International Law

The Next China Reality Show Concept?

By Stan

You know, my blog has lately been kind of a bummer. It’s either depressing economic news or boring legal analysis.

Thank heavens that there is entertaining news out there, or I might completely flip out. Case in point:

A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep.

But the contest took a fatal turn when one of the women, eliminated for her looks, drove the man and the four other competitors off a cliff, Chinese media reported.

The spurned mistress died and the other passengers were injured, the reports said.

Police initially thought the car had plummeted off a mountain road in eastern China on December 6 by accident. Then they learned of the contest through a letter the dead woman had left behind, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said.

The 29-year-old woman, identified only as Yu, was a waitress when she met the businessman at a restaurant in the coastal city of Qingdao in 2000.

At the time, the businessman, identified only by his last name — Fan — was married and had four other mistresses, according to the Peninsula Metropolis Daily newspaper in Qingdao.

The women knew of one another, but none elected to break up with the man and give up their rent-free apartment and a 5,000 yuan ($730) monthly allowance, the reports said.

When the economy soured, the businessman apparently decided to let go of all but one mistress.

He staged a private talent show in May, without telling the women his intentions. An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang and how much alcohol they could hold, the Shanghai Daily said.

The judge knocked out Yu in the first round of the competition based on her looks. Angry, she decided to exact revenge by telling her lover and the four other women to accompany her on a sightseeing trip before she returned to her home province, the media reports said.

It was during the trip that Yu reportedly drove the car off the cliff.

Fan shut down his company after the crash and paid Yu’s parents 580,000 yuan ($84,744) as compensation for her death.

The four other women left him, as did his wife when she learned of the affairs.

Now, someone actually died here, so this is a tragic event. Makes me look rather bad, therefore, to admit that I giggled my ass off when I read the story.

You gotta feel for this guy. He was trying to be responsible and cut back on expenses — times are tough. And he decided to take the high road by offering these girls a fair chance at retention. And what does he get for his generosity? A short drive off a high cliff, and in the end, his wife and girlfriends left him anyway.

If a studio doesn’t option that story and greenlight it for production within a month, that will be a tragedy.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).