Zhang Jiaqi's Mother Books a Therapy Session on Reality TV as Xiang Tai Urges the Family Apart

The preview ran under a minute, and it rearranged one of Chinese reality television's longest-running family stories. In the latest trailer for My That Girl, the mother of retired Olympic diver Zhang Jiaqi sits down for a counselling session with the psychologist Li Songwei, and offers a self-assessment that has been replayed across Weibo since: "Zhang Jiaqi is the genius. I'm the fool. That she could grow up this well in my hands was no small thing," the preview shared by an entertainment account records, the mother's voice audibly somewhere between apology and self-defence.

The site has followed this pair for months, through the diver's farewell post about the distance from her mother and through the lawyers who concluded her mother cannot legally keep her prize money — the three bank cards she holds, the prize income she has declined to return. Zhang Jiaqi won Olympic gold as a teenager and retired young; the show's season traced the cost. When her mother spoke on air of making things right, the diver's calm reply, per recaps under the new topic, was the shortest sentence of the whole saga: "There's no need anymore" (不需要了).

Into that stalemate stepped one of Hong Kong's most unmistakable media voices. On October 13, Chen Lan — Xiang Tai, producer, manager and wife of Charles Heung — posted a video weighing in. She praised Zhang's poise, said she would blame the mother whether or not cameras were rolling, accused her of years of put-downs and of taking her daughter's income, and called her, in the phrase now pinned to the topic, a serial liar (谎话连篇). Her advice, as the Modern Express report relayed it: the money can keep flowing, but the contact can stop — and she spoke from experience, having kept her own family at arm's length while young, meeting only her financial obligations.

The details commenters retell under the topic carry its weight: the custom gold necklace promised to celebrate a championship, kept by the mother "for safekeeping" for over a decade and never actually seen by the daughter; the 810,000-yuan National Games prize that went into her mother's pocket; the request to be taught investing, turned away with "you don't understand." Zhang's own line from the show — "I was raised by the team" — does the summarising for many.

What has made the therapy clip travel is its rarity value: as one widely shared post put it, in most Chinese parent-child conflicts it is the child who is asked to reflect, and a parent volunteering for a counselling chair on national television is close to unheard of. Li Songwei's read, relayed in the discussion, was restrained — the mother is still holding an image of a child who no longer exists, and repair accumulates like a piggy bank, slowly, with no instant settlement. Another recap's line has become the topic's shorthand: the obedient child is always the first to heal herself, and the last to be properly loved. Whether a televised session can move a relationship that lawyers and now celebrity moralists have weighed in on is the question the show will spend its season selling.