A Dutch man has been hospitalised for exhaustion after waiting 10 days at a Chinese airport to meet his online girlfriend.
According to The Sun, 41-year-old Alexander Pieter Cirk flew to the city of Changsha to meet Zhang, 26, for the first time.
However, when she didn’t show up, he decided to wait. Photos later emerged of him looking dishevelled in a wheelchair with an IV drip in his arm.
Cirk never confirmed his visit with Zhang, who told CCTV News that he mentioned it in passing but thought it was just a joke.
“We had advanced our romantic relationship but later he seemed a little callous toward me,” she said. “One day he sent me a photo of air tickets abruptly and I thought it was a joke.
“He didn’t contact me later.”
When he tried to call her from the airport, she was in hospital herself – having plastic surgery in another city.
While this story has attracted attention and ridicule, it runs to a deeper issue – isolation can be crushing and the search for love can make people do extreme things. We see it time and time again – lonely hearts meeting someone online and taking the plunge for romance. Sometimes there is a happy ending, but these grand gestures can also lead to heartache.
How far would you go for love? Would you take a chance on online romance?
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