Since April last year, Liu Wei, a "wedding photo destruction service provider", and several partners have sent away more than 500 sets of wedding photos in a solid waste disposal center in Bazhou, Langfang, relying on a shredder and a hydraulic press. Here, the decaying love, the disintegration of marriage, and the emotional confusion of modern people are all swallowed into the ruthless iron mouth of the crusher.
Wen Xiao Chuzhou gave love "burial".
At half past eight in the morning, in a solid waste disposal center next to Bazhou National Highway in Langfang, a crusher rested on an iron platform half a person high, and the cement floor in front of the machine was scattered with freshly unloaded packages. Two pillows were shaken off the concrete floor, one stuffed in a non-woven bag, and the other was stuffed in a large plastic bag with a four-piece set of bright red bedding. When the bag is opened, the cotton bedding that has been idle for a long time exudes a musty smell and feels crusty to the touch. The sheets fell on the original owner's photo album, unable to cover the huge 40-inch ** underneath, revealing the slightly faded hem of the wedding dress and the trouser legs of the suit. 
For most of the past six months, Liu Wei has driven back and forth between Beijing and Langfang twice a week, unpacking, spray-painting, and crushing wedding photos sent from all over the country (photo by Wang Pan).Huge wedding photos, acrylic albums thicker than books, and a plastic-wrapped table soon covered the open space of twenty or thirty square meters. Looking back, the hundreds of square meters of factory buildings are full of white snakeskin bags, the nearest snakeskin bag is filled with substandard mobile phone backsheets, the other is the blister sheet commonly used in mobile phone packaging, and there are waste electronic devices and car parts further away. The two piles of wedding photos only occupy a small corner, bright and absurd. Liu Wei's most well-known identity in the public eye is"Wedding photo destruction service provider". Since April last year, he and several partners have sent away more than 500 sets of wedding photos in a waste treatment factory in Bazhou, Langfang, relying on a shredder and a hydraulic press. Liu Wei's pricing is very fair, the starting price of 5 kg is 59 yuan, 25 kg is 199 yuan, and then 7 yuan a kilogram, there is no cap, and customers who are willing to let him publicly shoot ** material can get a discount of 20 yuan. But there was still someone bargaining. In essence, no matter how beautiful and valuable a souvenir is, after losing its meaning, people are only willing to pay for it. ** and netizens gave Liu Wei a lot of titles, "Aihai Donor Guest" is his favorite one, he added it to the back of his Douyin account, like a chivalrous man. For most of the past six months, he has driven back and forth between Beijing and Langfang twice a week, unpacking, spray-painting and smashing wedding photos sent from all over the country. On social software, Liu Wei's avatar is a ** man in a tight black T-shirt, with a small tugs on the top of his head, which is a bit wild and absurd. In contrast, he is much more honest and low-key in front of him, with a round face, glasses, and a small waist bag. Knowing that we were going to take pictures today, he specially wore a short black down jacket for the spirit, not the usual thick overalls, and rubbed his hands in the cold in the empty warehouse surrounded by iron walls. 
Before starting to shredd, Liu Wei (first from left) and his colleagues had to repeatedly confirm the customer's willingness to destroy (photo by Wang Pan).
What will be unpacked this morning is the packages accumulated in the past five days, a total of about 30 pieces, and another seven or eight pieces are expected to be delivered on the same day. The farthest are from Yunnan, the nearest are from Beijing, and the most are from Guangdong. Liu Wei originally only wanted to do business around Beijing, but he didn't expect so many people to be willing to spend thousands of miles to send him heavy wedding photos for destruction. After a few months of observation, he found that there were more customers in the south than in the north, especially in Guangdong. "There is a problem of consumption habits, and economically developed regions are more accepting of paying for services and do not feel that spending money on waste disposal is a waste of money. On the other hand, waste disposal is particularly difficult in big cities, and people have a stronger sense of confidentiality. ”When the wedding photos are made, they are all exquisite and heavy, the whole set of ** weighs more than 20 kilograms, and the less is 5 kilograms, and it is thrown on the ground to stir up a cloud of dust, making a "bang" muffled sound. Two of them were sent directly with the original packaging of the photo studio, and the rest were packed in cartons filled with fruits, flour, snacks and the like. Someone treated it with care, and each ** was neatly wrapped in newspaper. Someone stuffed it indiscriminately, and cracks were pressed out on the cover of the album. There are also obvious vents of anger, and the photo frame has traces of cutting. 
Now, there are seven or eight customers who place orders to destroy wedding photos every day, and they can receive more than 200 orders a month (photo by Wang Pan).
