A man in central China has filed for divorce after learning his wife blew their life savings on a male streamer, sending him 670,000 yuan (around $94,000 USD) and leaving the family deep in debt.
Mr. Liu from Zhengzhou spent eight years living frugally and funnelling nearly all his income to his wife, hoping to give her “a sense of security.”
According to The South China Morning Post, he saved 1.16 million yuan ($163,000 USD) during that time, all of which he entrusted to her.
But when he recently asked to check the account, his wife refused, raising suspicions. She later broke down and admitted the money was gone.
Man catches life sending over $90,000 to livestreamer
Out of the 1.16 million yuan, she had tipped 670,000 yuan to a male livestreamer she followed obsessively. She couldn’t explain where the rest of the money went. On top of that, she had borrowed another 80,000 yuan ($11,200 USD) from online lenders, pushing the family into debt.
Liu said he lived in a bare-bones rental costing just 300 yuan ($42 USD) a month while sending nearly every spare cent home. His wife has been a full-time caregiver for their child since they married eight years ago.
“I have been saving money on food and expenses and offered all my money to her. However, she gave the money to another man,” he told Henan TV, adding that he felt “stabbed in the back” and no longer loved her.
The wife admitted she became “obsessed” with the streamer. Chat logs reportedly showed her asking him to call her “baby,” though she insisted they never met offline.
With the savings wiped out and 80,000 yuan in debt, Liu now plans to recover half of the couple’s common property before filing for divorce.
This isn’t the first extreme case involving viewers sending massive sums to livestreamers.
Last year, another man in China lived on steamed buns and drained his family’s life savings, even stealing hundreds of thousands, to send a streamer roughly $555,000 just to be called “bro.”
And in South Korea, a man who had donated $70,000 to a female streamer was arrested after confessing to killing her, a case that shocked the region’s streaming community.
