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China / Society

Daughter's boast brings derision

(chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-07-16 18:58

A moment of daughterly pride has backfired in a big way on an Internet user who boasted that her father had never

stooped to corruption as a local government official.

With the overwhelming interest came mockery and intense scrutiny on Pangjiaqiao and her family. Many netizens felt the woman was flaunting her status as a child of a senior official.

The woman - who made the prideful post under the online name Pangjiaqiao (Fat Sparrow) on July 11 - bragged that her father held an "important" position, which has brought a tsunami of ridicule down upon her and her family over the next few days.

By Wednesday evening, a separate tag of "kengdienv," which means a daughter who gets her father in trouble, had attracted more than 15,000 comments and 11.4 million views on Sina Weibo, China's largest Twitter-like platform.

Her words eventually sparked one of China's infamous "human-flesh searches" - a cyber manhunt that ferrets out a person's most intimate details about his private life - by computer geeks.

It was soon revealed that Pangjiaqiao's parents bought her two homes inside the Third Ring Road in Beijing one year after her graduation.

One internet user, Lu Zhenwang, said the two houses have an estimated market value of more than 10 million yuan ($1.6 million).

Previous posts that were unearthed by the "human-flesh searches" showed that her parents hold an eye-popping 10 residential properties in her hometown of Shenyang city, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning province.

Cyber sleuths also found that Pangjiaqiao is now bidding in this year's lottery to buy her third home in Beijing, even though her monthly wage is only 5,000 yuan ($800). The new "owner-occupied commercial residential project" launched by Beijing municipal government in 2013. Such a house can be purchased at 70 percent off the market price.

When Pangjiaqia's real name was exposed as Fang, she began deleting her previous posts and changed her story to claim that her father was not a high-ranking official, just an average man with an important and special job.

She confirmed owning houses in Beijing, but said the properties were purchased by her parents and parents-in-law.

She also tried to prove the family increased their assets due to good wealth management.

But China's netizens were unconvinced. One user, who goes by the name of shenshuiluoyu, wrote on News portal Sina:

"How can we believe her words? Nobody can afford to buy two houses in Beijing and 10 houses in Shenyang if he is not a businessman, but a breadwinner working for the government."

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