Man dresses up as dead sister for 20 years for sake of mentally-ill mother

The man says he started dressing up as a woman after his mother started exhibiting signs of mental illness after the death of her daughter. After she saw him, she was convinced that her daughter had returned.

Talk of selfless love and this Chinese man could well be the world’s most loving son. In his 50s, he’s been dressing up as his dead sister for the last 20 years just so that his mentally ill mother can cope with the death of her daughter.

His story, on YouTube channel Pear Video, is raging on the internet and the latest craze on Chinese social media.

The video shows how the man, from Guilin in China’s Guangxi region, dressed up in a conventional cheongsam outfit, takes care of his ailing mother. He says he started dressing up as a woman after his mother started exhibiting signs of mental illness after the death of her daughter. After she saw him, she was convinced that her daughter had returned.

He has been living as a woman since then and claims he does not own any men’s clothes. He earns his living by playing the flute and isn’t married. “For my mother I’m not afraid of anything. I’m not afraid of people laughing at me,” he says in the video. His mother says, “My daughter passed away. He’s my daughter now.”

With the video going viral, the hashtag #HePosedAsHisDeadSisterFor20Years# was used widely on Sina Weibo (a Chinese micro blogging website).

Most people commenting on the site praised the man for what he was doing, while a few raised questions such as, “Is he using this as an excuse to dress up as a transvestite?” and “Didn’t the mother ask where the son has gone?”

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