section_path: Personal life/Relationships
section_name: Relationships
paragraph_text: Relationships
  
  I love with passion and intensity, but I end things with absolute finality. No matter how painful it is, I face my life and relationships with reason I never allow myself to look back or regret. I have to choose what is right, not what is comfortable.
  
  Hsu was a fixture in celebrity media, sustained by public fascination with her personal life, which she had been open and candid about since the outset of her career and which attracted no less attention after she had stepped back from acting. She was known for high-profile relationships with male idols and two “ flash marriages,” often described as “daring in love and hate” and likened to the dramatic plots of her own idol dramas.
  
  Hsu's first love began in 1994 with a student who was two years ahead of her at the Taipei Hwa Kang Arts School and lasted for three years until her graduation in 1997. She then dated Blackie Chen, after which they remained close friends. From late 1998 to 2000, she dated South Korean singer and Clon member Koo Jun-yup at the height of Clon's popularity. A fan of Koo, she was introduced to him by Taiwanese singer Yuki Hsu (sometimes misreported as Tarcy Su), who had covered the Mandarin version of Koo's song "Escape from City", at a party in Korea. They did not publicly confirm their relationship, during which Hsu faced pressure from Koo's fans due to circulating rumors, while Koo faced pressure from his management, who were concerned that a public romance could damage his idol career. In May 2000, Clon canceled a scheduled appearance on ASOS's television show 100% Entertainment at short notice to avoid fueling the romantic rumors. Dee subsequently criticized Koo and his management on air for their handling of the situation. Although it has been widely misreported that the breakup resulted from a dating ban enforced by Koo's management, Koo later stated that he personally ended the relationship out of concern for his career.
  
  From mid-2001 to May 2005, Hsu dated actor Lan Cheng-lung, whom she pursued after meeting on the set of Meteor Garden. Two months after their breakup, she began dating actor and F4 member Vic Chou, who had been her godbrother since Meteor Garden. Their relationship began after Chou was involved in a car accident in July 2005, which prompted both to acknowledge their feelings for each other, a development that Lan later implied was a betrayal by a friend, while Chou responded that he had never been Lan's friend. In January 2008, Hsu announced her breakup with Chou, which he later attributed to the pressure stemming from his less successful career and earnings, an explanation Hsu denied. In 2009, following her second collaboration with Hong Kong actor Louis Koo, reports surfaced about a secret relationship between the two, which both parties denied. However, the following year, she admitted to an on-set infatuation during an interview with Kangsi Coming.
  
  When I was a student, even the smallest discomfort made me want to take a day off. Now, even when I'm sick, I worry about falling behind at work. Once you have a sense of responsibility, you stop being willful. Back when I was hosting shows, I didn't like boxed meals. Now, if there's tofu in a bento, I feel completely satisfied. Only after gaining life experience do you learn to be grateful. I used to feel afraid whenever I left home. Now, no matter where I am, I can go with the flow. Once you find courage, you become truly free. I used to think loving someone meant never being apart. Now, I keep him in my heart.
  
  In late 2010, while filming Croczilla, Hsu suffered from radial nerve inflammation and was introduced to an acupuncturist in Beijing by Ady An, who subsequently invited her to two parties at LAN Club, where Hsu met the club's owner Wang Xiaofei, the son of South Beauty restaurant group founder Zhang Lan, on both occasions. The two fell in love at first sight, and after their second meeting on An's birthday party at the club, Hsu invited Wang to her own birthday party in Taipei. After meeting a total of four times, Wang confessed his love by proposing to Hsu in Beijing, as he explained in his autobiography, Born in 1981 (2019):
  
  There is an old American movie called Waterloo Bridge that many have seen. The male and female protagonists decide to get married the third time they meet because the man is about to go to the front lines, and both of them want to establish a relationship as soon as possible to avoid losing each other in the future. However, due to various unfortunate circumstances, they ultimately do not get married. It's a tragedy. Mentioning this movie is not to say that my relationship with her is the same, but when it comes to proposing on the fifth meeting, I really understand the male protagonist's feelings. My wife and I were living far apart—one in Beijing, the other in Taipei—separated by thousands of miles. I couldn't help but feel that if I didn't seize the moment and hold onto her then, I might miss out on being with her forever.
  
  After an expeditious engagement ceremony, where they bought Tiffany engagement rings at Wangfujing and sharing mutton hotpot with friends at Houhai, they announced their engagement on October 29, 2010. The whirlwind romance drew wide media attention at the height of Hsu's career and Wang's family business, when he was known as one of the Four Beijing Playboys (京城四少)—the city's most eligible fuerdai bachelors then, alongside Wang Yu, Wang Shuo, and Wang Ke—for his romantic associations with celebrities such as Zhang Ziyi, whom he denied having an alleged affair with during her engagement to Aviv “Vivi” Nevo; with Ady An, Zhang Lan's goddaughter, who introduced Hsu to Wang but later experienced a strain in her friendship with Hsu amid widespread rumors of her romantic feelings for Wang, until Hsu and Wang attended her wedding in 2017; and with Zhang Yuqi, who announced her breakup "some time ago" with Wang one day before his engagement to Hsu was made public. Hsu and Wang registered their marriage on November 16, 2010, in Beijing. Their wedding rings were designed by Wang with the help of jewelry designer Wan Baobao, granddaughter of Wan Li.
  
  Although Hsu preferred to treat the engagement ceremony as their wedding, a formal banquet was held at the request of Wang's family on 22 March 2011 in Sanya, Hainan on 22 March 2011, followed by a week-long honeymoon in Bhutan. Hsu's star-studded beach wedding drew scrutiny for its perceived extravagance, including two five-star hotels booked for guests and a chartered flight from Taiwan, which she later defended as a more economical alternative to individual travel arrangements. The generally negative publicity was compounded by her decision to keep the highly anticipated event private from the press corps stationed outside the venue—a move she only disclosed in 2024 was due to a miscarriage surgery four days before the wedding, when she publicly denied the media speculation about her pre-wedding pregnancy. Hsu's mother later claimed that Hsu had intended to cancel the wedding due to the miscarriage. However, Wang's mother, Zhang Lan, seeking to build momentum for South Beauty's planned IPO under a bet-on agreement, insisted that the ceremony proceed to avoid the Wang family “losing face.” Although both families had announced they would not accept monetary gifts, according to Hsu's mother, Zhang collected them secretly.
  
  Hsu's " flash marriage " left a surprisingly long-lasting legacy in the Chinese media landscape. In November 2010, the intense discussions of her marriage in the Kangsi Coming Group on Douban led to a splinter group, the "Gossip Coming Group," specifically centered on the event. Over time, the latter grew into one of the most active and chaotic forums on the Chinese Internet until the government ban in 2022. Zhang Lan, Wang's mother, claimed that the wedding was sponsored by Wanda Group, prompting Wang Sicong, son of Wanda founder Wang Jianlin, to publicly refute her claims and rise to prominence as a media personality over the following decade, during which he often mocked Hsu and Wang, until he was banned on Weibo for his criticism of the Chinese government's COVID policy. Charles Zhang, CEO of Sohu and a guest at the wedding, live-blogged the private event on Sohu Weibo, without the couple's permission but with Wang's mother's approval, in an effort to drive traffic amid the microblogging turf war, sparking a feud with the couple that lasted until Zhang reconciled with Wang in 2015. Zhang's unauthorized live postings—for which he refused to apologize after Hsu's demand letter —strained her relationship with the Taiwanese media, who viewed the exclusive content given to a mainland Chinese platform as an act of preferential treatment. The tension persisted until about half a year later, when Taiwanese reporters received a Mid-Autumn Festival gift from Hsu's mother—a Parker pen, accompanied by a note. The gesture symbolized a wish to "draw a line under the past," a reference to the Chinese idiom 一筆勾銷 (yī bǐ gōu xiāo), literally meaning "to write off in one stroke.” After Zhang Lan's Douyin account was banned in 2025 following Hsu's death for spreading misinformation about her, Charles invited her to Sohu's livestreaming platform in a new round of the livestreaming turf war.
  
  Following her marriage, Hsu continued working for a year before scaling back during three difficult years of trying to conceive, when she frequently sought treatment from a range of specialists in both Western and traditional Chinese medicine, in Asia and beyond. In 2012, Hsu ended her more than a decade of vegetarianism—which she had initially adopted in hopes that one of her pet dogs would recover from an illness, and maintained out of a desire to avoid harming animals—partly due to pressure from Wang's mother, who believed that vegetarianism was detrimental to fertility, despite the fact that Hsu's elder sister was also a vegetarian and a mother. Hsu also gave up her long-standing restrictive dieting and began taking herbal remedies and nutritional supplements, in addition to receiving high-dose ovulation hormone injections. These changes affected both her hormone levels and body shape, which never returned to its famously slender pre-marriage form, drawing public scrutiny from the media and private pressure from Wang.
  
