With marriages declining and divorces rising, several business ideas have emerged in some parts of the world to deal with breakups in the best possible way. China is no exception. In this Asian country, the number of marriages has fallen to the lowest in 36 years, and the number of divorces is in the millions per year—so much so that an unusual market has flourished.
A “crematorium” for wedding photos. In a country where the number of divorces is increasing every year, many snapshots and wedding memories end up in the attic or, worse, in the trash. However, with so many millions of couples getting divorced, Liu Wei, a former pharmaceutical company employee, saw an opportunity.
As The Washington Post reports, Liu started a business that had plenty of work. He defines it as a “crematorium of those photos when their life cycle ends.” Yes, he and his team destroy photos and any trace of what once represented happiness and love between two people.
The story. Between 2016 and 2020, China registered more than four million divorces yearly. By 2021, the country’s divorce rate was so exaggerated that the government began looking for a solution. According to The New York Times, the authorities introduced a law to keep unhappy marriages together and forced them to go through a 30-day “cooling off” period before finalizing the divorce.
Did it work? Well, it reduced the divorce rate to less than three million per year since 2021. About 1.3 million Chinese couples divorced in the first half of this year, but that’s still a considerable number of couples who are breaking up.
And when the love is over, they want to put an end to all traces of the marital past.
The XL photos. What happens when the image of marital bliss (and the rest) is no longer needed? In a country like China, throwing away the photos is out of the question, especially in big cities with strict waste sorting regulations. Privacy is a critical issue in the territory, too. And you can’t simply burn the photos, either. Burning snapshots of people is highly frowned upon in the country. It’s considered bad luck in Chinese superstition, even for separated spouses.
And there’s another problem. For a long time, as China has become richer and the middle class has flourished, pre-wedding photo shoots have gone from commonplace to monstrous. Couples would end up with an album and giant, life-size versions of them that they displayed at the wedding reception and then had at home. What the hell are they going to do with this smiling, life-size, cardboard version of their ex-couple?
The Mr. Wolf of married pictures. It’s here where Liu appears. In 2022, after fleeing his former job, he set up a business as a professional shredder of documents and other personal information in a factory warehouse in Langfang, a city between Beijing and Tianjin. However, he “saw the light” with the divorce numbers early last year.
As Liu explained to The Washington Post, he posted a promotional video on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. His employees stomped and jumped on some framed photos to show how durable materials, such as glass, wood, and metal, can be too hard to break at home. “Just send in the photos ... and we’ll make them disappear completely like they never existed,” he said. The clip got over a million views, and Liu’s business took off.
The “love destruction” process. Liu says that over 95% of his business is photo destruction, and about 80% of those photos are from weddings. He and his team eliminate other items as well. When the packages arrive at the factory, they record a video of the boxes and the items inside, then weigh them to determine the price of the destruction. In addition to photos, the boxes contain towels, linens, and even diaries.
To destroy the photos, the team first spray-paints over faces and distinctive features such as tattoos, piercings, and physical disabilities. They do this to protect the client’s privacy and sometimes to ensure a double erasure of memories. Some clients request a specific color. Others ask for patterns like a Taoist talisman to “exorcise toxicity.” What doesn’t go through the shredder goes through the sledgehammer.
A video ending. Finally, Liu’s team sends its customers a video of the entire process, sometimes with an upbeat soundtrack. Then, they ship all the fragments to a plant for biofuel. “Everything is done responsibly,” Liu says, adding that some customers find “therapeutic value” in the service.
The man also explains that some people, especially in small towns, drive to other villages to mail their photos because they’re worried about what their neighbors might say. Divorce remains stigmatized in many less-developed regions and close-knit communities, especially for women. In other cases, some customers come to the factory to participate in the spray-painting themselves and witness the crushing, “perhaps for additional emotional catharsis,” Liu says.
What if someone regrets it? Of course, it’s possible to regret it at the last minute. In these cases, the company stops the process if possible. Sometimes, customers request urgent destruction, and 24 hours later, they call begging to stop everything because the couple in question has reconciled.
In those cases, I assume that the person contracting the service didn’t tell their significant other about the process they had paid for to ensure future cohabitation.
Image | Jan Termont
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