In order to fix the most fragile feelings with the strongest things, people can imprint their faces on everything that is unthinkable. Lao Yang opened a hard-shell cardboard box with a yellow cloth surface, and inside was a large black stone slab, on which was gray-white dotted laser carving, and the faces of the two were blurred, and they could only vaguely identify two large white teeth. There are also two pieces of solid glass printed with ** in the same box, the size of a fist, and it takes a lot of effort to pull it out of the box, which is a popular crystal table around 2010. A half-person-high ** is pressed with tempered glass, and Lao Yang specially pulled it out to show me, "This is more difficult than glass, you have to hit it with a hammer first, otherwise the pieces will jump around." These things cannot be processed by the crusher, and they have to be destroyed under the hydraulic press with a volume of 200 tons. Liu Wei's inspiration for developing the wedding photo destruction business comes from the personal privacy item destruction business. The waste treatment plant we are in was built in 2021, and the main business of the factory is to destroy waste equipment and vehicle parts, and it also has the qualification to destroy confidential items, which can deal with various confidential carriers of enterprises and institutions in the public. At the beginning of this year, the boss approached Liu Wei and wanted to expand the business of destroying private items, mainly dealing with discarded mobile phones, computers and printer toner cartridges. After doing market research for a while, Liu Wei found that the idea of destroying personal privacy items sounded beautiful, but it was too difficult to do. "One is that private items are paid by the piece, and the unit price is too low. Again, people may not have such a strong sense of privacy protection, and few people are willing to spend money on it. ”In April last year, a Fujian guest sent a wedding photo, which opened Liu Wei's mind: in ordinary people's storage devices, the most and most sensitive content is **. Among all the **, wedding photos are a special category, it is physical, difficult to destroy, and the most emotionally colorful and unbearable. "It's not just about personal privacy, it's about deeper emotional needs. ”After all, the destruction of wedding photos is a niche track that has just emerged, and the attention comes quickly and there is a lot of controversy. There are more than 4,600 comments under the top ** of Liu Wei's Douyin account, and the first comment is "This is very promising, the divorce rate has been very high over the years", and then looking down, there are a lot of cynicisms such as "throwing it away", "spending money at both ends", "doing it more" and so on. From April to September last year, the number of wedding photos destroyed each month was only in single digits, adding up to less than 50 orders. At the beginning of November, Han Song, a writer with more than 600,000 followers, fell on Weibo **Liu Wei**, and also pointed out in the comments that his live broadcast room was called "Meritorious in the contemporary, beneficial in the future". With compassion in black humor, decompression and excitement in visual experience, poking at the mood of the times of "love is incompetent", Liu Wei's account became popular all of a sudden, and ** came one after another. Now, there are seven or eight customers who place orders to destroy their wedding photos every day, and they can receive more than 200 orders a month. Decency and farewell.
After checking the items in the package with the customer, Liu Wei insisted on confirming whether the face was sprayed one by one, "I can't regret it if I spray the paint." The partners Lao Yang and Zichao each have a spray paint can, and the black paint is sprayed on the picture of the "nourishing" North Korean Yan. The air was filled with the smell of paint, and the old face turned into a black mist. Too much for the paint to close before it has time to dry. When Liu Wei opened it again to confirm the customer's photo, some places had already fainted, and flowers full of holes were spread on the face, and he sprayed them one by one. Liu Wei didn't think about covering his face at first, and after posting a few **, a netizen took out a frame in ** and posted it in the comment area, and the half-palm-sized fragment happened to have the faces of the husband and wife, although it couldn't be seen clearly, it was very shocking. Liu Wei increased the painting process"It was a huge hit when it was launched, and it effectively obscured privacy. But some people don't send wedding photos, but they are not satisfied, so they emphasize that they don't spray paint, after all, spray paint always makes people feel that something bad has happened." 
At a solid waste disposal center in Langfang, wedding photos sent from all over the country were concealed and queued up to enter the shredder (photo by Wang Pan).Painting is an important symbolic step that directly erases the object from the human being. Sometimes, guests will offer to spray what color, which is mostly mixed with emotions and metaphysics. Some ask for both men and women to spray red and black, and some ask to spray all green. Zichao told me quite mysteriously that a guest sent a ** last week, and each one had a yellow charm pasted on the back. In this batch of **, there are two albums that have been smeared, one is painted with a black marker, the brushstrokes are simply frenzied, and one is very precise only covering the man, and the picture of the two sides hugging each other tightly is cut in half, and the meaning of the trial is very strong. Liu Wei couldn't get it right, so he sent a message to the customer to ask if he needed to spray it again. The customer seemed to suddenly put it down, saying that it should be sprayed. Lao Zhang was chattering beside me, covering his face even if he had removed "that taboo point". He is from the Yongqing countryside, and he usually shows people feng shui in the village, and he is an expert in traditional customs. He solemnly told me that according to the customs of their hometown, the ** of the living cannot be disposed of casually, and if they have to be thrown away, they must be torn apart and not burned. The question is,"In the past, it was easy to tear, but now it is not easy to do. It's okay, and it's a sign of respect to cover your face." That being said, he didn't reach for the paint can. Why do people still need such a sense of ritual after the relationship is over? Liu Wei said two key words to me, "decency" and "farewell". I want to ask Liu Wei if he has watched a Japanese drama, and his first reaction is "The Undertaker", "Ninety percent of what we see here should be the end of love." Whether it is a divorce, a breakup, or the death of some spouses, it is the end of a relationship. When feelings come, they are vigorous, and I hope that when they leave, they will also be decent. This is our word to arouse the customer's consumption consciousness, but it is also sincere. "Actually, what I wanted to tell him was "Life Deletion Office", which is about an organization that specializes in handling electronic memory for the deceased. There is a saying in it: "When you remove the hidden contents, your life will become consistent, and if you expose them, many things will start to fall apart." ”
An hour and a half after the stills of "Life Deletes the Office", Liu Wei finally asked Zichao to turn on the machine. The ground shook with a roar. Zichao stood on the platform and "fed" the crusher without the slightest emotion. Liu Wei stood next to him wearing a mask on his head, stretched his mobile phone above the crushing port, and recorded the whole process. This crusher has two motors and consumes 60 kilowatt-hours of electricity in one hour at full power. Think of the square inlet as a giant mouth, and the 4-centimeter-wide blade is the giant tooth that opens and closes, turning slowly in a clumsy posture, struggling to crush the body of love. The debris slowly rises through a long conveyor belt and falls into the tons of bags on the ground. The album can be thrown straight in, drawing a short parabola, and silently falling between the blades that roll in opposite directions. The first to be eliminated was the thickness, the five or six centimeter-thick acrylic sheets, which struggled for five or six seconds at most before twisting into a flat, wavy shape. Then the length was eliminated, and the half of the flattened album was rolled into the knife, shortened, and disappeared without the slightest sound. The huge ** hanging on the wall is small, and the knife edge runs up as soon as it is squeezed. Zichao held the photo frame with one hand and pressed it down, and the wooden board "crackled". The disappearance of the image is slow and clear, first with the puffy skirt, then the clasped hands, the flowers in the hands, and finally the blackened face. The crushed timber broke into an irregular shape and jumped high, like a spicy man in a frying pan, beating happily out of place. In the end, only a few hard bones remained, stone slabs, glass tables and tempered glass hanging photos. Lao Yang turned the tempered glass ** over and buckled it upside down on the ground, took out a big red hammer, stretched out his arm and slammed it down, and smashed a small hole, and then smashed it four or five times in a row. Under the weight of 200 tons, the slate turned into powder, and the fragments jumped out six or seven meters away, floating a fine cloud of dust. From the photographer's lens, it looks like an asteroid shattering at the center of the universe. 
After the wedding photos are crushed, they are packed into tons of bags and transported to the power plant with other solid waste materials for dissolution (photo by Wang Pan) I sent the ** of the crushing site to my friend Huiyi, and she excitedly typed a series of messages: "There is also this kind of good thing!" Can it be airlifted to you overnight? Big brother deserves to enjoy the temple! She told me that she was going home to make a list of things and sort out all the rags that she and her ex-husband had accumulated from their relationship to their 10 years of marriage. This methodical approach to taking stock of love reminds me of Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence", a real museum that annotates each other with fictional **. **Inside, Kemal, a wealthy son who is already engaged, falls in love with his distant cousin Fu Song, and deduces a poignant love that has been obsessed for 9 years. Outside the story, Pamuk bought an old house in Istanbul and collected thousands of small objects from the 70s of the last century, which were combined with the story of Fusong to form a memory palace dedicated to love. I visited the museum on a sweltering rainy day, and all I remember was covering a whole devastated wall, 4,213 cigarette butts that Fusson had extinguished. Traces of lipstick, crooked filters, blackened cigarette butts, and the date written under each cigarette butt, as well as what Floff had said and done that day. In the era of consumption first and love decaying, fetishes are intensifying, but leaving a memento of your ex after a breakup will only make people think that you are not very clear-headed. 