  Hsu resided in Beijing with Wang for a year but struggled to adapt to the climate, experiencing frequent nosebleeds, chest pain, and allergic reactions to the city's springtime willow catkins. She returned to Taipei, initially to serve as a stand-in host on Kangsi Coming during Dee's maternity leave until mid-2012, but moved back permanently from Beijing around early 2013. For most of their marriage, Wang commuted between Beijing and Taipei every week, with Hsu's refusal to relocate to Beijing being a major point of contention between them. They had two children: a daughter born in April 2014 and a son born in May 2016, both born and raised in Taipei. On April 20, 2018, Hsu underwent surgery following her second miscarriage, just one day after the pre-show interview and a week before the main filming of the first season of the marriage reality show Happiness Trio, which she joined with Wang in an effort interpreted to raise fund for his business. Wang's mother, however, later accused Hsu of keeping the entire RMB 26 million payment for the reality show, while Wang was left to pay the associated taxes.
  
  Since the beginning of their relationship, Hsu had been characterized as a “gold digger” who married into wealth, a “public trial” she protested by asserting that she had been unaware of Wang's wealth before their whirlwind romance and by quitting Weibo alongside him on November 10, 2011, for several months. In 2013, Wang launched his first major venture beyond South Beauty, a health beverage brand that heavily relied on Hsu's endorsement but failed shortly after its launch. Since CVC Capital Partners ’ buyout of South Beauty in late 2013 and the private equity's subsequent allegations of fraud and false accounting within the group—claims that led to the Wang family’s ousting from the restaurant business in 2015—Wang increasingly leveraged Hsu’s fame for his ventures, registering multiple trademarks related to her during their marriage.
  
  In 2017, Wang opened the S Hotel in Taipei, named after “Big S,” featuring Hsu's likeness, themed décor, and welcome messages styled in her tone, with a budget of NT$350 million. The hotel, the first wholly Chinese-funded in Taiwan, struggled following China's ban on individual tourism to Taiwan—imposed after political tensions flared from a pro-independence speech at the 55th Golden Horse Awards —and was further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the primary financial burden on Hsu during her later years when she largely withdrew from working due to health issues. In 2020, Hsu sold one of her three properties in Taipei—an apartment at Kingdom of Global View paid for by Wang but registered under her name—in a move widely interpreted as an effort to support her husband, either to aid his struggling hotel business or to help fulfill his mother's guarantee, which accounted for 40% of her frozen assets in Hong Kong and was required to suspend enforcement. Wang's mother claimed that the NT$276 million proceeds from the sale went to Hsu's mother, while Hsu's mother asserted that the funds were primarily used for the payment on the couple's second and last residence, a penthouse at Taipei Shin-yi complex on Songyong Road in Xinyi District, which was also registered under Hsu's name. However, the claim by Hsu's mother is contradicted by the timeline—as the Taipei Shin-yi was acquired in 2016, while the Kingdom of Global View was listed for sale in 2019 and sold in 2020 after a price reduction—and by Wang's notarized documentation indicating that he had paid NT$150 million for the down payment for the NT$360 million Taipei Shin-yi property. Hsu's mother also claimed that the remaining NT$80 million from the sale of their first house had been deposited into a joint account to service the mortgage for the second house, but that Wang appropriated the funds without notification. Hsu later placed a second mortgage on the Taipei Shin-yi property to raise funds for the S Hotel. After their divorce, Hsu's mother, who served as guarantor for the hotel lease on Wang's behalf due to his lack of Taiwanese citizenship, complained about Wang's reluctance to release her from the role, which left her receiving formal notices and facing potential legal liability as rental payments were delayed. In November 2023, the S Hotel joined the Accor group and was renamed as Mgallery, apparently after Mandy Ma, a Taiwanese medical aesthetics consultant whom Wang had dated for a month after being introduced by plastic surgeon Lee Jin-liang, the ex-husband of Hu Yingzhen, at the hotel. However, in August the following year, the hotel closed due to financial losses.
  
  Hsu's marriage to Wang was beset by rumors of Wang's infidelity and accounts of his volatile temper from the outset. On June 27, 2010, Wang's first birthday after their marriage, he had an outburst during the birthday party organized by the Hsu family for him in Taipei, reportedly because the restaurant had been a place Hsu frequented with her ex-boyfriend, Vic Chou. In June 2011, Chinese model Elin Lü claimed she was in a relationship with Wang at the time he announced his engagement to Hsu. In March 2015, following a Hong Kong court order obtained by CVC freezing the personal assets of Zhang Lan, Wang Sicong, who had risen to fame after Hsu and Wang's marriage, mocked the couple and suggested that Hsu had been subjected to domestic abuse. By the late 2010s, their marriage was increasingly strained by Wang's struggling business ventures in Taiwan—which prompted his desire to relocate the family to Beijing, much to Hsu's reluctance—as well as by his outspoken nationalism regarding China's unification with Taiwan. In July 2020, Wang left Taipei for a six-month business stay in Beijing, due to the travel quarantine requirements imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, barring him from his regular cross-strait commuting. His first extended period apart from his wife and children, set against the backdrop of the pandemic, caused significant stress and marked the beginning of increasingly unmanageable mental health issues. During his time in Beijing, he was also photographed with a woman during a nighttime outing in Sanlitun, the city's bar and club district, but denied any inappropriate behavior implied by the paparazzi. Wang returned to Taipei for Chinese New Year, but during his quarantine in February 2021, Hsu requested a divorce, while Wang sought reconciliation. In March, they held a tenth anniversary wedding party in Taipei, attended by friends including David Tao, Ruby Lin, Wallace Huo, and Mavis Fan. Wang gifted Hsu a custom-designed 10-carat anniversary ring sponsored by a Chinese jewelry brand, before returning to mainland China, where he was first photographed with actress Zhang Yingying in May. Hsu would later accuse Zhang of having an affair with Wang before his divorce, while Wang's mother and Taiwanese paparazzo Ryan Ko claimed that Zhang also acted as an informant for Hsu and supplied Hsu with intimate photos of Wang with other women to support her divorce negotiations, a claim denied by Zhang.
  
  In the early hours of June 5, 2021, Wang published two Weibo posts that became the final straw in his marriage. In the first post, he wrote: “This is what it looks like returning to the mainland for quarantine for the third time. Domestic consumption is thriving—we've already signed contracts to open 10 new stores. Meanwhile, my family in Taipei can't even get vaccinated. It's shameless, it's low-class. This is the contrast, this is the gap. Our company here is flourishing, while Taiwan is in decline. To my colleagues working at the hotel in Taipei: thank you for your hard work. If you can't continue there, we have dozens of stores in the mainland waiting for you as store managers, with double the salary,” apparently blaming Taiwan's vaccination shortage on the DPP government, which at the time refused to import vaccines produced in mainland China and accused Beijing of sabotaging its efforts to procure vaccines from international manufacturers. In the second post, in response to the reports against the backdrop of China's zero-COVID policy that two passengers arriving in Xiamen from Taiwan had tested positive for COVID-19—one of whom had been allowed to board a Uni Air flight despite a positive test result —Wang harshly criticised Taiwan's rising anti-China and pro-independence sentiments while apparently referring to COVID-19-positive Taiwanese travelers as hanjian: “We've approached them with sincerity, only to be constantly used and slandered. After so many years, I've seen enough—it's unbearable. As a Beijinger, I can say this will be recorded in the history books: these hanjian,” before editing out the slur term. That morning, Hsu, living in Taipei, was reportedly upset by Wang's politically provocative posts and their potential repercussions for her extended family in Taiwan, leading to a phone argument with Wang. She then replied to Taiwanese media that she was seeking a divorce from Wang, whose remarks she declined to comment on. Wang initially responded to Chinese media that he was unaware of any divorce, then deleted the controversial posts, explaining that he had spoken out of concern for his family inaccessible to COVID-19 vaccines in Taiwan. That evening, he posted again: “I love all my family—my wife comes first,” in an apparent apology to Hsu. On the same day, Hsu's mother and agent dismissed her announcement as a moment of emotional outburst after a family argument. A week later, Hsu echoed Wang's criticism of Taiwan's pandemic policy, using even stronger language. However, after Wang's unsuccessful attempts to reconcile over the following months and Hsu's refusal to let him return to Taipei for her birthday, he agreed to enter divorce negotiations, prompted by Hsu's repeated assurances that she would not remarry. The couple formally announced their divorce on November 22, 2021. Hsu later revealed that she had offered custody of their children to Wang, but he declined, stating he would need three years for reasons she deliberately left undisclosed.
  
  Days after the divorce announcement, on November 28, 2021, during a livestream, Wang's mother Zhang Lan accused Blackie Chen, a longtime friend of the Hsu family and Hsu’s former boyfriend, of assaulting Wang over a political disagreement. The allegation, which implied Chen supported Taiwanese independence and sparked intense backlash against him from Chinese internet users, was retracted by both Zhang and Wang the same day and clarified by Hsu years later that Chen only "restrained" Wang from assaulting her. The incident nonetheless drew significant traffic to Zhang's livestream, marking the start of her controversial use of Hsu's name and celebrity effect to promote her livestreaming business —a source of cyberbullying cited by Hsu in subsequent years.
  
