A Chinese man who was fined $400,000 for having 8 children just got his fine reduced to $14,000
Vanessa Gu
Wed, July 7, 2021, 4:11 AM
A family in China's Sichuan was fined $400,000 for having 8 children, but this was later reduced to $14,000. d3sign/Getty Images
A family in west China's Sichuan province was fined $400,000 for having eight children.
The fine was eventually lowered to $14,000.
Liu Mouhua and his wife had five daughters before having two sons in 2006 and 2010, SCMP reported.
A Chinese family with eight children was slapped with a 2.6 million yuan ($401,660) fine for breaking China's family planning laws. This was later reduced to 90,000 yuan ($13,900), Chinese news site Jiemian reported on Monday.
In their quest for a son, 50-year-old farmer Liu Mouhua and his former wife continued having children. The couple from Anyue county in west China's Sichuan had five daughters before giving birth to two sons in 2006 and 2010, and a daughter in between the boys, according to the South China Morning Post.
Anyue county is located in Sichuan province, west China. Google Maps
In China, many families have a preference for sons because they are the ones who pass on the family name. However, the country also has a strict population planning policy, under which families who exceed the number of children allowed are fined or have to pay "social support fees."
These fines and payments are usually calculated based on annual income and decided by local governments. In Sichuan province and before 2016, the fine was between six and eight times the family's annual income, reported Jiemian. The fine was later reduced to three times the family's annual income.
All of Liu's children were born before 2015 - at which point China relaxed its one-child policy to two - so he was fined for every child born after the first. The 2.6 million yuan fine was a penalty for Liu's sixth, seventh, and eighth children. It's unclear how much he paid in fines or "social support" for his other children.
After local authorities spoke to the local court and lawyers, the fine was lowered to 90,000 yuan to be paid in installments, Jiemian reported.
The father of eight told Jiemian he was resigned to paying the fine but admitted it was a struggle with five children who are still in school and two in college.
"I'll pay what I have, after deducting expenditure for my children and parents' daily lives. I will face it and pay as much as I can," he told the Chinese news site.
Liu's story has caused a stir on Chinese social media as China suffers from a rapidly aging and shrinking population. Earlier this year, the country expanded its two-child policy to three to encourage more births.
Marriages
Re: Marriages
How A.I. Is Transforming Wedding Planning
A.I. is enhancing a time-consuming and stressful process, providing couples and planners with event suggestions, budgeting and many other useful tools.
By the time Emily Strand and Will Christiansen exchange vows this fall, most of the tasks on their wedding to-do list will have been created, organized and completed thanks to artificial intelligence.
These include everything from a seating chart to a personalized 70-word crossword puzzle for their Oct. 11 wedding at the Rio Secco Golf Club in Henderson, Nev. A.I. is helping them manage their budget and found their officiant and cake maker, too.
Ms. Strand’s secret for getting it all done? Specificity. “I asked ChatGPT to list, as a bride, common and uncommon things I needed to do to plan a D.I.Y., 120-person, outdoor ceremony in Las Vegas in October 2025,” said Ms. Strand, 31, a public defender for Clark County, Nev. Within seconds it spit out an Excel document listing 200 suggestions, including ideas from blog posts, Reddit and Google Crowdsource.
“Once it suggested vendors,” Ms. Strand said, “I had A.I. write my query letters to them.” She also asked for advice on improving her wedding website. What probably would have taken her 250 hours of research over all, she said, was completed by A.I. in about an hour.
Wedding planning has long been time-consuming and stressful, filled with meticulous details and endless decision making. A.I. is transforming the process by providing couples and event planners with many useful tools. Among them: real-time cost analyses and budget tracking; virtual styling assistants; algorithms for seating; automated R.S.V.P. reminders; and augmented reality, or A.R., which can allow couples to tour venues remotely.
Anne Chang, 32, a freelance D.J. from Brooklyn, said she wanted to “simplify and optimize” the planning for her five-day bachelorette party in Ibiza, Spain, and turned to an A.I. tool on Bridesmaid for Hire, a wedding service platform. Seconds after plugging in some basic information, a six-page itinerary was produced that “factored in that the night we’re going to a club, our following morning would be a late rise and breakfast, and a chill beach day,” Ms. Chang said. She paid $35 for the assistance.
The itinerary offered recommendations and featured a “fun meter” for each activity. Other unexpected touches included group photo shoot suggestions and locations, a packing checklist, emergency precautions and names of the nearest hospitals.
Julia Lynch, 31, and Alex Eckstein, 30, of Manhattan, used the same site, but a different tool to create a seating chart for their 300 guests, who are attending their wedding on Aug. 23 at the Hillrock Estate Distillery in Ancram, N.Y., where Mr. Eckstein, is a partner.
“The complexities of who to seat people next to is overwhelming,” said Ms. Lynch, a personal brand strategist. After inputting the names and details about their guests, the program created two seating charts, for two meals that will be served on different nights, taking into account guests’ commonalities and family dynamics.
