This was too good not to post. Thanks to Scott for showing me this on my break. …My hearts and thoughts go out to the victims/survivors etc.
Chinese mistress contest takes tragic turn
BEIJING, China (CNN) — A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep.
The businessman and his spurned mistress met in Qingdao, pictured here last August, local media report.
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.
There is no aspect of this story that makes the slightest bit of sense to me. I fear that my basic cluelessness will forever prevent me from engaging fully with human beings.
Which part is clueless? The way the article is written or the behaviors and lifestyle of those involved?
Oh, the article is clear enough about the events, and amusing enough. I’m the one who is clueless.
It’s the rationales behind any of the actions of any of the players that are unclear to me. It’s unclear to me why he needed or wanted 5 mistresses in addition to his wife, why the 5 didn’t seem to care about the other 4 (or the wife), why having somebody else judge the mistresses seemed like a good idea, why the quality of their singing figured into it, why one of them (who didn’t care about the other 4 previously) suddenly cared so much that multiple murders seemed reasonable to her, why the guy felt responsible to the tune of $84,000 (when his supposed motivation for the contest was that he was running out of money), and so on.
But in retrospect, I suppose it’s possible to make up a back-story in which this made some kind of sense, even if the article doesn’t contain any details that would let you do it. If it were a movie, I think I’d put the scenes in reverse chronological order, like Memento.
Well it is a difficult culture. That’s all I really have to say about it. I know in MANY countries, it’s not uncommon to have mistresses or additional wives. You also have to look at the opportunities and upbringing for females, they got $$. A lot of them aren’t treated as equals depending on social classes etc. It’s a huge gray world.
Mistresses weren’t merely about sex. A lot factored into it- women to use to also entertain friends and clients.
Bottom line- she didn’t like being rejected for her looks so she wanted to kill them all, and herself for the disgrace of being turned away.
He was only intending on keeping ONE- so he was eliminating one by one. She was merely the first to go.
He didn’t PLAN to spend the $84,000 but that’s how much he wound up having to pay after Yu killed herself and attempted to kill the rest of them… he had to shut down his company, so obviously he wasn’t THAT loaded.
What this calls to mind is the response I get from one of my friends whenever I start bitching about movie remakes. (I hate them and refuse to watch them, and they drive me into a rage … I exaggerate slightly here for dramatic effect.) “Why do they keep making these things?!!!” I exclaim.
My friend always responds, “Because they want to make a lot of money.” He also says that about sequels.
It’s true, and I can’t argue with it. But I still don’t understand it. Perhaps I should say that I understand it intellectually, but viscerally I’ll never understand it.
No- you’re from a different culture. You may never.