  In December 2021, Wang was photographed multiple times with a woman alleged to be Zhang Yingying, his rumored affair partner leading to his divorce. On December 25, he denied that the woman was Zhang, rejected accusations from Hsu's supporters that he had portrayed Hsu as a Taiwan independence advocate—citing his repeated defenses of the sisters on that issue—and distanced himself from his mother, stating: “The two of us parted peacefully and do not need any external harm. No one's voice can represent me or Barbie, including Ms. Zhang Lan.” In the following months, photos circulated online showing Wang and Yingying on trips together, as well as Yingying and Wang's mother wearing matching necklaces. Wang's mother later claimed she had been misled by Wang into joining a trip to Mount Tai, where Yingying was among several young fans who requested photos with her and Wang. She alleged that Yingying later sent the photos to Hsu, whose lawyer cited them as evidence of Wang's infidelity and as part of a long-devised scheme to pressure him into agreeing to unfavorable divorce terms. Yingying denied this, stating that Wang had arranged the photo opportunity between her and his mother.
  
  After her divorce, Hsu and Koo Jun-yup rekindled their relationship. According to Koo, after reading news of Hsu's divorce, he called a phone number he had kept for 20 years, only to discover that she had never changed it. However, Wang and his mother alleged that Hsu and Koo had remained in contact over the 15 years preceding her divorce, during which Koo had proposed to her. Notably, to prove Hsu's liaison with Koo had long been in place, Wang and his mother claimed that on November 29, 2021, a week after their divorce announcement, Hsu requested Wang to sign a supplemental agreement modifying their divorce settlement, which had originally required him to cover certain expenses such as housing maintenance and chauffeur fees only until she remarried, but now obligated him to continue paying afterward. On January 14, 2022, despite strong objections from his lawyer, Wang agreed to remove the remarriage clause based on Hsu's assurance that she would never remarry, less than a month before her remarriage. Additionally, Wang cited a home-use tattoo machine that Hsu purchased and sent to Koo in South Korea in August 2021—prior to the finalization of their divorce—using Wang's company account. However, Taiwanese tattoo artist Benjamin Lee, who had visited Hsu's home to give her a tattoo, clarified that Hsu had instructed her chauffeur to send the parcel merely as a courtesy after he mentioned that he was planning to send the machine to Koo, another of his clients. Taiwanese writer and television personality "Nick" Wang Yu-Ren and paparazzo Ryan Ko also claimed that Hsu and Koo had reconnected prior to her divorce. These claims were denied by both Hsu and Koo, with Hsu threatening to file a second defamation lawsuit against Ko after winning the first one over his drug use allegations.
  
  Hsu and Koo registered their marriage on February 8, 2022, in South Korea—three months after her divorce from Wang was finalized in Taiwan but before it was recognized in mainland China on February 18—primarily to allow Koo to enter Taiwan on a spousal visa amid pandemic-related travel restrictions. They registered the marriage in Taiwan on March 28, following Koo's arrival and quarantine. Hsu did not inform her own family of the remarriage in advance, prompting strong opposition from her mother when the news became public on March 8. However, after Hsu signed prenuptial agreements with Koo and transferred her residence at National Art Museum, a property purchased before her first marriage, to her mother, Koo was eventually well received by the Hsu family when he relocated to Taiwan. Hsu did not hold a wedding ceremony for her remarriage, except for releasing a wedding photo and matching wedding ring tattoos with Koo. Their marriage, two decades after their break-up, was widely celebrated in South Korea and Taiwan, where it was portrayed as a fairy-tale reunion.
  
  On March 30, 2022, after Dee spoke favorably on her show about her sister's reunion with Koo, Wang, apparently offended by Dee's prior knowledge of either Barbie's remarriage or her alleged extramarital affair, harshly attacked Dee on Weibo and accused her of drug abuse. On May 21, 2022, Wang posted picnic photos taken at the same location as those shared by actress Zhang Yingying on social media. The internet quickly associated the two, long rumored to be in an affair before his divorce, prompting Wang to delete the photos. Days after, Taiwanese paparazzo Ryan Ko, who had been among the first to identify Zhang as his mistress in late 2021, drew wide attention when he claimed that Wang had engaged in affairs with over ten women and had purchased a luxury car for Zhang following her abortion of his child, a decision Zhang made herself after Wang did not commit to marriage but encouraged her to keep the baby. Wang's mother dismissed the photographic evidence Ko claimed to possess as fabricated and suggested that Wang's infidelity was in response to Hsu's alleged prior affair. Ko countered by publishing two intimate photos of Wang and Zhang taken in September 2021, marking the first time Wang's long-rumored affairs were substantiated, a decision, according to Ko, also driven by a longstanding grievance over Wang's alleged use of police power to conduct a three-day home search against Ko's fellow paparazzo for photographing him in China. Ko later expressed regret over releasing the images for triggering the prolonged post-divorce conflict between Wang and Hsu, who had initially parted on amicable terms. He also accused the Hsu family of taking advantage of him by remaining silent on his exposé. On May 30, 2022, Wang acknowledged on Weibo the authenticity of Ko's photos, explaining that following Hsu's divorce request in February 2021, he experienced significant stress and developed alcohol problems, which led to inappropriate behavior while intoxicated. However, he denied having engaged in any extramarital affairs and filed defamation lawsuits against Ko twice in Taiwan. The first was withdrawn on the same day it was filed, while the second, initiated on May 18, was dropped in August of the same year. Also on May 30, in what appeared to be retaliation for Hsu's alleged “blackmail” over his extramarital affairs, Wang accused her of drug abuse by using prescriptions issued to others. He deleted the post shortly afterward and publicly apologized the next day, calling the drug allegation "the most regrettable thing in my life" but never disputed its truthfulness.
  
  On May 31, 2022, Ko capitalized on his surge in gossip notoriety with a much-hyped livestream debut on Kuaishou —the main rival of Douyin, where Wang's family ran their successful yet controversial e-commerce business —during which Ko released additional intimate photos of Wang with three other women, a toned-down disclosure that Ko attributed to Wang's personal pleas with his mother's hospitalization. The livestream, during which Ko also shared salacious claims about JJ Lin and Mike Xu, Dee's husband, was abruptly cut off when he mentioned the rumored relationship between Dilraba Dilmurat and Lu Han, suggesting a protective intervention by Kuaishou amid China's crackdown on celebrity gossip under Operation Qinglang, launched in 2021 to rein in celebrity culture and fandom on the Chinese Internet. Ko later claimed that Hsu had thanked him through her agent, Angelina Liao, for releasing photos of Wang with other women, though the message was relayed via an intermediary journalist and denied by Liao. In December 2022, Ko filed a defamation lawsuit in Taiwan against Wang's mother, who had accused him of being a paid proxy for Hsu to expose Wang. In March 2023, Ko reconciled with Wang by livestreaming their meeting at Wang's hot pot restaurant, Ma Liu Ji, in Beijing. In August 2023, Ko's defamation case against Wang's mother was closed after Taiwanese prosecutors issued a non-prosecution decision.
  
  In November 2022, Hsu sought enforcement of spousal maintenance of over NT$7.5 million at the Taipei District Court against Wang, claiming he had failed to honor their divorce agreement since March of that year. Wang claimed that he continued to pay child support and Hsu's personal maintenance but no longer wished to cover her family expenses—primarily the NT$40,000 monthly electricity bill for the house he had previously shared with Hsu, which she now shared with Koo—after Hsu remarried. He then launched a series of attacks against Hsu and her family on Weibo including her second husband Koo, her sister Dee, and Dee's husband, Mike Xu. Wang accused Dee of encouraging Barbie's divorce out of jealousy, implying that Dee wanted to sabotage her sister's marriage because Dee had endured habitual infidelity from Xu, who purchased a property in Shanghai for his extramarital relationships, using Wang's funds paid by Hsu after Xu had discovered Dee's affair with a dance instructor. A media frenzy erupted when Wang denigrated Koo for not replacing the mattress he had purchased for Hsu during their marriage; Hsu returned the mattress to the S Hotel, where it was destroyed live on Taiwanese television.
  
  On December 3, 2022, prompted by Wang's mother's claim that Wang had paid for Hsu's two Taipei properties, echoing the long-standing narrative that Hsu had married into his wealth, Hsu stated on social media that she had personally paid for both homes, which had been chosen by Wang—whom she mockingly called “ Aisin-Gioro Wang,” a jab at his mother's claim that Wang was descended from the Manchu royal family. Hsu also showed an IOU signed by Wang in 2018, acknowledging a debt of over NT$170 million, which she had lent him to support his business. According to Taiwanese agent Eddie Chen, the IOU was written at the request of Hsu's mother, after Wang had repeatedly borrowed money from Hsu without timely repayment as his finances were controlled by his mother. Wang countered that Hsu had paid the down payment of Kingdom of Global View in 2011 using NT$200 million he had previously deposited into her account when he did not yet have a bank account in Taiwan. He also stated that Hsu had reneged on an agreement to offset the NT$100 million loan in exchange for her ownership of the nearly NT$400 million penthouse at Taipei Shin-yi following their divorce, and attributed the delay in repayment to China's strict foreign exchange and money transfer regulations, which he circumvented by selling a painting, through which he had repaid NT$5 million. Wang revealed the terms of their divorce and financial arrangements—widely seen as favoring Hsu, given his substantial financial commitments including a total of NT$184 million in alimony until 2038, a NT$250 million mortgage, and a credit card provided for routine expenses. According to Wang, Hsu had spent NT$12 million on luxury goods using his card post-divorce—including gifts for Koo and parts of the outfit she wore in her remarriage photos—after which Wang's mother claimed that she suspended the card in Hsu's possession. Hsu subsequently sued Wang for violating Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act by disclosing her address and bank information.
  
