After Record 9,778 days in Jail, Innocent Man Released

Zhang (in red sash) reunited with his extended family

One wonders if the Chinese justice system will make changes in how it convicts defendants after an innocent man was finally released after spending almost 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. It is believed to be the longest wrongful imprisonment in China's history.

A court in the eastern province in Jiangxi found there was insufficient evidence to convict then 26-year-old Zhang Yuhuan of murdering two boys in 1995. He was handed a suspended death sentence in 1995 that was commuted life in prison after two years.

The court apologizes to Zhang

Zhang applied for a retrial in 2017 and it was granted last March and then finally ruled on last month.

"After the verdict, a representative of the Jiangxi High People's Court apologized to Zhang Yuhan on behalf of the court, and informed him he has the right to apply for state compensation," said the official summary of the case that was published on the court's website.

Before Zhang, the longest wrongful sentence was held by Liu Zhonglin, who was imprisoned at the age of 22 and released 25 years later. Liu was awarded 4.6 million yuan (US$670,000), about 500 yuan for each of the 9,217 days he was in prison.

Zhang, now 53, spent 9,778 days behind bars and is applying for 7 million yuan in compensation, according to his lawyer.

"I was taken as a young man and returned as a geezer, but I still have to thank the government for giving back my innocence," Zhang told local media on Wednesday.

But the emotional toll the almost 27-year sentence had on his family cannot be compensated with money; time is not something they can reverse.

Zhang with his ex-wife who helped his appeal

At the time of his imprisonment Zhang had a wife and two sons. She divorced him after being deprived of an income for six years and remarried, though she continued to help him with his appeal. Zhang came out of jail to meet his grandchildren, the oldest one is 12 years old.

"I've seen a lot of brothers and sisters, a lot of relatives, but I don't recognize many," Zhang said, adding his mother now 84, was the hardest to recognize.

Zhang says he was tortured by public security officers to produce a confession that contributed to his original conviction. However, the Jiangxi High People's Court rejected the application by Zhang and his lawyer to have such evidence disqualified, citing a lack of evidence behind the claims.

But now Zhang wants the relevant legal authorities to take action against those who allegedly pressured him to give a false confession.

What are the chances the authorities will actually track down those people from 27 years ago? Zhang may never get the justice he wants to see.

Zhang with his 84-year-old mother

China has one of the highest conviction rates in the world at 99.9 percent in 2016, while the conviction rate in the US federal court system is 93 percent.

In 2014 the Supreme People's Court abolished the use of conviction rates as a performance benchmark in the hopes that it would lead to fewer miscarriages of justice, and reduce the instances of torture and forced confessions.

But no one listened to Zhang, or his older brother Zhang Minqiang, who said he wrote over 1,000 letters of appeal throughout his brother's imprisonment.

How will Zhang ease back into normal life again? It will be a massive challenge for him, not only from a practical sense, but also psychologically having been through so much.

Hopefully his compensation request will be approved, but how do you even begin to compensate for 27 years of lost time?

Not Everyone Understands Quarantine

At the airport people are given quarantine bracelets and stay home for 14 days

Yesterday reporters grilled Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor about people who had come back to Hong Kong and were supposed to be under home quarantine but were seen out and about. What should the public do? They asked.

She explained that people were given about two hours' grace to get straight home on whatever way, as it might be public transport. But after, that they should not leave their homes.

This 13-year-old ate dinner with her uncle (right)

However, last night eagle-eyed Hongkongers immediately saw people completely contravening the quarantine order, taking videos and pictures of them.

One was a 13-year-old girl who was out having dinner with her uncle, her bracelet clearly showing on her wrist and she made no attempt to hide it. Nor did she put on a mask after eating.

The man filming them claimed they should stay where they are as he had called the police, but they kept walking away. At first they tried to get a taxi, but the man filming warned the taxi driver the girl had a quarantine bracelet on and not to take them.

