A Chinese couple who abandoned their daughter when she was only a toddler, suddenly reappeared in her life decades later when they learned she was well off, to ask her for a home for her brother.

Zhang was only 2 years old when her parents decided they couldn’t raise her anymore and placed her in the care of her brother’s sister. They had little to no other interaction with her ever since, and the now 29-year-old woman always considered her aunt’s family her biological one. It was for this reason that she recently used part of her savings to help her cousin, who she considers her brother, buy an apartment. However, she never anticipated that her generosity would suddenly make her biological parents come knocking, asking her to buy an apartment for her biological brother as well…

Photo: Ekaterina Bolovtsova/Pexels

The Shandong Business Daily reported that Zhang’s biological parents, who also live in Guangzhou, demanded that she take care of their son, whom they had kept, despite their financial difficulties. When the young woman refused, they filed a lawsuit with a local court asking for 500,000 yuan ($72,000) in “parental maintenance”.

The Chinese court recently issued a controversial verdict that sparked outrage on Chinese social media. It ruled that, while Zhang had no obligation to gift property to her adult biological brother or otherwise help him financially, she was legally required to support her parents.

Filial piety is a big deal in China, and the law clearly states that all adult children have a legal obligation to offer support to their biological parents, regardless of whether they fulfilled their duties as parents. Basically, if they gave you life, you need to support them when you grow up if their income does not cover the needs of daily life. In this particular case, the court ruled that Zhang needed to negotiate with her biological parents and settle on an amount to pay as maintenance…

The verdict sparked outrage online, with the vast majority of comments being critical to Zhang’s parents.

“Are they vampires? The father sucked up the blood of his sister, and now he and his wife want to drain the blood from their daughter,” one person wrote.

“It’s so lucky that Zhang didn’t grow up in her family of origin. Horrible!” someone else commented.