“The tool gave me suggestions for designs, layouts and types of tables within the parameters of our tent,” said Ms. Lynch, who chose round tables for easier conversation. She described the experience as fun and, at $9, inexpensive. Though her wedding planner is full service, she said she wanted to optimize his time. “This took seconds and eliminated the need for him to do the work,” she said.
Last year Jen Glantz, a professional vows writer who started Bridesmaid for Hire in 2014, added an A.I. speechwriting component to her human-driven offerings. Since introducing the tool, around 1,300 people opted for a $35 A.I. speech, versus 20 people who each hired Ms. Glantz to write them for $375.
Now 10 different A.I. tools, including a 24-hour hotline that people call for advice, are available, and account for 70 percent of her business.
“The hotline gives users actionable advice and steps they can take, with a bit of sympathy in my trained voice and expertise,” she said. “For my customers, A.I. is making this industry more personalized, affordable, faster, and efficient.”
Popular wedding platforms like the Knot, Minted and Canva are also incorporating A.I. into their sites.
Zola, the wedding website, added two A.I. programs last year: Split the Decisions, which helps couples divide wedding planning responsibilities, and a thank-you note generator tool available as a mobile app. It is also planning to add a wedding vendor budget assistant in August.
Other A.I. platforms have been recently built out of firsthand wedding experiences, like Guestlist and Nupt.ai.
When Michelle Nemirovsky, 35, and Federico Polacov, 34, of Austin, Texas, were married in Buenos Aires on Dec. 17, 2023, the couple wished they had a better way to track RSVPs and connect instantly with guests.
“People have a wedding website, but no one looks at it, and it doesn’t give updates in real time,” said Ms. Nemirovsky, who, with Mr. Polacov, started Guestlist in 2024.
Ms. Nemirovsky described the site as a social network that organizes RSVPs and offers real-time updates. More than 7,300 people have downloaded the app since its launch, and a 24-hour A.I. chatbot component is in the works for later this year. Some services are free, and others require a $10 monthly subscription that gives unlimited photo and video uploads, and texting to guests.
This year, another couple, Alvina Putri, 29, and Deepak Venkatesh, 32, of Los Angeles, created Nupt.ai, a wedding planning platform powered by A.I. The couple married in Newport, R.I., on Sept. 17, 2023, and had longed for some help organizing and executing their wedding-planning tasks.
Their site can generate personalized checklists based on cultural or traditional nuances; curate vendor recommendations; manage guest lists; streamline repetitive tasks, “like emailing vendors or chasing down RSVPs, and do smart vendor matching,” Ms. Putri said.
“Our average couple is 25 to 34, who spends over 500 hours planning their wedding,” she said. “We’re bringing that down to 50 hours.”
According to Ms. Putri, some parts of the platform are free; others cost $20 per month or a $200 annual plan, which 60 to 70 percent of couples pay for and stay on until their wedding happens.
Though most professionals and couples agreed A.I. is a tool, rather than a replacement for people, many said A.I. was doing the job of numerous people, all at once.
“Not all brides will need a full-service planner if they can do a lot of legwork themselves with A.I.,” Ms. Strand said. “We only needed ‘a day-of coordinator.’”
Ms. Nemirovsky, though, was glad to have her planner by her side.
“The night before our wedding, a huge storm hit,” she said. “Everything we planned was outside and needed to be inside. ChatGPT could not have replaced our wedding planner who consoled me while I was crying, or coordinated our vendors while making sure our Plan B looked like plan A.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/fash ... nning.html
A.I. is enhancing a time-consuming and stressful process, providing couples and planners with event suggestions, budgeting and many other useful tools.
By the time Emily Strand and Will Christiansen exchange vows this fall, most of the tasks on their wedding to-do list will have been created, organized and completed thanks to artificial intelligence.
These include everything from a seating chart to a personalized 70-word crossword puzzle for their Oct. 11 wedding at the Rio Secco Golf Club in Henderson, Nev. A.I. is helping them manage their budget and found their officiant and cake maker, too.
Ms. Strand’s secret for getting it all done? Specificity. “I asked ChatGPT to list, as a bride, common and uncommon things I needed to do to plan a D.I.Y., 120-person, outdoor ceremony in Las Vegas in October 2025,” said Ms. Strand, 31, a public defender for Clark County, Nev. Within seconds it spit out an Excel document listing 200 suggestions, including ideas from blog posts, Reddit and Google Crowdsource.
“Once it suggested vendors,” Ms. Strand said, “I had A.I. write my query letters to them.” She also asked for advice on improving her wedding website. What probably would have taken her 250 hours of research over all, she said, was completed by A.I. in about an hour.