Eventually the police found the pair.

This woman went shopping with her quarantine bracelet

Then there was a woman, again showing her bracelet and grocery shopping with a haul of food. She was also criticized.

Anyone who violates the quarantine order can be prosecuted and face up to HK$25,000 in fines or six months in jail.

There were other cases of people cutting the bracelet and going out and bragging about what they had done on social media... only to be caught later.

Some people really can't take things seriously, like a contagious virus that could be deadly when spread to people with compromised immune systems.

Carrie Lam teared up, asking people to respect quarantine

Lam even teared up during the press conference yesterday when she said: "To anyone who intends to breach the quarantine orders, anyone who still wants to go out and meet up with friends, can you not be restrained for some more time so Hong Kong can win this battle?"

Her pleas fell on deaf ears for some people.

Meanwhile McDonald's issued an announcement today that starting from tomorrow until April 7, all outlets will not allow customers to dine in all their Hong Kong outlets from 6pm, though they are allowed to order takeaway or have their meals delivered to them.

Perhaps people tend to linger more in the evenings than during the day?

While this move is completely understandable given the tense health situation we are in, this also means Hong Kong's many homeless people will have no where to go at night.

Homeless won't be able to stay overnight in McDonald's now

These "McRefugees" usually come into these places to not only use the washroom, but also shelter from the cold or heat, and have a cheap meal. Staff are usually sympathetic and let them stay. But this new rule will force the McRefugees to find another place to stay for the night.

Meanwhile after more than two-month lockdown, Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, is finally breathing some fresh air, with residents slowly allowed to go outdoors in the neighbourhood.

However, not all is well in China... if anything the weeks of being stuck at home to keep safe from the coronavirus has resulted in a spike in... divorces.

State media Global Times reports that since March 1 when the divorce appointment system reopened in Xi'an in Shaanxi province, the marriage registration office began receiving a slew of appointments. There were 14 of them on March 4 and 5, reaching the maximum daily limit.

Divorce rates spiked in Xi'an... why is that?

"As a result of the epidemic, many couples have been bound with each other at home for over a month, which evoked the underlying conflicts, and in addition, the office was closed for a month, so the office has seen an acutely increasing number of divorce appointments," said an official surnamed Wang.

"Usually the office sees a wave of divorce appointments after Spring Festival and after the college entrance examinations."

But by the same token, another official in Xi'an in another district office handling divorces reports that several of the divorce requests are impulse decisions, and some couples decide to remarry when their divorce certificate is being printed...

Chinese Women Buying Security

Successful women own property for security and also status in the family

The obsession to buy a home in China continues, but we're happy to discover that more Chinese women are realizing this dream.

Despite having to deal with the gender pay gap of earning on average 16 percent less than men, Chinese women have found ways to buy homes under their own name. Last year 46.7 percent of all homeowners were women in 2018, which compares to only 5 percent just two years earlier.

Over 47 percent of women over 30 bought their own homes

These numbers came from a report by real-estate broker platform Beike Zhaofang 贝壳找房, which surveyed thousands of women aged 18-50 in 12 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan. 

For single women over 30 years of age, 47.1 percent of them bought their own homes. More than one-third managed to buy their property without a loan, and 23.4 percent own more than two properties.

Either these women got a lot of help from their parents, relatives and friends, or they have high-powered jobs, or even really generous sugar daddies giving them lots of cash...

Media outlet Southern Weekly tried to find out why this phenomenon was happening and most women they interviewed cited "a sense of security" as the main reason for buying their home(s).

Wives usually do not have their names on the deeds

For successful women in high-paying jobs, home ownership is a statement of independence. Southern Weekly interviewed a female senior manager at a finance firm who owns three properties, which resulted in her having an elevated status in the family, making her even more confident as a woman.

Also as most families only have one child, the parents are more supportive in helping out their daughters in buying a home, or will even outright buy real estate for them. In addition, parents from older generations see buying a home as a safe investment that will give the daughters security when they retire.

