very much."

Those words of affection notwithstanding, Chao's daughter was clearly
annoyed by the 1,500-plus proposals she has received on social-networking
sites and called on her father to shut down his campaign to find her a
husband, adding: "I'm sure Daddy is enjoying being the king, seeing all
these handsome men from distant lands beg for his daughter's hand. I hate
to be the one bursting his daydream bubble but, hello, it's 2012."

So far, dad and daughter have not talked directly to each other about
their differences over Gigi's future love life but have chosen instead to
communicate through the gossip-hungry media in this city of 7.1 million
people. That shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed the shamelessly
flamboyant life of one of Hong Kong's most notorious Lotharios.

Chao's boast of bedding 10,000 women may be nothing more than macho
bravado - and, whatever the count, surely it has diminished considerably
as he enters his late 70s. In his younger years and well into middle age,
however, Chao did his utmost to establish a reputation as Hong Kong's
Casanova. 

Although he never married, Chao has three children by three different
women. Gigi, his only daughter, is the product of a liaison with former
actress Yiu Wai. 

The woman many regard as Chao's most impressive catch - the beautiful
Vietnamese-American model Terri Holladay, who bore him a son - believed
she had wed the property magnate in 1993 in Singapore but, when the couple
fell out two years later, the Singapore ceremony was found to have no
legal validity. 

Chao's prolonged fling with Holladay, 30 years his junior, made him the
darling of Hong Kong's racy tabloids, a role he obviously relished. Even
as a septuagenarian, he is loath to see the tabloid spotlight cast on
other geriatric epicures among Hong Kong's multimillionaires.

Last year, after another aging tycoon - Lam Kin-ming, chief executive of
Crocodile Garments Ltd - posed for a Hong Kong magazine in the company of
a bevy of adoring floozies, Chao answered back on the pages of a rival
magazine that ran photos of him cavorting with bikini-clad models.

If all this seems a bit silly, embarrassing and immature for a man who is
supposed to be gaining wisdom in his golden years - well, it is.

Ironically, however, Chao's latest publicity stunt may serve to benefit
the very LGBT group it is meant to slight. For years, Hong Kong's gay
community has lived in the shadows of a city that, despite its long
history of interaction with the West, regarded homosexuality as a
perversion. Now, thanks to Chao, gay-rights activists have a new and
much-improved poster girl: his daughter, who has politely, lovingly but
firmly refused his HK$500 million bribe.

Meanwhile, however, Hong Kong continues to offer virtually no legal
protection against discrimination to Gigi Chao or anyone else like her.
The city did not decriminalize consensual sex between men until 1991 -
and, even then, set the age of consent at 21 (as compared with 16 for
heterosexuals) and ignored lesbianism altogether.

In 2006, after Hong Kong's High Court ruled the higher age of consent for
homosexual men unconstitutional, the government - then led by chief
executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, a devout Catholic - launched an appeal of
that judgment, which failed.

At the time, gay-rights advocates celebrated this decision as the
beginning of the end of discrimination against the city's LGBT community.
But progress has been slow coming.

Hong Kong's Legislative Council, the city's mini-parliament, recently
enacted anti-discrimination legislation, but it covers only racial
minorities and ignores sexual orientation. Employers can - and still do -
fire employees who do not fit the heterosexual mold, and homosexuality
remains mostly a taboo subject among Hong Kong families.

But there are signs of change. Beyond events like Pink Season - regarded
by most people as a strange sideshow - there is increasing evidence of a
shift in attitudes. For example, Hong Kong now has its first openly
homosexual legislator - Raymond Chan Chi-chuen of the radical People Power
coalition, although it should be noted that Chan waited until after his
election last month to come out of the closet.

Skittish and belated though it may have been, Chan's announcement
nevertheless represents another crack in the wall of traditional
prejudices against homosexuality, and the cracks are getting wider. A
recent University of Hong Kong survey shows that, contrary to popular
perception, a majority of people in the city are either "accepting" or
"somewhat accepting" of homosexual or transgender colleagues in the
workplace and that a much larger majority, 85%, want to see greater
acceptance of LGBT lifestyles in general.

Clearly, Cecil Chao is not part of that majority - but his daughter is,
and Hong Kong supports her.

Hello, this is 2012.

Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing56 at gmail.com Follow him on Twitter: @KentEwing1.

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.)





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