Wedding planning has long been time-consuming and stressful, filled with meticulous details and endless decision making. A.I. is transforming the process by providing couples and event planners with many useful tools. Among them: real-time cost analyses and budget tracking; virtual styling assistants; algorithms for seating; automated R.S.V.P. reminders; and augmented reality, or A.R., which can allow couples to tour venues remotely.
Anne Chang, 32, a freelance D.J. from Brooklyn, said she wanted to “simplify and optimize” the planning for her five-day bachelorette party in Ibiza, Spain, and turned to an A.I. tool on Bridesmaid for Hire, a wedding service platform. Seconds after plugging in some basic information, a six-page itinerary was produced that “factored in that the night we’re going to a club, our following morning would be a late rise and breakfast, and a chill beach day,” Ms. Chang said. She paid $35 for the assistance.
The itinerary offered recommendations and featured a “fun meter” for each activity. Other unexpected touches included group photo shoot suggestions and locations, a packing checklist, emergency precautions and names of the nearest hospitals.
Julia Lynch, 31, and Alex Eckstein, 30, of Manhattan, used the same site, but a different tool to create a seating chart for their 300 guests, who are attending their wedding on Aug. 23 at the Hillrock Estate Distillery in Ancram, N.Y., where Mr. Eckstein, is a partner.
“The complexities of who to seat people next to is overwhelming,” said Ms. Lynch, a personal brand strategist. After inputting the names and details about their guests, the program created two seating charts, for two meals that will be served on different nights, taking into account guests’ commonalities and family dynamics.
“The tool gave me suggestions for designs, layouts and types of tables within the parameters of our tent,” said Ms. Lynch, who chose round tables for easier conversation. She described the experience as fun and, at $9, inexpensive. Though her wedding planner is full service, she said she wanted to optimize his time. “This took seconds and eliminated the need for him to do the work,” she said.
Last year Jen Glantz, a professional vows writer who started Bridesmaid for Hire in 2014, added an A.I. speechwriting component to her human-driven offerings. Since introducing the tool, around 1,300 people opted for a $35 A.I. speech, versus 20 people who each hired Ms. Glantz to write them for $375.
Now 10 different A.I. tools, including a 24-hour hotline that people call for advice, are available, and account for 70 percent of her business.
“The hotline gives users actionable advice and steps they can take, with a bit of sympathy in my trained voice and expertise,” she said. “For my customers, A.I. is making this industry more personalized, affordable, faster, and efficient.”
Popular wedding platforms like the Knot, Minted and Canva are also incorporating A.I. into their sites.
Zola, the wedding website, added two A.I. programs last year: Split the Decisions, which helps couples divide wedding planning responsibilities, and a thank-you note generator tool available as a mobile app. It is also planning to add a wedding vendor budget assistant in August.
Other A.I. platforms have been recently built out of firsthand wedding experiences, like Guestlist and Nupt.ai.
When Michelle Nemirovsky, 35, and Federico Polacov, 34, of Austin, Texas, were married in Buenos Aires on Dec. 17, 2023, the couple wished they had a better way to track RSVPs and connect instantly with guests.
“People have a wedding website, but no one looks at it, and it doesn’t give updates in real time,” said Ms. Nemirovsky, who, with Mr. Polacov, started Guestlist in 2024.
Ms. Nemirovsky described the site as a social network that organizes RSVPs and offers real-time updates. More than 7,300 people have downloaded the app since its launch, and a 24-hour A.I. chatbot component is in the works for later this year. Some services are free, and others require a $10 monthly subscription that gives unlimited photo and video uploads, and texting to guests.
This year, another couple, Alvina Putri, 29, and Deepak Venkatesh, 32, of Los Angeles, created Nupt.ai, a wedding planning platform powered by A.I. The couple married in Newport, R.I., on Sept. 17, 2023, and had longed for some help organizing and executing their wedding-planning tasks.
Their site can generate personalized checklists based on cultural or traditional nuances; curate vendor recommendations; manage guest lists; streamline repetitive tasks, “like emailing vendors or chasing down RSVPs, and do smart vendor matching,” Ms. Putri said.
“Our average couple is 25 to 34, who spends over 500 hours planning their wedding,” she said. “We’re bringing that down to 50 hours.”
According to Ms. Putri, some parts of the platform are free; others cost $20 per month or a $200 annual plan, which 60 to 70 percent of couples pay for and stay on until their wedding happens.
Though most professionals and couples agreed A.I. is a tool, rather than a replacement for people, many said A.I. was doing the job of numerous people, all at once.
“Not all brides will need a full-service planner if they can do a lot of legwork themselves with A.I.,” Ms. Strand said. “We only needed ‘a day-of coordinator.’”
Ms. Nemirovsky, though, was glad to have her planner by her side.
“The night before our wedding, a huge storm hit,” she said. “Everything we planned was outside and needed to be inside. ChatGPT could not have replaced our wedding planner who consoled me while I was crying, or coordinated our vendors while making sure our Plan B looked like plan A.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/fash ... nning.html