Chinese Man Dresses Up As His Dead Sister For 20 Years To Help Mentally-Ill Mom

How much can you sacrifice to care for your sick mom? Can you trade your own identity for your mother’s happiness? A 50-year-old man in China has been dressing up as his sister for 20 years to help his mentally-ill mother cope up with his sister’s death.

It’s not just an occasional cosplay thing. He has been literally living as a girl for two decades and has discarded all his male clothing. A video of him caring for her mother while dressed in traditional cheongsam dress has gone viral in China.

He began wearing female clothes when her mother showed up signs of mental illness following her daughter’s death.

Convinced that her daughter came back, his mother began to cheer up.

The un-named man from Guilin in the Guangxi region told Pear Video that he kept doing it because his mother was very happy. He said:

“She was so happy, so I kept doing it. I’ve basically been living as a woman ever since… I don’t own any men’s clothing.”

Many netizens has praised him for his filial piety and says he is a “real man” and “truly filial.”

Filial piety or respect towards parents, elders and ancestors, is a core value in Chinese culture and society. It dates back from the 400 BC and is an essential virtue of Confucianism. It is also backed by most religions. Filial piety has been described in the earliest texts of known philosophers and is the main concern of a large number of stories. It was also a criteria for choosing officials during the ancient dynasties.

But not everyone is convinced. Some netizens are criticizing the man’s actions.

One commenter asks, “Is this filial piety or is he looking for an excuse to be a transvestite?”.

The man, however, is not troubled of what other people think of his actions as long as his mother is happy:

“I’m doing this for my mother. Why would I be afraid of people laughing at me?”

“This is my family’s business, if you don’t like the way it looks then don’t look.”

His mother was also shown in the video referring to the man as her daughter: “She is my daughter. When my other daughter died she became my daughter.”

Watch the full footage from Pear Video below: