An offline business in China’s Shandong Province has been getting attention for offering divorcing couples the chance to destroy their wedding pictures in a cheap and effective way.
Tearing up wedding photos after a failed marriage isn’t as easy as it sounds in China, a country where it’s customary to immortalize wedding stills on tough acrylic canvases that also happen to be very resistant to flames. That leaves divorcing couples with few options, like simply throwing their wedding pictures in the trash, which many are reluctant to do for fear that they might get recognized by someone. That’s where a new business venture from Shandong Province comes in. Founded by a young man surnamed Liu, the new company specializes in shredding wedding photographs, helping clients put their past behind them while also protecting their privacy.
“I started this business with privacy as the simple motivation,” Liu told Bailu Video. “Wedding photos fall into the category of personal privacy items, and I believe there is a strong demand for my service. We have received orders from every province and municipality across China, except for Tibet.”
The process is pretty straightforward. Liu’s company offers several pricing options – from a few 10s of yuan to over 100 yuan ($14) – depending on the size of the wedding photos that need to be destroyed, and once an agreement has been reached the client ships the photos to the base of operations in Langfang, Shandong Province. Here staff first cover the photos with spray paint to ensure that the protagonists cannot be seen, and then put them into a powerful shredding machine. The entire process is filmed and the footage is sent to the client as proof.
Liu’s business might be the only one of its kind in China, but its success has surprised even its owner. With other businesses reluctant to even try to burn pictures of living people out of superstition, his simple wedding photo shredding business is one of the few available solutions divorcees have.
