Imagine you were willing to give any amount of money for a man to marry your daughter but you receive an open letter from your daughter urging you to accept that she is a lesbian and that men are just not for her. How would you feel?
This is the story of a rich Hong Kong tycoon, Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, who offered a whopping HK$500 million ($64m) 'dowry' to a man that would marry his daughter, Gigi Chau. The only problem, however, was that his daughter was already married to her female partner of nine years, Sean Eav. Marrying a man was the last thing she wanted to do.
Despite knowing that his daughter was 'married' in a civil ceremony in France in 2012, the property developer father remained poised to attract suitable men for his daughter with his bounty. He insisted that his daughter was still single, adding that he believed that her thoughts could still change as she was only 33, the South China Morning Post reported.
The Hong Kong based newspaper was among the first news outlets to publish the open letter that she was forced to write as there seemed to be no other way out to convince her father that she cannot be happy with a man.
"My regret is that you have no idea how happy I am with my life, and there are aspects of my life that you don't share. I suppose we don't need each other's approval for our romantic relationships, and I am sure your relationships are really fantastic too," Gigi wrote in her letter.
"However, I do love my partner Sean, who does a good job of looking after me, ensuring I am fed, bathed and warm enough every day, and generally cheering me up to be a happy, jolly girl. She is a large part of my life, and I am a better person because of her".
She added that she was sorry to mislead him to think that she was only in a lesbian relationship because there was a shortage of good, suitable men in Hong Kong.
"There are plenty of good men, they are just not for me," she said.
One of most interesting part of the letter was the way she ended it.
"Patiently yours," she said, 'Your daughter, Gigi."
