An Internet company in China is under fire for demanding an employee provide documentary evidence proving her grandmother is her actual grandmother.

The woman, surnamed Zhang, from Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, eastern China, recently learned her grandmother was seriously ill after a cerebral haemorrhage.

She immediately booked a flight home and applied for leave from her employer, the Hangzhou Jiajie Internet Technology Company, before heading to the airport.

“At that time, the team leader told me to provide my grandma’s medical diagnosis document,” Zhang said. “After I gave them the document other people from the company asked me to certify that my grandma is really my grandma. I was already at the airport, I was anxious and outraged at the same time!” She wrote in a social media post about her employer’s behaviour, video portal Gongfu Video reported.

Zhang said she next contacted a human resources staffer about her leave application who asked her to provide photocopies of her identity card and household registration certificates to prove that she and her grandma were blood relatives.

“With only a 75-year-old patient’s hospital diagnosis document, I can not deduce that she is your grandma,” the HR person told Zhang. “It’s not that we don’t believe you. It’s because we believe you that’s why we are asking you to provide more evidence.”

Zhang, who is originally from Jiahe in Jilin province, northeastern China, passed a photo of her own household registration certificate to the HR person, however, they rejected it because it did not carry her grandma’s name.

“I don’t share the same household registration certificate with my grandma any more since I moved to Hangzhou,” Zhang told the HR person.

Zhang claimed that the HR person then threatened her, reportedly saying: “If anyone takes leave using false reasons, I will criticise him or her in front of all employees of our company.”

It was at this point that Zhang, who was still unable to prove her blood relationship with her grandma to her employer’s satisfaction, quit her job.

So far, no one from the company has contacted Zhang about her resignation or for a handover, the report said.

The post about her unpleasant experience has been viewed six million times on short video platform Douyin.

“This company is inhumane. I think it intended to force the woman to quit,” wrote one user.

But some other people sided with the HR person. “From their chat records, the HR worker said the woman had taken too many days off before, causing complaints from her teammates. So it’s necessary to double-check her reason for requesting leave,” one person said.

It’s not uncommon for mainland residents to be trapped in dilemmas like this when they are required to provide documents to prove a relationship with their parents or other relatives.

Two years ago, a man in Harbin, Heilongjiang, northeastern China, complained online that he had spent several days contacting various authorities, but failed to get any documentation proving his mother is his mother, the Modern Evening Times reported.

The man said he was told by a bank to present the document to prove this relationship when he needed to withdraw his mother’s money after she died.

The man, surnamed Sun, said his mother divorced his father over three decades ago. He and his sister were raised by their father. The mother later remarried and divorced again.

The hospital, where Sun was born, said it could not provide his birth certificate as he was born more than 30 years ago while records only dated back three decades ago.

After Sun’s case attracted attention online the local notary authority sent four officials to investigate. As a result, the authority issued a notary document to prove Sun’s mother was a blood relative

 - SCMP