Many women have parents helping them buy homes

The jump in female home ownership is also a result of high divorce rates. Typically when women get married, the husband has already bought a home and the woman's side is expected to contribute caili or betrothal gifts in the form of cash or gifts, such as furniture or cars.

And so in the event of a divorce, the wife is left with nothing, because her name is not on the deed.

But with 46.7 percent of home buyers now being women, they are actively protecting themselves (and their parents) from financial ruin. It's another big step in forcing Chinese men to confront the reality that yes, women do hold up half the sky -- for themselves.

China Wants Baby-Making Machines

China is trying to encourage couples to have more children... without success

Over 10 years ago when I was working in Beijing, a local colleague admitted his parents were severely fined for having another child -- him. They were anxious for a boy, and finally had one, but his parents were punished because they were senior Communist Party members.

He said their punishment was a very high fine and being socially looked down upon for not obeying the one-child policy that was implemented in 1979. In the end he managed to leave China to study an MBA at Duke University and now runs his family's company.

A financial penalty can make life difficult to make ends meet, but what about the horrific stories of women in rural areas who were forced to have abortions in their second and even third trimester because local officials wanted to keep the birth rates down in order to have good job performances?

A Chinese stamp showing a family with three piglets

The physical and psychological scars are indelible.

But now the Chinese government is doing away with the draconian policy and allowing parents to have not only two but more children. There are even propaganda posters of families of pigs, supposedly a metaphor that the more you procreate, the happier your family will be.

However, women aren't buying it.

Since the one-child policy, more young women are getting a higher education, focusing on careers and getting married later. There's also the rising costs of having a child; many can only afford to have one.

There is also the statistical problem of fewer women in the population thanks to the one-child policy, as families preferred boys of girls in almost 40 years.

According to He Yafu, a demographer and author of a book on the impact of China's population controls says the number of women between the ages of 20 and 39 is expected to drop by more than 39 million over the next decade, to 163 million from 202 million.

China needs more children for the workforce and pensions

"Without the introduction of measures to encourage fertility, the population of China will drop sharply in the future," he said.

This is a huge looming problem because the shrinking workforce won't be able to support the elderly not only in terms of manpower but also pensions.

As a result different provinces have their own incentives or punishments in order to get couples to have more children. For example, in Liaoning, one of the provinces with the lowest birthrates, is proposing several benefits for young families, including tax breaks, housing and education subsidies and longer maternity and paternity leaves, as well as investments in clinics and preschools.

Meanwhile in Jiangxi province, the government has reissued guidelines on when women can get abortions. There is a concern the rules will be strictly enforced, such as requiring a woman who is more than 14 weeks pregnant to obtain three signatures from medical personnel before an abortion.

Two other provinces have made it harder for couples to divorce, in the hopes that they will stick it out and have children.

The one-child policy from 1979 is over

Talk about not having control over one's body.

"Women cannot decide what happens to their own ovaries," one person complained on the microblogging platform Weibo, after Jiangxi announced its abortion guidelines in July.

The one-child policy has been slightly modified since it was instituted in 1979. Rural couples were allowed to try for another child if their first one was a girl, while ethnic minorities could have as many children as they liked. In 2013, if the husband and wife are only children, they were allowed to have more than one child. Then two years later, all couples could have two children.

This latest policy change didn't get the big baby bump the government was hoping for -- in fact the birthrate last year dropped, causing Beijing to worry.

On the one hand the government wants women to be educated and contribute to the work force, and on the other to pump out babies and look after aging parents. However, women get discriminated at work if they become pregnant and lose out on the career track if they don't go back to work after a period of time.

What about the men in all of this?

With a patriarchal government and society no wonder they think they can tell women what to do. But if they are having children, it's not to benefit the state.