  Actress Zhang Yingying—whom Hsu identified as Wang's mistress, and whom both Wang's mother and paparazzo Ryan Ko claimed had acted as Hsu's informant during divorce proceedings—ended her relationship with Wang in January 2023, two months after he publicly acknowledged the relationship following years of rumors. Zhang cited ongoing disapproval and humiliation from Wang's mother as the primary reasons for the breakup, despite Wang's proposal. Following the split, Zhang frequently criticized Wang and his mother on social media, implying that Wang had “deceived” her—as well as other women—into romantic involvement with him. In August 2024, Zhang suggested that Wang had cheated on her with Mandy Ma. Ma responded on social media that she had not known Wang prior to October 2023, and referred to Zhang as a “mistress.” Zhang subsequently noted that Ma's remark effectively confirmed Wang's infidelity to Hsu, after which Ma deleted the post. After Hsu's death, Zhang harshly attacked Wang on Weibo, claiming that Wang had been unfaithful since the second year of his marriage to Hsu, and “all the harm suffered was caused by him.”
  
  From 2022 to 2025, Hsu and Wang's post-divorce dispute—set in motion by tensions following Hsu's rapid remarriage and intensified by her legal efforts to enforce alimony—sparked wide-ranging public discussions on sexism, misinformation, and cross-strait relations. Both Wang and Hsu accused each other of infidelity and domestic abuse during their marriage. Wang and his mother accused Barbie and Dee of drug use, which the sisters denied, and criticized Hsu for not allowing the children to visit Beijing or meet Wang's mother, who hadn't seen her grandchildren in five years until she visited Taipei in December 2024. Wang and his mother accused the sisters of splittism and supporting Taiwanese independence, though Wang had previously defended them from such allegations, including Dee's Chinese nationalist trolling controversy in 2021. During their legal battle, Wang also repeatedly proposed remarriage in private, while publicly maintaining that he harbored no ill will toward Hsu or her family, attributing their post-divorce conflict to the actions of her lawyers and agent. His proposals were rejected by Hsu, who was then in her second marriage. In October 2023, during a livestreaming session, Wang's mother chided him for publicly expressing his wish to remarry Hsu, while Wang explained that he was motivated by concerns for Hsu's health and fears for her possible death. Hsu's agent, Angelina Liao, responded by urging Wang not to “both defame and profess love in an attempt to interfere with court proceedings.” Wang subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against Liao in Taiwan, but was dismissed by the court.
  
  On March 20, 2024, Hsu issued her most direct and detailed response to Wang's series of allegations on Weibo:
  
  The one who was unfaithful during the marriage was you, not me. After the divorce, it's true that I used your credit card a few times out of spite. But you had signed off on it yourself. More importantly, I never used your card to buy anything for my husband.
  
  I was furious at the time because:
  
  Ten years of marriage, two deaths, and one serious injury. The fact that I used your card out of spite, looking back on it now, feels almost laughable. Because what I gave to you, invested in you, was far more than that. Even when I used your card, I was spending money I had worked hard to earn myself. After the divorce, you and your people spread rumors and twisted the truth, leading to the online abuse I still endure today. Still, I thank you—for creating such a brutal test for me. You've made me stronger. “No complaints, no excuses. With grace and composure—go!”
  
  From now on, I will no longer respond to any of the slander and smear campaigns you fabricate. I will leave everything to the law and the judicial system. From this very second on, you are but an illusion, and I will walk only the path of flowers.
  
  On the same day, Wang countered on Weibo, along with a shipping receipt from Hsu to Koo as evidence for her liaison before divorce:
  
  In response to Barbie Hsu’s evasive statements, I’m going to lay everything out this time!!!
  
  All this time, I’ve put up with what your family has said. I kept telling those around me, “She’s the mother of my children—I respect her.” But you’ve never respected me. From now on, if you have something to say, say it yourself—don’t hide behind others.
  
  On March 22, 2024, which would have marked Wang and Hsu's wedding anniversary, Wang exhibited a series of emotionally charged outbursts. He conducted a midday livestream on Douyin, during which he showed affection toward his girlfriend, Mandy Ma, while also offering a backhanded compliment, saying, “I’ll never argue with you—your personality doesn’t allow for arguments anyway.” He then tearfully sang Richie Jen ’s "Heart Too Soft," seemingly alluding to his perceived leniency toward Hsu during their legal disputes, before launching into a verbal attack on Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, Douyin's parent company, apparently triggered by the platform's automatic warning about his use of inappropriate language. The livestream was cut short when Wang's long-time housekeeper, Ms. Yang, intervened and took away his phone, as he appeared to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. That afternoon, from his rented residence nearby, Wang went to his former marital home with Hsu at the Taipei Shin-yi complex to request a visit with their daughter. According to paparazzo Ryan Ko, the former couple had previously agreed that their daughter would stay with Wang during his stay in Taipei, while their son would remain with Hsu, with a chauffeur routinely dropping off the children after school. However, tensions had escalated following contentious online exchanges two days earlier. When the Hsu family—allegedly an unusually large group of six, including Hsu and Koo—picked up Hsu's son that afternoon, they also took her daughter from the vehicle. According to Wang's mother, Yang attempted to prevent this and was pushed to the ground by the Hsu family. Wang subsequently arrived at Hsu's residence with two companions around 5 p.m. Both parties contacted the police, who confirmed that Wang was emotional but neither intoxicated nor violent. Wang was allowed to see his daughter, and Hsu, without meeting with Wang, assured him through intermediaries that their daughter would return after dinner. He left without further incident. However, around 8 p.m., after Hsu informed him that their daughter would remain overnight, Wang attempted to forcibly enter her residence. Security staff contacted the police, who escorted him from the scene. At the police station, Wang told officers and media that his child was being “illegally detained” by Hsu and stated his intent to file a report accusing her, along with Dee, of abusing Stilnox through others' prescriptions. He ultimately left without providing evidence or filing a report. Wang claimed to have experienced memory loss over the following four days due to severe psychological distress. His housekeeper Yang—who had already strained her relationship with Hsu as a live-in nanny by posting dancing videos on Douyin that revealed the interiors of Hsu's home—was dismissed by Hsu after having come to Taiwan with Wang nine years earlier. Yang returned to her home in Beijing until Hsu's death, after which she came back to Taiwan to resume working for Wang.
  
  On March 27, 2024, when asked whether their highly publicized divorce—sometimes seen as a symbolic end of the honeymoon period in cross-strait relations—would worsen relations, a spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office commented, “People on both sides of the strait are one family, and cross-strait marriages bring us even closer.” However, regarding the “rare cases of failed marriages,” the parties involved should “part on good terms and go their separate ways in peace.” The next day, Wang proposed to Mandy Ma. They married in May 2024. In May 2025, by the time of their make-up wedding banquet in Beijing, Taiwanese designer Robert Cheng, Ma's ex-husband from 2016 to 2022, publicly accused Ma of serial infidelity and of engaging in post-divorce legal harassment against him and his associates. Cheng's claims were supported by a non-prosecution ruling issued by the Taiwan Shilin District Prosecutors Office in response to a defamation lawsuit Ma had filed against one of Cheng's friends. In an apparent attempt to disrupt the wedding, over three thousand revealing photos of Ma, taken when she was 20, were circulated online, along with further allegations of extramarital affairs and an unverified claim that she had previously worked as an escort in Macau, a claim Ma has denied. Chinese celebrity wedding dress designer Lan Yu also implied that she declined Ma as a client out of support for Hsu, a claim Ma denied by stating she had never approached the designer. Wang's second wedding proceeded as planned on May 17, without the presence of his two children with Hsu. Three days after his wedding, Wang posted on Douyin to Ma: "Thank you to my wife for loving Beijing, for getting used to the weather here, to my temper, to my friends, and to the Maotai here.” The post was interpreted as an indirect jab at Hsu, who had struggled to adapt to Beijing's dry climate and was allergic to the city's springtime willow catkins, prompting her return to Taipei a year after their marriage.
  
  In February 2023, Hsu filed lawsuits in China against Wang for defamation and invasion of privacy, and against Zhang for online infringement liability; Hsu later applied for injunctions against Wang and Zhang. On August 19, 2024, the Beijing Internet Court granted Hsu's injunctions by prohibiting Wang and Zhang from publishing Hsu's personal information online, but dismissed Hsu's appeal to shut down their social media accounts. The injunctions would remain in effect until the court renders a final judgment, but Wang and Zhang effectively ignored them by continuing posting about Hsu online. At the time of Hsu's death on 2 February 2025, her two lawsuits in Taiwan against Wang over matrimonial assets, which she had won in the first-instance trial but was appealed by Wang, and over violations of the Personal Data Protection Act remained unresolved, while the judgement from the Beijing Internet Court had yet to be issued. Hsu claimed over NT$250 million from Wang, including his NT$170 million IOU, NT$80 million that he allegedly appropriated from their joint account funded by the sale of Kingdom of Global View, the mortgage she placed on her Taipei Shin-yi property to support his business, and spousal maintenance. In late February, Wang sent a message to Hsu's mother, offering to transfer the NT$7.5 million in spousal maintenance that Hsu had claimed before her death, only to find that he had been blocked. In March 2025, the Hsu family continued to pursue Hsu's matrimonial assets case posthumously, maintaining the NT$7.5 million claim against Wang.
  
