Wah lau eh, put down your Kopi-O first, don’t spill all over the table when you hear this one! If you thought local TV dramas were wild, wait till you see what happens when the mega-rich decide to produce their own reality. This is absolute peak sibei dramatic Kopitiam gossip.

The Ultimate Power Move: “Money Can Buy Happiness, But Cannot Buy Kissing License”

Here is the breakdown of the wild story blowing up online right now:

1. The Boss Lady Dream

Got one super rich China auntie (age secret, paiseh to say). She got so much cash lying around that she decided to self-fund her own online short drama (microdrama). But she didn’t just sit back and collect profits like a normal investor—she wanted to be the female lead, playing a gorgeous, regal princess.

2. The Victim… Oops, Lead Actor

For her male lead, she personally handpicked 23-year-old hunk actor Zhong Yufei to play a down-on-his-luck prince. Basically: “I pay, so I pick the handsome boy.”

3. The “60 Kissing Scenes” Clause

The entire drama only had around 50 short episodes, but this auntie forced the director to add more than 60 kissing scenes! The film crew had to tahan until they joked that every two steps the actors walked, they had to stop and kiss once.

4. The Actor Suffer

Poor 23-year-old actor later posted a video complaining until super sad—saying his personal boundaries were completely crossed and he felt extremely uncomfortable as more and more intimate scenes were stuffed into the script.

5. Censorship Steps In

After finishing filming, the streaming platform saw the raw footage and went “Aiya, too explicit already!” and chopped out over 20 kissing scenes. Because the cuts were so abrupt and weird, confused viewers even thought the two leads were secretly having a real-life affair off-screen!

6. Payment Dispute & Drama

When the show released and got terrible reviews, the rich woman got angry, blamed the editing team, and refused to pay the remaining 30,000 yuan (~S$5,700) production fee to the director! Director Meng Xing got so fed up that she came out publicly to reveal the whole saga.

Kopitiam Summary: Rich auntie spends money to live out her K-drama romance fantasy with a 23-year-old boy, forces him to kiss 60 times, gets censored by the platform, gets bad reviews, and then refuses to pay the bill. Aiya, truly “Auntie Ximen 2.0”!

4 Other Mind-Boggling Things Real-Life “Crazy Rich Asians” Have Done

If you think self-funding a drama just to kiss a handsome actor 60 times is the ceiling, think again. When you have infinite cash, the flexing gets out of this world:

When you have infinite cash, the flexing gets completely out of this world. For starters, some Middle Eastern and Asian tycoons routinely book entire first-class cabin seats just for their pet falcons or prize-winning birds when traveling. Imagine paying top-dollar for Singapore Airlines Suites Class, only to look over and realize your neighbor eating caviar is a falcon wearing a leather hood!

Beyond traveling in style with pets, multi-millionaires across India and Southeast Asia frequently drop $5M to $10M USD just to fly in global megastars like Rihanna, Beyoncé, or Bruno Mars for a private 45-minute performance at a birthday bash or pre-wedding celebration. Who needs to fight for concert tickets when you can literally bring the entire stadium to your backyard?

When it comes to weddings, the ultra-wealthy take things even further by shutting down public parks or renting out actual UNESCO heritage sites in Europe, transforming them into private fairytale kingdoms complete with custom-built glass palaces for a single night—a budget that could easily build three whole HDB blocks.

Finally, there are those who buy gold-plated supercars purely for fun, customizing solid gold, diamond-encrusted Lamborghinis and Bugattis only to let them sit in air-conditioned, multi-story private garages. It is the ultimate “Crazy Rich” flex: paying millions extra for a super-luxury ride that you cannot even park at your local hawker centre!

At the end of the day, whether it’s renting a superstar for a night or funding a 50-episode drama just to score 60 kisses with a young actor, one thing is for sure: When you have that much money, reality is whatever you pay for it to be!

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