Fact of the Day: 70% Divorces Filed by Chinese Women

More than 70 percent of divorces in China are filed by women

In the age of #MeToo or #mitu in China, it's hard to see how attitudes towards women will change much in this patriarchal society when men believe they have or are entitled to more power than women.

Although Chairman Mao Zedong claimed that "women hold up half the sky", in reality it's not true at all.

In 1986, 460,000 couples registered for divorce, while 20 years later the number jumped to 4.15 million.

A new report that uses divorce statistics from 2016 and 2017 by the Supreme People's Court shows two things. The first is that women filed more than 70 percent of the divorce cases in the past two years, with most couples splitting up after three years of marriage.

The second is that domestic violence was the second most common problem, cited as the major factor in 15 percent of divorces. "Incompatibility" was cited for 75 percent of divorce cases.

Tencent News did a survey in 2016 about the high divorce rates. Some 70,000 internet users gave their responses which found the following: About 60 percent of male respondents had cheated on their partners in a relationship, while it was around 30 percent for women respondents.

Another interesting result was that one-third of male respondents didn't think sex with prostitutes was cheating. What is it then? Having an intimate playmate? A way to work off stress? It's paid so it doesn't count?

Ah, men. Always finding an excuse to have it their way...

Rocky Cross-Border Marriages

In cross-border marriages, the reality soon sets in, and arguments flare up

In the past week Hong Kong has seen two cases of domestic disputes involving a Hong Kong husband and mainland wife, both ending in death.

A 60 year-old man was suspected of strangling his wife, 41, after an argument they had as they were in the midst of divorce proceedings.

Their 18-year-old daughter found her mother alone and unconscious in the Tokwawan flat and called police, but the woman was declared dead in the hospital.

He meanwhile jumped into Victoria Harbour and was picked up by police, with minor injuries.

This incident follows another last Saturday when a 52-year-old woman attacked her 87-year-old husband with a knife, and then jumped from the window of the Tsuen Wan flat to her death.

It is believed they were having marital problems after the mainland wife moved to Hong Kong a few years ago. They were separated but still living together in the flat.

Hong Kong has seen many older men marrying younger mainland women, hoping she will look after him in old age, while she looks to him as a way to get residency in the city.

Perhaps when reality sets in, it's not what both parties had expected and the quarrels begin...

This is only the basic storyline... it's probably even more complicated with money (or the lack thereof) that makes it even more stressful. And Hong Kong is left dealing with the mess afterwards.

When the disputes involve children, particularly young ones, it's even more complicated, especially when the mother takes the children back to the mainland and are near impossible to find again.

It's a sad state of affairs, and social workers here have a hard time trying to build relationships with the mainland authorities in the hopes of tracking down disgruntled spouses and children who miss their other parent.

Perhaps the good thing is that the marriages between locals and mainlanders has dropped in recent years. It peaked in 2006 at 28,145 and was 16,154 last year. The last thing we need is more conflict in the city that leads to heartache and in extreme cases, death.

Getting Hitched to Reality of Marriage

The documentary looks at what happens to couples after they get married...

When people get married, do they really know what they are getting themselves into? Do they know what challenges they will face and how they will deal with them? With 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, why do people still tie the knot?

Those are the kinds of questions New York-based documentary filmmaker Doug Block asks in his film 112 Weddings.

I had read about the documentary in a newspaper article almost a year ago and was curious to actually see it. And on the flight back to Hong Kong I had that opportunity.

Documentary filmmaker Doug Block

Block is an award-winning documentary filmmaker (The Kids Grow Up, 51 Birch Street, The Heck with Hollywood!), who funds his passion by being a wedding videographer.

He started doing it over 20 years ago and in that period has shot 112 weddings. He narrates the documentary by saying, "I found it unexpectedly thrilling to be a wedding videographer. We're always struggling to gain access to our subjects, and here I was being granted a front-row position as an ordinary couple experience perhaps the most extraordinary day in their lives (and being paid well for it, no less!).