  I love with passion and intensity, but I end things with absolute finality. No matter how painful it is, I face my life and relationships with reason I never allow myself to look back or regret. I have to choose what is right, not what is comfortable.
  
  Hsu was a fixture in celebrity media, sustained by public fascination with her personal life, which she had been open and candid about since the outset of her career and which attracted no less attention after she had stepped back from acting. She was known for high-profile relationships with male idols and two “ flash marriages,” often described as “daring in love and hate” and likened to the dramatic plots of her own idol dramas.
  
  Hsu's first love began in 1994 with a student who was two years ahead of her at the Taipei Hwa Kang Arts School and lasted for three years until her graduation in 1997. She then dated Blackie Chen, after which they remained close friends. From late 1998 to 2000, she dated South Korean singer and Clon member Koo Jun-yup at the height of Clon's popularity. A fan of Koo, she was introduced to him by Taiwanese singer Yuki Hsu (sometimes misreported as Tarcy Su), who had covered the Mandarin version of Koo's song "Escape from City", at a party in Korea. They did not publicly confirm their relationship, during which Hsu faced pressure from Koo's fans due to circulating rumors, while Koo faced pressure from his management, who were concerned that a public romance could damage his idol career. In May 2000, Clon canceled a scheduled appearance on ASOS's television show 100% Entertainment at short notice to avoid fueling the romantic rumors. Dee subsequently criticized Koo and his management on air for their handling of the situation. Although it has been widely misreported that the breakup resulted from a dating ban enforced by Koo's management, Koo later stated that he personally ended the relationship out of concern for his career.
  
  From mid-2001 to May 2005, Hsu dated actor Lan Cheng-lung, whom she pursued after meeting on the set of Meteor Garden. Two months after their breakup, she began dating actor and F4 member Vic Chou, who had been her godbrother since Meteor Garden. Their relationship began after Chou was involved in a car accident in July 2005, which prompted both to acknowledge their feelings for each other, a development that Lan later implied was a betrayal by a friend, while Chou responded that he had never been Lan's friend. In January 2008, Hsu announced her breakup with Chou, which he later attributed to the pressure stemming from his less successful career and earnings, an explanation Hsu denied. In 2009, following her second collaboration with Hong Kong actor Louis Koo, reports surfaced about a secret relationship between the two, which both parties denied. However, the following year, she admitted to an on-set infatuation during an interview with Kangsi Coming.
  
  When I was a student, even the smallest discomfort made me want to take a day off. Now, even when I'm sick, I worry about falling behind at work. Once you have a sense of responsibility, you stop being willful. Back when I was hosting shows, I didn't like boxed meals. Now, if there's tofu in a bento, I feel completely satisfied. Only after gaining life experience do you learn to be grateful. I used to feel afraid whenever I left home. Now, no matter where I am, I can go with the flow. Once you find courage, you become truly free. I used to think loving someone meant never being apart. Now, I keep him in my heart.
  
  In late 2010, while filming Croczilla, Hsu suffered from radial nerve inflammation and was introduced to an acupuncturist in Beijing by Ady An, who subsequently invited her to two parties at LAN Club, where Hsu met the club's owner Wang Xiaofei, the son of South Beauty restaurant group founder Zhang Lan, on both occasions. The two fell in love at first sight, and after their second meeting on An's birthday party at the club, Hsu invited Wang to her own birthday party in Taipei. After meeting a total of four times, Wang confessed his love by proposing to Hsu in Beijing, as he explained in his autobiography, Born in 1981 (2019):
  
  There is an old American movie called Waterloo Bridge that many have seen. The male and female protagonists decide to get married the third time they meet because the man is about to go to the front lines, and both of them want to establish a relationship as soon as possible to avoid losing each other in the future. However, due to various unfortunate circumstances, they ultimately do not get married. It's a tragedy. Mentioning this movie is not to say that my relationship with her is the same, but when it comes to proposing on the fifth meeting, I really understand the male protagonist's feelings. My wife and I were living far apart—one in Beijing, the other in Taipei—separated by thousands of miles. I couldn't help but feel that if I didn't seize the moment and hold onto her then, I might miss out on being with her forever.
  
  After an expeditious engagement ceremony, where they bought Tiffany engagement rings at Wangfujing and sharing mutton hotpot with friends at Houhai, they announced their engagement on October 29, 2010. The whirlwind romance drew wide media attention at the height of Hsu's career and Wang's family business, when he was known as one of the Four Beijing Playboys (京城四少)—the city's most eligible fuerdai bachelors then, alongside Wang Yu, Wang Shuo, and Wang Ke—for his romantic associations with celebrities such as Zhang Ziyi, whom he denied having an alleged affair with during her engagement to Aviv “Vivi” Nevo; with Ady An, Zhang Lan's goddaughter, who introduced Hsu to Wang but later experienced a strain in her friendship with Hsu amid widespread rumors of her romantic feelings for Wang, until Hsu and Wang attended her wedding in 2017; and with Zhang Yuqi, who announced her breakup "some time ago" with Wang one day before his engagement to Hsu was made public. Hsu and Wang registered their marriage on November 16, 2010, in Beijing. Their wedding rings were designed by Wang with the help of jewelry designer Wan Baobao, granddaughter of Wan Li.
  
  Although Hsu preferred to treat the engagement ceremony as their wedding, a formal banquet was held at the request of Wang's family on 22 March 2011 in Sanya, Hainan on 22 March 2011, followed by a week-long honeymoon in Bhutan. Hsu's star-studded beach wedding drew scrutiny for its perceived extravagance, including two five-star hotels booked for guests and a chartered flight from Taiwan, which she later defended as a more economical alternative to individual travel arrangements. The generally negative publicity was compounded by her decision to keep the highly anticipated event private from the press corps stationed outside the venue—a move she only disclosed in 2024 was due to a miscarriage surgery four days before the wedding, when she publicly denied the media speculation about her pre-wedding pregnancy. Hsu's mother later claimed that Hsu had intended to cancel the wedding due to the miscarriage. However, Wang's mother, Zhang Lan, seeking to build momentum for South Beauty's planned IPO under a bet-on agreement, insisted that the ceremony proceed to avoid the Wang family “losing face.” Although both families had announced they would not accept monetary gifts, according to Hsu's mother, Zhang collected them secretly.
  
  Hsu's " flash marriage " left a surprisingly long-lasting legacy in the Chinese media landscape. In November 2010, the intense discussions of her marriage in the Kangsi Coming Group on Douban led to a splinter group, the "Gossip Coming Group," specifically centered on the event. Over time, the latter grew into one of the most active and chaotic forums on the Chinese Internet until the government ban in 2022. Zhang Lan, Wang's mother, claimed that the wedding was sponsored by Wanda Group, prompting Wang Sicong, son of Wanda founder Wang Jianlin, to publicly refute her claims and rise to prominence as a media personality over the following decade, during which he often mocked Hsu and Wang, until he was banned on Weibo for his criticism of the Chinese government's COVID policy. Charles Zhang, CEO of Sohu and a guest at the wedding, live-blogged the private event on Sohu Weibo, without the couple's permission but with Wang's mother's approval, in an effort to drive traffic amid the microblogging turf war, sparking a feud with the couple that lasted until Zhang reconciled with Wang in 2015. Zhang's unauthorized live postings—for which he refused to apologize after Hsu's demand letter —strained her relationship with the Taiwanese media, who viewed the exclusive content given to a mainland Chinese platform as an act of preferential treatment. The tension persisted until about half a year later, when Taiwanese reporters received a Mid-Autumn Festival gift from Hsu's mother—a Parker pen, accompanied by a note. The gesture symbolized a wish to "draw a line under the past," a reference to the Chinese idiom 一筆勾銷 (yī bǐ gōu xiāo), literally meaning "to write off in one stroke.” After Zhang Lan's Douyin account was banned in 2025 following Hsu's death for spreading misinformation about her, Charles invited her to Sohu's livestreaming platform in a new round of the livestreaming turf war.
  
  Following her marriage, Hsu continued working for a year before scaling back during three difficult years of trying to conceive, when she frequently sought treatment from a range of specialists in both Western and traditional Chinese medicine, in Asia and beyond. In 2012, Hsu ended her more than a decade of vegetarianism—which she had initially adopted in hopes that one of her pet dogs would recover from an illness, and maintained out of a desire to avoid harming animals—partly due to pressure from Wang's mother, who believed that vegetarianism was detrimental to fertility, despite the fact that Hsu's elder sister was also a vegetarian and a mother. Hsu also gave up her long-standing restrictive dieting and began taking herbal remedies and nutritional supplements, in addition to receiving high-dose ovulation hormone injections. These changes affected both her hormone levels and body shape, which never returned to its famously slender pre-marriage form, drawing public scrutiny from the media and private pressure from Wang.
  
