Chew the Fat

A Taoyuan County couple who could not get their parents’ blessing to marry split up after three failed attempts to commit suicide together, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday.

A man identified only as Lin, 30, had been dating a woman surnamed Lee for a year and wanted to marry her, the Liberty Times (the ‘Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported.
But both sets of parents were opposed to the marriage, so Lin and Lee decided to commit suicide, the report said.

Over the weekend, the pair checked into a Taipei County hotel, determined to commit suicide by burning charcoal. However, the smoke detector in their room went off and hotel staff expelled them from the hotel, the report said.

The pair checked into another hotel. This time they wrapped a towel around the smoke detector, but the alarm still went off, and again they were forced to leave by staffers, who feared a suicide would bring bad luck to the hotel.

Next the pair bought sleeping pills and checked into a third hotel, where they swallowed two dozen sleeping pills each. They were awoken the next day by hotel staffers telling them it was check-out time.

The couple decided to return home, but quarreled in the car. Lee scratched Lin, and Lin hit Lee. When they got to Taoyuan County, they went to the police station to press charges against each other, putting an end to their relationship.