When his 25th wedding anniversary came around, it prompted Block to go and find the same couples again to see how marriage had affected them, if it was what they thought it would be, and how they fared.

He tried to track down some of his favourite couples; a few may have moved away and he lost contact with him, while others had divorced and didn't want to talk on camera.

In the film each interview starts with footage from the wedding, and then the couple is interviewed. Even though they are trying to present the best side of themselves, their body language and the words they choose are more telling.

Wedding #71, Block says, Jenn and Augie's was one of the most joyful he had ever witnessed. After eight years, they were still in love with each other with one child, but financially things were tight and admitted they were fighting more than when they had gotten married.

Augie said that after a fight one would want space, but in reality they are in this together because of the child and so they have to work hard to make things work. "My wife and I agree 95 percent of the time. But that 5 percent, we're just at each other's throats."

Olivia and Dennis were Wedding #49, with Olivia wearing a kind of pearl-encrusted crown that made her look like a medieval princess walking down the aisle. After they got married, the couple moved to Tulum, Mexico for her to be a massage therapist, and him a scuba diving instructor.

When their daughter Lily was born, they moved back to New York, but when she turned three, Lily was diagnosed with a brain tumour which threw their lives into turmoil.

The two parents completely focused on their child, with the constant fear of losing her at anytime, which put their lives into perspective as well. They needed each other to help Lily get better, and as they are interviewed, Block pans up above the casual white shirted-couple on the couch to reveal an elaborate gold-framed portrait of their daughter, who looks sad.

Dennis says, "There is no real book on how to take care of a child who maybe taken from you at any moment, and dealing with that fear. You're thrown into a living nightmare that never ends."

However, Block reports on his website that Lily is now 10 and her parents say is "kicking ass".

Tom and Yoonhee looking back on their wedding day

There was one mixed-race couple in the documentary, Yoonhee and Tom, Wedding #43. They met on a plane and Tom wouldn't give up pursuing her, even though she was supposed to finish her masters degree in music, and her father back in Korea had already arranged a teaching job for her there.

But she fell in love with Tom and decided to give up her career for him, much to the chagrin of her father, who at first refused to come to the wedding, but did come in the end. Yoonhee and Tom now have two children.

Block asks them if he thinks it was fate for them to meet on the plane. While Tom immediately dismisses the possibility, Yeehoon, who seems very bubbly and optimistic, looks out into space and says, "Life can be funny. Life can be very funny because, I mean, why did it happen, you know?"

Alexander and Janice just after finishing their own vows

Another loving couple was Janice and Alexander, Wedding #111. Both their parents were very displeased to find out the couple did not want to have a "wedding", as it involved ownership, right of lineage, and possession, values they did not believe in; instead they had a three-day "partnership ceremony", and Block shows a scene of them right afterwards, so excited, and Alexander saying, "We did it! We did it!"

Thirteen years later they still seem happily together, with two daughters, and the older one keenly aware that though they are her parents, they are not legally married.

When Block contacted them, though, Janice and Alexander decided it was time to really get married, and was lucky enough to record their very small ceremony in their living room, which was just as emotional, if not more, with their children as witnesses.

The documentary managed to dissect a few marriages that had gone sour. Janet and David, (Wedding #83) had beautiful wedding, but seemed strange for the groom to reveal how many meds he was taking -- was this to calm his nerves or was he always like this?

After seven years and a child later, the marriage was over, and David, with disheveled hair, sitting in a small apartment is honest about what happened. He was a struggling screenwriter and didn't get too far, while it seemed Janet wanted her husband to grow up and take responsibility of looking after the family.

Block wasn't able to get Janet's side of the story, but David is not malicious at all, taking complete blame for the end of the marriage and admires her for being with him throughout that time.

However the same could not be said of Sue and Steve, Wedding #1. When Block contacted Sue about doing the documentary, she said she had just filed for divorce the day before. She had recently found out her husband had been cheating on her and had another woman, which was a complete shock to her.