  Hsu resided in Beijing with Wang for a year but struggled to adapt to the climate, experiencing frequent nosebleeds, chest pain, and allergic reactions to the city's springtime willow catkins. She returned to Taipei, initially to serve as a stand-in host on Kangsi Coming during Dee's maternity leave until mid-2012, but moved back permanently from Beijing around early 2013. For most of their marriage, Wang commuted between Beijing and Taipei every week, with Hsu's refusal to relocate to Beijing being a major point of contention between them. They had two children: a daughter born in April 2014 and a son born in May 2016, both born and raised in Taipei. On April 20, 2018, Hsu underwent surgery following her second miscarriage, just one day after the pre-show interview and a week before the main filming of the first season of the marriage reality show Happiness Trio, which she joined with Wang in an effort interpreted to raise fund for his business. Wang's mother, however, later accused Hsu of keeping the entire RMB 26 million payment for the reality show, while Wang was left to pay the associated taxes.
  
  Since the beginning of their relationship, Hsu had been characterized as a “gold digger” who married into wealth, a “public trial” she protested by asserting that she had been unaware of Wang's wealth before their whirlwind romance and by quitting Weibo alongside him on November 10, 2011, for several months. In 2013, Wang launched his first major venture beyond South Beauty, a health beverage brand that heavily relied on Hsu's endorsement but failed shortly after its launch. Since CVC Capital Partners ’ buyout of South Beauty in late 2013 and the private equity's subsequent allegations of fraud and false accounting within the group—claims that led to the Wang family’s ousting from the restaurant business in 2015—Wang increasingly leveraged Hsu’s fame for his ventures, registering multiple trademarks related to her during their marriage.
  
  In 2017, Wang opened the S Hotel in Taipei, named after “Big S,” featuring Hsu's likeness, themed décor, and welcome messages styled in her tone, with a budget of NT$350 million. The hotel, the first wholly Chinese-funded in Taiwan, struggled following China's ban on individual tourism to Taiwan—imposed after political tensions flared from a pro-independence speech at the 55th Golden Horse Awards —and was further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the primary financial burden on Hsu during her later years when she largely withdrew from working due to health issues. In 2020, Hsu sold one of her three properties in Taipei—an apartment at Kingdom of Global View paid for by Wang but registered under her name—in a move widely interpreted as an effort to support her husband, either to aid his struggling hotel business or to help fulfill his mother's guarantee, which accounted for 40% of her frozen assets in Hong Kong and was required to suspend enforcement. Wang's mother claimed that the NT$276 million proceeds from the sale went to Hsu's mother, while Hsu's mother asserted that the funds were primarily used for the payment on the couple's second and last residence, a penthouse at Taipei Shin-yi complex on Songyong Road in Xinyi District, which was also registered under Hsu's name. However, the claim by Hsu's mother is contradicted by the timeline—as the Taipei Shin-yi was acquired in 2016, while the Kingdom of Global View was listed for sale in 2019 and sold in 2020 after a price reduction—and by Wang's notarized documentation indicating that he had paid NT$150 million for the down payment for the NT$360 million Taipei Shin-yi property. Hsu's mother also claimed that the remaining NT$80 million from the sale of their first house had been deposited into a joint account to service the mortgage for the second house, but that Wang appropriated the funds without notification. Hsu later placed a second mortgage on the Taipei Shin-yi property to raise funds for the S Hotel. After their divorce, Hsu's mother, who served as guarantor for the hotel lease on Wang's behalf due to his lack of Taiwanese citizenship, complained about Wang's reluctance to release her from the role, which left her receiving formal notices and facing potential legal liability as rental payments were delayed. In November 2023, the S Hotel joined the Accor group and was renamed as Mgallery, apparently after Mandy Ma, a Taiwanese medical aesthetics consultant whom Wang had dated for a month after being introduced by plastic surgeon Lee Jin-liang, the ex-husband of Hu Yingzhen, at the hotel. However, in August the following year, the hotel closed due to financial losses.
  
  Hsu's marriage to Wang was beset by rumors of Wang's infidelity and accounts of his volatile temper from the outset. On June 27, 2010, Wang's first birthday after their marriage, he had an outburst during the birthday party organized by the Hsu family for him in Taipei, reportedly because the restaurant had been a place Hsu frequented with her ex-boyfriend, Vic Chou. In June 2011, Chinese model Elin Lü claimed she was in a relationship with Wang at the time he announced his engagement to Hsu. In March 2015, following a Hong Kong court order obtained by CVC freezing the personal assets of Zhang Lan, Wang Sicong, who had risen to fame after Hsu and Wang's marriage, mocked the couple and suggested that Hsu had been subjected to domestic abuse. By the late 2010s, their marriage was increasingly strained by Wang's struggling business ventures in Taiwan—which prompted his desire to relocate the family to Beijing, much to Hsu's reluctance—as well as by his outspoken nationalism regarding China's unification with Taiwan. In July 2020, Wang left Taipei for a six-month business stay in Beijing, due to the travel quarantine requirements imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, barring him from his regular cross-strait commuting. His first extended period apart from his wife and children, set against the backdrop of the pandemic, caused significant stress and marked the beginning of increasingly unmanageable mental health issues. During his time in Beijing, he was also photographed with a woman during a nighttime outing in Sanlitun, the city's bar and club district, but denied any inappropriate behavior implied by the paparazzi. Wang returned to Taipei for Chinese New Year, but during his quarantine in February 2021, Hsu requested a divorce, while Wang sought reconciliation. In March, they held a tenth anniversary wedding party in Taipei, attended by friends including David Tao, Ruby Lin, Wallace Huo, and Mavis Fan. Wang gifted Hsu a custom-designed 10-carat anniversary ring sponsored by a Chinese jewelry brand, before returning to mainland China, where he was first photographed with actress Zhang Yingying in May. Hsu would later accuse Zhang of having an affair with Wang before his divorce, while Wang's mother and Taiwanese paparazzo Ryan Ko claimed that Zhang also acted as an informant for Hsu and supplied Hsu with intimate photos of Wang with other women to support her divorce negotiations, a claim denied by Zhang.
  
  In the early hours of June 5, 2021, Wang published two Weibo posts that became the final straw in his marriage. In the first post, he wrote: “This is what it looks like returning to the mainland for quarantine for the third time. Domestic consumption is thriving—we've already signed contracts to open 10 new stores. Meanwhile, my family in Taipei can't even get vaccinated. It's shameless, it's low-class. This is the contrast, this is the gap. Our company here is flourishing, while Taiwan is in decline. To my colleagues working at the hotel in Taipei: thank you for your hard work. If you can't continue there, we have dozens of stores in the mainland waiting for you as store managers, with double the salary,” apparently blaming Taiwan's vaccination shortage on the DPP government, which at the time refused to import vaccines produced in mainland China and accused Beijing of sabotaging its efforts to procure vaccines from international manufacturers. In the second post, in response to the reports against the backdrop of China's zero-COVID policy that two passengers arriving in Xiamen from Taiwan had tested positive for COVID-19—one of whom had been allowed to board a Uni Air flight despite a positive test result —Wang harshly criticised Taiwan's rising anti-China and pro-independence sentiments while apparently referring to COVID-19-positive Taiwanese travelers as hanjian: “We've approached them with sincerity, only to be constantly used and slandered. After so many years, I've seen enough—it's unbearable. As a Beijinger, I can say this will be recorded in the history books: these hanjian,” before editing out the slur term. That morning, Hsu, living in Taipei, was reportedly upset by Wang's politically provocative posts and their potential repercussions for her extended family in Taiwan, leading to a phone argument with Wang. She then replied to Taiwanese media that she was seeking a divorce from Wang, whose remarks she declined to comment on. Wang initially responded to Chinese media that he was unaware of any divorce, then deleted the controversial posts, explaining that he had spoken out of concern for his family inaccessible to COVID-19 vaccines in Taiwan. That evening, he posted again: “I love all my family—my wife comes first,” in an apparent apology to Hsu. On the same day, Hsu's mother and agent dismissed her announcement as a moment of emotional outburst after a family argument. A week later, Hsu echoed Wang's criticism of Taiwan's pandemic policy, using even stronger language. However, after Wang's unsuccessful attempts to reconcile over the following months and Hsu's refusal to let him return to Taipei for her birthday, he agreed to enter divorce negotiations, prompted by Hsu's repeated assurances that she would not remarry. The couple formally announced their divorce on November 22, 2021. Hsu later revealed that she had offered custody of their children to Wang, but he declined, stating he would need three years for reasons she deliberately left undisclosed.
  
  Days after the divorce announcement, on November 28, 2021, during a livestream, Wang's mother Zhang Lan accused Blackie Chen, a longtime friend of the Hsu family and Hsu’s former boyfriend, of assaulting Wang over a political disagreement. The allegation, which implied Chen supported Taiwanese independence and sparked intense backlash against him from Chinese internet users, was retracted by both Zhang and Wang the same day and clarified by Hsu years later that Chen only "restrained" Wang from assaulting her. The incident nonetheless drew significant traffic to Zhang's livestream, marking the start of her controversial use of Hsu's name and celebrity effect to promote her livestreaming business —a source of cyberbullying cited by Hsu in subsequent years.
  
  In December 2021, Wang was photographed multiple times with a woman alleged to be Zhang Yingying, his rumored affair partner leading to his divorce. On December 25, he denied that the woman was Zhang, rejected accusations from Hsu's supporters that he had portrayed Hsu as a Taiwan independence advocate—citing his repeated defenses of the sisters on that issue—and distanced himself from his mother, stating: “The two of us parted peacefully and do not need any external harm. No one's voice can represent me or Barbie, including Ms. Zhang Lan.” In the following months, photos circulated online showing Wang and Yingying on trips together, as well as Yingying and Wang's mother wearing matching necklaces. Wang's mother later claimed she had been misled by Wang into joining a trip to Mount Tai, where Yingying was among several young fans who requested photos with her and Wang. She alleged that Yingying later sent the photos to Hsu, whose lawyer cited them as evidence of Wang's infidelity and as part of a long-devised scheme to pressure him into agreeing to unfavorable divorce terms. Yingying denied this, stating that Wang had arranged the photo opportunity between her and his mother.
  
