A couple of years ago, we wrote about Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, a Hong Kong-based property and shipping tycoon who offered US $65 million to any man who could woo his gay daughter, Gigi Chao. At the time, 33-year-old Gigi had just announced her wedding to her partner of seven years, Sean Eav.
Fast forward to present-day and Gigi is still a happily married woman, but Cecil doesn’t appear to have given up yet. He is in the news again for raising the reward to a whopping HK $ 1 billion (approximately US $130 million), even though thousands of eligible bachelors have tried and failed at the task. 77-year-old Cecil is still refusing to acknowledge Gigi’s marriage, insisting that she is single.
Photo: Gigi Chao/Facebook
The billionaire businessman is quick to point out that he’s not homophobic. “I’m not saying that it’s not okay to be gay,” he said. “I mean, it’s her own choice and her own tendency, but she should make sure she knows what she wants. Maybe what she wants today is different [from] what she wants in the future.”
Cecil sounds like any other concerned parent, but the words are rather strange coming from him, considering his playboy image. At one point, he had bragged about having bedded over 10,000 women. But when it comes to his precious daughter, he wants her to have a “good marriage and children.”
Photo: Gigi Chao/Facebook
Gigi said that her wife Sean was left distraught by her father’s interview. But she isn’t taking it too seriously. “I don’t think my dad’s offering of any amount of money would be able to attract a man I would find attractive,” she said. But she hasn’t let this affect her relationship with her father. “Thank you, Daddy, I love you too,” were her exact words.
In fact, Gigi is quite willing to befriend a man who agrees to donate his ‘dowry’ to her charity, Faith in Love. Of course, he shouldn’t mind that she already has a wife and the relationship would be strictly platonic.
Photo: Gigi Chao/Facebook
Back in 2012, when the plea was first made public, Gigi received scores of marriage proposals. “War veterans from the US, someone from Ethiopia, someone from Istanbul, South America, Portugal, really from all over the world,” she said. “One American suitor wrote: ‘I’m interested in the offer. I am a male person, who also happens to be gay.’”
Although Gigi has no intentions of dating men, she understands her father’s perspective. “I understand that he loves me, it’s just he’s from another time and it’s difficult for him to understand the plight of the LGBT,” she said.
Photo: video caption
Gigi is a part-time pilot, founder of the charity Faith in Love Foundation and an executive director at her father’s property development company. “At the office it’s business as usual. At family gatherings we hug and dance. And we just agree to disagree on what marriage is and family is.”
Sources: International Business Times, Daily Mail