The filmmaker was able to get Steve's side of the story, where he says the marriage became lifeless, particularly when three children were in the picture, and things were very routine.

In the end there is a scene with Sue looking back at her wedding photos. She says she can look at them because it's a different person in the picture.

One sad couple was Danielle and Adam, Wedding #90. Block remembers Danielle as a radiant bride, but when he met them again five years later, she was severely depressed, something she had before, but the sadness was magnified after taking hormone pills to get pregnant.

With the two of them together, she looked despondent and very pessimistic, saying how she could not contribute as much as she wanted to the family because she was tired all the time.

But her husband was so stoic and even said on camera: "I personally feel like you're completely worth waiting for, for this to fix itself one day. And even if that's never, I still think that I wouldn't want to do this with anyone else, you know?"

Wedding #112: Heather and Sam after their ceremony

To add more depth to 112 Weddings, Block also interviewed a lesbian couple who were also wedding photographers. Anna and Erica have been together for four years and are keen to get married, to be recognized legally as a couple.

And then as a counterpoint to the previous weddings, Block follows Heather and Sam, Wedding #112, and both are very articulate in talking about their hopes and dreams of what they want their marriage to be like. The film ends with the end of their wedding ceremony, and they begin walking literally into the sunset, into the unknown.

112 Weddings makes you realize that there are a lot of things people don't necessarily consider when they get married, but by the same token, you don't know how you will deal with a situation until it happens, and it requires teamwork. Love and communication are essential, but also can the relationship sustain through time? No one knows until they actually go through with it...

Murdoch Moving On

Murdoch is starting the new chapter in his life, and what about ex-wife Wendi?

Media baron Rupert Murdoch says that allegations his ex-wife Wendi Deng had an affair with former UK prime minister Tony Blair led to him divorcing her after 14 years of marriage.

The 83-year-old founder, chairman and CEO of News Corporation also confirmed the existence of a note in which Deng gushed about Blair that was published in Vanity Fair last month.

"I regret the whole Vanity Fair thing," he said in an interview with Fortune magazine. "I wish we just could have got a divorce quietly."

The damning note in a diary entry says in part: "Whatever why I'm so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body. Also I love his power on stage... and what else what else and what else," in broken English.

Murdoch said the marriage fell apart after Vanity Fair reported rumours that Deng and Blair conducted their affair at Murdoch's Carmel, California ranch.

Well, you know, everybody was talking about these things and never telling me anything," he said. "I don't really want to go into this. But then I was told two pretty circumstantial things about the ranch.

"I was in Australia. When I got back, I naturally asked the staff, and it opened up. That's the story. And then, you know, a week later I filed [for divorce]. As soon as I could find a lawyer."

Did Murdoch really have to find a lawyer? Doesn't he have an army of them on hand to cater to all his needs?

In any event, there have been rumours of Deng having dalliances with other men, not just Blair. While she is attracted to power as evidenced by Murdoch and the former PM, she apparently also likes to play with younger men.

As for informing Deng about the divorce, the story goes the then couple hosted a party in their $44 million penthouse. During the festivities he allegedly whispered in Deng's ear that he was divorcing her. Sounds like it should be in a movie, right?

What Deng does next will be interesting now that her days of leveraging Murdoch's connections are over... She is the model many ambitious mainland Chinese women try to emulate in their quest for quick money and power that ends in a pretty decent payout, but in this case with a sordid reputation...

The Marital Pressure's On

Baihe website helps singletons get matched up to please their elders

Over Chinese New Year, young mainland men and women who are single dread going home for the holidays because they know they will be grilled by their parents and relatives asking when they will get married.

During my time in Beijing, there were news stories about men willing to be their pretend boyfriend and actually go to the woman's hometown and stay with her family -- sex not included -- for a fee.

They would meet before the actual Spring Festival just to see if they could somehow get along, go through the terms of the agreement and then go ahead with the farce.