  After her divorce, Hsu and Koo Jun-yup rekindled their relationship. According to Koo, after reading news of Hsu's divorce, he called a phone number he had kept for 20 years, only to discover that she had never changed it. However, Wang and his mother alleged that Hsu and Koo had remained in contact over the 15 years preceding her divorce, during which Koo had proposed to her. Notably, to prove Hsu's liaison with Koo had long been in place, Wang and his mother claimed that on November 29, 2021, a week after their divorce announcement, Hsu requested Wang to sign a supplemental agreement modifying their divorce settlement, which had originally required him to cover certain expenses such as housing maintenance and chauffeur fees only until she remarried, but now obligated him to continue paying afterward. On January 14, 2022, despite strong objections from his lawyer, Wang agreed to remove the remarriage clause based on Hsu's assurance that she would never remarry, less than a month before her remarriage. Additionally, Wang cited a home-use tattoo machine that Hsu purchased and sent to Koo in South Korea in August 2021—prior to the finalization of their divorce—using Wang's company account. However, Taiwanese tattoo artist Benjamin Lee, who had visited Hsu's home to give her a tattoo, clarified that Hsu had instructed her chauffeur to send the parcel merely as a courtesy after he mentioned that he was planning to send the machine to Koo, another of his clients. Taiwanese writer and television personality "Nick" Wang Yu-Ren and paparazzo Ryan Ko also claimed that Hsu and Koo had reconnected prior to her divorce. These claims were denied by both Hsu and Koo, with Hsu threatening to file a second defamation lawsuit against Ko after winning the first one over his drug use allegations.
  
  Hsu and Koo registered their marriage on February 8, 2022, in South Korea—three months after her divorce from Wang was finalized in Taiwan but before it was recognized in mainland China on February 18—primarily to allow Koo to enter Taiwan on a spousal visa amid pandemic-related travel restrictions. They registered the marriage in Taiwan on March 28, following Koo's arrival and quarantine. Hsu did not inform her own family of the remarriage in advance, prompting strong opposition from her mother when the news became public on March 8. However, after Hsu signed prenuptial agreements with Koo and transferred her residence at National Art Museum, a property purchased before her first marriage, to her mother, Koo was eventually well received by the Hsu family when he relocated to Taiwan. Hsu did not hold a wedding ceremony for her remarriage, except for releasing a wedding photo and matching wedding ring tattoos with Koo. Their marriage, two decades after their break-up, was widely celebrated in South Korea and Taiwan, where it was portrayed as a fairy-tale reunion.
  
  On March 30, 2022, after Dee spoke favorably on her show about her sister's reunion with Koo, Wang, apparently offended by Dee's prior knowledge of either Barbie's remarriage or her alleged extramarital affair, harshly attacked Dee on Weibo and accused her of drug abuse. On May 21, 2022, Wang posted picnic photos taken at the same location as those shared by actress Zhang Yingying on social media. The internet quickly associated the two, long rumored to be in an affair before his divorce, prompting Wang to delete the photos. Days after, Taiwanese paparazzo Ryan Ko, who had been among the first to identify Zhang as his mistress in late 2021, drew wide attention when he claimed that Wang had engaged in affairs with over ten women and had purchased a luxury car for Zhang following her abortion of his child, a decision Zhang made herself after Wang did not commit to marriage but encouraged her to keep the baby. Wang's mother dismissed the photographic evidence Ko claimed to possess as fabricated and suggested that Wang's infidelity was in response to Hsu's alleged prior affair. Ko countered by publishing two intimate photos of Wang and Zhang taken in September 2021, marking the first time Wang's long-rumored affairs were substantiated, a decision, according to Ko, also driven by a longstanding grievance over Wang's alleged use of police power to conduct a three-day home search against Ko's fellow paparazzo for photographing him in China. Ko later expressed regret over releasing the images for triggering the prolonged post-divorce conflict between Wang and Hsu, who had initially parted on amicable terms. He also accused the Hsu family of taking advantage of him by remaining silent on his exposé. On May 30, 2022, Wang acknowledged on Weibo the authenticity of Ko's photos, explaining that following Hsu's divorce request in February 2021, he experienced significant stress and developed alcohol problems, which led to inappropriate behavior while intoxicated. However, he denied having engaged in any extramarital affairs and filed defamation lawsuits against Ko twice in Taiwan. The first was withdrawn on the same day it was filed, while the second, initiated on May 18, was dropped in August of the same year. Also on May 30, in what appeared to be retaliation for Hsu's alleged “blackmail” over his extramarital affairs, Wang accused her of drug abuse by using prescriptions issued to others. He deleted the post shortly afterward and publicly apologized the next day, calling the drug allegation "the most regrettable thing in my life" but never disputed its truthfulness.
  
  On May 31, 2022, Ko capitalized on his surge in gossip notoriety with a much-hyped livestream debut on Kuaishou —the main rival of Douyin, where Wang's family ran their successful yet controversial e-commerce business —during which Ko released additional intimate photos of Wang with three other women, a toned-down disclosure that Ko attributed to Wang's personal pleas with his mother's hospitalization. The livestream, during which Ko also shared salacious claims about JJ Lin and Mike Xu, Dee's husband, was abruptly cut off when he mentioned the rumored relationship between Dilraba Dilmurat and Lu Han, suggesting a protective intervention by Kuaishou amid China's crackdown on celebrity gossip under Operation Qinglang, launched in 2021 to rein in celebrity culture and fandom on the Chinese Internet. Ko later claimed that Hsu had thanked him through her agent, Angelina Liao, for releasing photos of Wang with other women, though the message was relayed via an intermediary journalist and denied by Liao. In December 2022, Ko filed a defamation lawsuit in Taiwan against Wang's mother, who had accused him of being a paid proxy for Hsu to expose Wang. In March 2023, Ko reconciled with Wang by livestreaming their meeting at Wang's hot pot restaurant, Ma Liu Ji, in Beijing. In August 2023, Ko's defamation case against Wang's mother was closed after Taiwanese prosecutors issued a non-prosecution decision.
  
  In November 2022, Hsu sought enforcement of spousal maintenance of over NT$7.5 million at the Taipei District Court against Wang, claiming he had failed to honor their divorce agreement since March of that year. Wang claimed that he continued to pay child support and Hsu's personal maintenance but no longer wished to cover her family expenses—primarily the NT$40,000 monthly electricity bill for the house he had previously shared with Hsu, which she now shared with Koo—after Hsu remarried. He then launched a series of attacks against Hsu and her family on Weibo including her second husband Koo, her sister Dee, and Dee's husband, Mike Xu. Wang accused Dee of encouraging Barbie's divorce out of jealousy, implying that Dee wanted to sabotage her sister's marriage because Dee had endured habitual infidelity from Xu, who purchased a property in Shanghai for his extramarital relationships, using Wang's funds paid by Hsu after Xu had discovered Dee's affair with a dance instructor. A media frenzy erupted when Wang denigrated Koo for not replacing the mattress he had purchased for Hsu during their marriage; Hsu returned the mattress to the S Hotel, where it was destroyed live on Taiwanese television.
  
  On December 3, 2022, prompted by Wang's mother's claim that Wang had paid for Hsu's two Taipei properties, echoing the long-standing narrative that Hsu had married into his wealth, Hsu stated on social media that she had personally paid for both homes, which had been chosen by Wang—whom she mockingly called “ Aisin-Gioro Wang,” a jab at his mother's claim that Wang was descended from the Manchu royal family. Hsu also showed an IOU signed by Wang in 2018, acknowledging a debt of over NT$170 million, which she had lent him to support his business. According to Taiwanese agent Eddie Chen, the IOU was written at the request of Hsu's mother, after Wang had repeatedly borrowed money from Hsu without timely repayment as his finances were controlled by his mother. Wang countered that Hsu had paid the down payment of Kingdom of Global View in 2011 using NT$200 million he had previously deposited into her account when he did not yet have a bank account in Taiwan. He also stated that Hsu had reneged on an agreement to offset the NT$100 million loan in exchange for her ownership of the nearly NT$400 million penthouse at Taipei Shin-yi following their divorce, and attributed the delay in repayment to China's strict foreign exchange and money transfer regulations, which he circumvented by selling a painting, through which he had repaid NT$5 million. Wang revealed the terms of their divorce and financial arrangements—widely seen as favoring Hsu, given his substantial financial commitments including a total of NT$184 million in alimony until 2038, a NT$250 million mortgage, and a credit card provided for routine expenses. According to Wang, Hsu had spent NT$12 million on luxury goods using his card post-divorce—including gifts for Koo and parts of the outfit she wore in her remarriage photos—after which Wang's mother claimed that she suspended the card in Hsu's possession. Hsu subsequently sued Wang for violating Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act by disclosing her address and bank information.
  
