34-year-old Annie Niu said in one of her videos that she had been pretending to be her twin sister while on call with her grandparents since their voices were similar.
Credit: Instagram/niu.annie
An influencer sparked disbelief on social media after she revealed to her followers that she had been hiding the death of her twin sister from her grandparents for five years.
The Chinese Canadian lifestyle influencer shared a video telling her followers that her twin sister, whose name she did not disclose, died five years ago from meningitis, as per a South China Morning Post report .
34-year-old Annie Niu said in one of her videos that she had been pretending to be her twin sister while on call with her grandparents since their voices were similar.
Niu explained that her father had asked her not to reveal the news of her sister's demise to her grandparents because both of them were aged over 90 years and he feared it would cause them heartbreak.
Before Niu's grandmother passed away in July, her father told her on her deathbed that her granddaughter would be waiting for her in heaven. Meanwhile, her grandfather was in the dark even after that.
When she posted the video, while some of her followers understood where she was coming from, several other bashed her for keeping her family in the dark.
“How did they not know for five years?" one user questioned.
Niu, though born in China, moved to Canada with her parents at the age of 10 and they live away from their grandparents and other relatives which apparently made the lies believable.
Another user sympathising with Niu said: "After my dad passed away, my grandma stopped eating and basically died of a broken heart. She passed away two weeks after my dad."