I don't know anyone who actually resorted to that route, but it seemed the men were trying to fill a desperate need, though the reality of the situation must have been awkward to say the least.

And now a dating website is under fire for pressuring young women to hurry up and find a mate.

Matchmaking website Baihe has come out with a TV commercial about a well-to-do young woman and her aging grandmother. Viewers can see the family is wealthy as the living room seems quite large... In any event after the young woman's university graduation, her grandmother asks her when she will get married, and she persists as the young woman grows older.

Grandma keeps persisting that her granddaughter get hitched

It gets to the point where the young woman decides she must do something about this with the help of Baihe and in the last scene she is dressed in a gorgeous bridal gown covered in lace and pearls and finally tells her grandmother on her hospital bed that she has finally tied the knot.

The commercial has provoked some interesting online reactions, some infuriated that the website has played the "filial piety card" in order to pressure young people to rush into marriage just to please their elders. Some are so angered by the site that they promise to boycott it -- a usual knee-jerk reaction from mainlanders who are annoyed at anything.

Others suggested that perhaps people should be having conversations with their elders that pressuring them to get married does not help the situation.

"Besides the conventional family values, people shall not sacrifice their own happiness to comply with their family members' unreasonable demands," commented Peng Xiaohui, a prominent sexologist and Central China Normal University professor.

But not everyone has the same idea as Peng.

Some not only think of it as a Confucian ideal to strive for, but are only thinking in the best interests of the child or grandchild to find a mate to share their happiness and burdens together.

However, not all elders know how complicated and difficult the dating scene has become thanks to the proliferation of divorces, mistresses, long-distance relationships and so on.

Dating websites can either solve the problem or make them even more complicated...

It all comes down to luck.

Divorced from Reality

Florence Tsang Chiu-wing (right) fought over Samanthur Li-kan's assets (left)

In 2011 Hong Kong was riveted by a high profile divorce case between Samanthur Li Kin-kan and Florence Tsang Chiu-wing.

Li is the son of Samuel Tak-lee, head of Prudential Enterprise that has a collection of global real estate developments and owns the Prudential Hotel in Jordan.

The divorce proceedings came about when Tsang got pregnant and refused Li's demand that she get an abortion, and then she discovered he was having an affair.

Thus began a legal battle that allowed the rest of us to peek into the lives of the uber rich.

The court heard how Li liked to splurge more than HK$100 million on himself, and at one point had a Boeing business jet, two yachts, 28 cars and millions of dollars worth of wine.

Meanwhile she claimed she was used to her lavish lifestyle, and the court awarded her HK$250 million for a property in Hong Kong, HK$30 million for a place in London, HK$2.5 million for two cars in Hong Kong and another HK$1 million for a set of wheels in London.

She also got HK$5 million to buy a yacht and HK$4.6 million to enable to her to join clubs in both Hong Kong and London.

In the end Tsang was awarded a whopping HK$1.4 billion which must have freaked out all married men in Hong Kong. Part of the reasoning was because the court felt Li and his father had deliberately tried to lower the value of Li's assets by transferring some of them into the father's name.

Li and his father appealed to the Court of Appeal and yesterday it slashed Tsang's divorce settlement to HK$411 million, saying the lower court was wrong to include Li's multi-billion dollar real estate investment in Japan, which was developed with seed money from his father (that he bought back for a nominal sum of HK$1).

The Court of Appeal also ruled that Tsang had her own assets and so HK$411 million would be enough. Li had already given her HK$202.8 million already so the remaining balance was HK$208 million.

Will Tsang be able to live comfortably on HK$411 million her ex-husband gives her? It more than covers the lifestyle she seems to have demanded.

The lesson learned? The rich get mind-boggling richer and even their ex-wives aren't living too shabbily even though their original settlement was reduced by two-thirds.

And people wonder why Hong Kong women only want to meet rich men...