  Actress Zhang Yingying—whom Hsu identified as Wang's mistress, and whom both Wang's mother and paparazzo Ryan Ko claimed had acted as Hsu's informant during divorce proceedings—ended her relationship with Wang in January 2023, two months after he publicly acknowledged the relationship following years of rumors. Zhang cited ongoing disapproval and humiliation from Wang's mother as the primary reasons for the breakup, despite Wang's proposal. Following the split, Zhang frequently criticized Wang and his mother on social media, implying that Wang had “deceived” her—as well as other women—into romantic involvement with him. In August 2024, Zhang suggested that Wang had cheated on her with Mandy Ma. Ma responded on social media that she had not known Wang prior to October 2023, and referred to Zhang as a “mistress.” Zhang subsequently noted that Ma's remark effectively confirmed Wang's infidelity to Hsu, after which Ma deleted the post. After Hsu's death, Zhang harshly attacked Wang on Weibo, claiming that Wang had been unfaithful since the second year of his marriage to Hsu, and “all the harm suffered was caused by him.”
  
  From 2022 to 2025, Hsu and Wang's post-divorce dispute—set in motion by tensions following Hsu's rapid remarriage and intensified by her legal efforts to enforce alimony—sparked wide-ranging public discussions on sexism, misinformation, and cross-strait relations. Both Wang and Hsu accused each other of infidelity and domestic abuse during their marriage. Wang and his mother accused Barbie and Dee of drug use, which the sisters denied, and criticized Hsu for not allowing the children to visit Beijing or meet Wang's mother, who hadn't seen her grandchildren in five years until she visited Taipei in December 2024. Wang and his mother accused the sisters of splittism and supporting Taiwanese independence, though Wang had previously defended them from such allegations, including Dee's Chinese nationalist trolling controversy in 2021. During their legal battle, Wang also repeatedly proposed remarriage in private, while publicly maintaining that he harbored no ill will toward Hsu or her family, attributing their post-divorce conflict to the actions of her lawyers and agent. His proposals were rejected by Hsu, who was then in her second marriage. In October 2023, during a livestreaming session, Wang's mother chided him for publicly expressing his wish to remarry Hsu, while Wang explained that he was motivated by concerns for Hsu's health and fears for her possible death. Hsu's agent, Angelina Liao, responded by urging Wang not to “both defame and profess love in an attempt to interfere with court proceedings.” Wang subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against Liao in Taiwan, but was dismissed by the court.
  
  On March 20, 2024, Hsu issued her most direct and detailed response to Wang's series of allegations on Weibo:
  
  The one who was unfaithful during the marriage was you, not me. After the divorce, it's true that I used your credit card a few times out of spite. But you had signed off on it yourself. More importantly, I never used your card to buy anything for my husband.
  
  I was furious at the time because:
  
  Ten years of marriage, two deaths, and one serious injury. The fact that I used your card out of spite, looking back on it now, feels almost laughable. Because what I gave to you, invested in you, was far more than that. Even when I used your card, I was spending money I had worked hard to earn myself. After the divorce, you and your people spread rumors and twisted the truth, leading to the online abuse I still endure today. Still, I thank you—for creating such a brutal test for me. You've made me stronger. “No complaints, no excuses. With grace and composure—go!”
  
  From now on, I will no longer respond to any of the slander and smear campaigns you fabricate. I will leave everything to the law and the judicial system. From this very second on, you are but an illusion, and I will walk only the path of flowers.
  
  On the same day, Wang countered on Weibo, along with a shipping receipt from Hsu to Koo as evidence for her liaison before divorce:
  
  In response to Barbie Hsu’s evasive statements, I’m going to lay everything out this time!!!
  
  All this time, I’ve put up with what your family has said. I kept telling those around me, “She’s the mother of my children—I respect her.” But you’ve never respected me. From now on, if you have something to say, say it yourself—don’t hide behind others.
  
  On March 22, 2024, which would have marked Wang and Hsu's wedding anniversary, Wang exhibited a series of emotionally charged outbursts. He conducted a midday livestream on Douyin, during which he showed affection toward his girlfriend, Mandy Ma, while also offering a backhanded compliment, saying, “I’ll never argue with you—your personality doesn’t allow for arguments anyway.” He then tearfully sang Richie Jen ’s "Heart Too Soft," seemingly alluding to his perceived leniency toward Hsu during their legal disputes, before launching into a verbal attack on Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, Douyin's parent company, apparently triggered by the platform's automatic warning about his use of inappropriate language. The livestream was cut short when Wang's long-time housekeeper, Ms. Yang, intervened and took away his phone, as he appeared to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. That afternoon, from his rented residence nearby, Wang went to his former marital home with Hsu at the Taipei Shin-yi complex to request a visit with their daughter. According to paparazzo Ryan Ko, the former couple had previously agreed that their daughter would stay with Wang during his stay in Taipei, while their son would remain with Hsu, with a chauffeur routinely dropping off the children after school. However, tensions had escalated following contentious online exchanges two days earlier. When the Hsu family—allegedly an unusually large group of six, including Hsu and Koo—picked up Hsu's son that afternoon, they also took her daughter from the vehicle. According to Wang's mother, Yang attempted to prevent this and was pushed to the ground by the Hsu family. Wang subsequently arrived at Hsu's residence with two companions around 5 p.m. Both parties contacted the police, who confirmed that Wang was emotional but neither intoxicated nor violent. Wang was allowed to see his daughter, and Hsu, without meeting with Wang, assured him through intermediaries that their daughter would return after dinner. He left without further incident. However, around 8 p.m., after Hsu informed him that their daughter would remain overnight, Wang attempted to forcibly enter her residence. Security staff contacted the police, who escorted him from the scene. At the police station, Wang told officers and media that his child was being “illegally detained” by Hsu and stated his intent to file a report accusing her, along with Dee, of abusing Stilnox through others' prescriptions. He ultimately left without providing evidence or filing a report. Wang claimed to have experienced memory loss over the following four days due to severe psychological distress. His housekeeper Yang—who had already strained her relationship with Hsu as a live-in nanny by posting dancing videos on Douyin that revealed the interiors of Hsu's home—was dismissed by Hsu after having come to Taiwan with Wang nine years earlier. Yang returned to her home in Beijing until Hsu's death, after which she came back to Taiwan to resume working for Wang.
  
  On March 27, 2024, when asked whether their highly publicized divorce—sometimes seen as a symbolic end of the honeymoon period in cross-strait relations—would worsen relations, a spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office commented, “People on both sides of the strait are one family, and cross-strait marriages bring us even closer.” However, regarding the “rare cases of failed marriages,” the parties involved should “part on good terms and go their separate ways in peace.” The next day, Wang proposed to Mandy Ma. They married in May 2024. In May 2025, by the time of their make-up wedding banquet in Beijing, Taiwanese designer Robert Cheng, Ma's ex-husband from 2016 to 2022, publicly accused Ma of serial infidelity and of engaging in post-divorce legal harassment against him and his associates. Cheng's claims were supported by a non-prosecution ruling issued by the Taiwan Shilin District Prosecutors Office in response to a defamation lawsuit Ma had filed against one of Cheng's friends. In an apparent attempt to disrupt the wedding, over three thousand revealing photos of Ma, taken when she was 20, were circulated online, along with further allegations of extramarital affairs and an unverified claim that she had previously worked as an escort in Macau, a claim Ma has denied. Chinese celebrity wedding dress designer Lan Yu also implied that she declined Ma as a client out of support for Hsu, a claim Ma denied by stating she had never approached the designer. Wang's second wedding proceeded as planned on May 17, without the presence of his two children with Hsu. Three days after his wedding, Wang posted on Douyin to Ma: "Thank you to my wife for loving Beijing, for getting used to the weather here, to my temper, to my friends, and to the Maotai here.” The post was interpreted as an indirect jab at Hsu, who had struggled to adapt to Beijing's dry climate and was allergic to the city's springtime willow catkins, prompting her return to Taipei a year after their marriage.
  
  In February 2023, Hsu filed lawsuits in China against Wang for defamation and invasion of privacy, and against Zhang for online infringement liability; Hsu later applied for injunctions against Wang and Zhang. On August 19, 2024, the Beijing Internet Court granted Hsu's injunctions by prohibiting Wang and Zhang from publishing Hsu's personal information online, but dismissed Hsu's appeal to shut down their social media accounts. The injunctions would remain in effect until the court renders a final judgment, but Wang and Zhang effectively ignored them by continuing posting about Hsu online. At the time of Hsu's death on 2 February 2025, her two lawsuits in Taiwan against Wang over matrimonial assets, which she had won in the first-instance trial but was appealed by Wang, and over violations of the Personal Data Protection Act remained unresolved, while the judgement from the Beijing Internet Court had yet to be issued. Hsu claimed over NT$250 million from Wang, including his NT$170 million IOU, NT$80 million that he allegedly appropriated from their joint account funded by the sale of Kingdom of Global View, the mortgage she placed on her Taipei Shin-yi property to support his business, and spousal maintenance. In late February, Wang sent a message to Hsu's mother, offering to transfer the NT$7.5 million in spousal maintenance that Hsu had claimed before her death, only to find that he had been blocked. In March 2025, the Hsu family continued to pursue Hsu's matrimonial assets case posthumously, maintaining the NT$7.5 million claim against Wang.