Hui Yi's wedding photos are the ultimate sample of the sense of ceremony. In 2021, she found a top photography studio in a first-tier city against the epidemic, flew to Yunnan to travel and photograph, and spent 30,000 yuan. The ex-husband proposed at the wedding photo scene and took out a diamond ring that claimed to be worth 50,000 yuan. But the time that marriage has existed has not yet reached the production cycle of wedding photos. The month they got the photos back, they agreed to divorce. The material memorial left by the marriage becomes humiliation, and "the more homework you do at the time, the greater the shame you leave behind". But she still has an electronic version of the wedding photos, and she doesn't plan to delete them in the future, "Every time I want to be dizzy for love, I take it out and re-educate myself again." When she divorced, Hui Yi asked her ex-husband to take away the set of physical wedding photos like a pillar of shame, but she still had many things in her hand that she wanted to give to Liu Wei to deal with. These include at least a Nikon camera, a laptop, and a couple of kindles. She bought the camera, and her ex-husband took it for a while when he studied abroad, and she also had her own ** in it. The computer was eliminated by her ex-husband, and I don't know if there is a hidden folder in it that stores her private information. She thought about cleaning up the memory of her camera and computer, but she didn't even want to touch the card slot, "and the thought of having been in contact with someone like that makes me sick sick." Hui Yi described the things her ex-husband took away as "things with more practical value than emotional value", including expensive desktops for gaming and trendy clothes she gave away. He didn't take any of the worthless clothes or souvenirs they bought on their trip together, and those things filled the bottom layer of the bookcase. She didn't clean up the souvenirs for a long time, because there was also a part of herself, and she couldn't bear to throw them all away just because of the breakdown of her marriage. I think of "The Most Perfect Divorce", where the male protagonist lies on the dentist's chair and spews out a series of complaints about marriage: "The so-called marriage, I think, is the most painful disease that people create themselves." Marriage is an endless torture, the season is described as the rainy season, the wedding and funeral are used as an analogy for the funeral, and married life is a burlesque every day, staged for a lifetime. Painful, too painful. ”
The Most Perfect Divorce" stills Before the reality is squeezed and the material is coerced, the life cycle of love is getting shorter and shorter, but most people have not developed the corresponding ability to say goodbye. In the Japanese drama "The Most Perfect Divorce", the grandmother persuaded the divorced granddaughter:"The can was invented in 1810, but the can opener was only invented in 1858. It's strange, sometimes that's how it is, and important things sometimes come one step late, whether it's love or life. ”A hundred emotions, one ending.
Many people who come to consult ** regard Liu Wei as a tree hole, pouring out their emotions day and night. He has learned that customers who want to talk tend to show up in the evening and concentrate their efforts from 9 to 12 p.m. A month ago, Liu Wei added a customer in Guangdong, and at 12 o'clock in the evening, suddenly "Ding Dong Ding Dong" sent a few messages, "I have been divorced for a year, and I feel sorry for my children", "My husband is very scum", "I cheated", "I still paid for the wedding photos". He persuaded him with good words, but the customer didn't reply, and she was still messaging him until 3 a.m. The next morning, Liu Wei asked her again, do you want to destroy it? She said** At her ex-mother-in-law's house, she will pick it up next time. Liu Wei made a judgment in his heart, there is no play"The more people talk, the more they don't make a good decision, the less likely they are to place an order. On the contrary, those who don't have a word of nonsense have decided not to look back." 
Life Deletion Office" stills Zi Chao has been stationed in the factory for a long time, and the recipients written on the courier list are all him. Several guests who came to the scene to see the destruction in person were all received by Zichao, and they were often very anxious, as if they were forcing themselves to make up their minds and be reborn on the spot. Someone contacted him at 5 p.m., called a ride, and delivered three photos at 9 p.m. for him to destroy immediately. Someone sent ** the day before and asked him to deal with it immediately, and he had to go back the next day, "The daughter-in-law is back". Recently, a young man from a neighboring city came and asked to destroy it early the next morning, Zichao told him that the factory would cut off power at 9 o'clock in the morning, and the young man asked him: "Is there electricity at 8 o'clock?" I'm coming at 8 o'clock. Zichao came early in the morning and turned on the machine for him alone. After staring at the destruction of the wedding photos, he said a few words to Zichao, the wedding photos were taken two months ago, the object was just broken, the marriage was not completed, and the wedding photos were useless. His last emotion was: "Brother, I hope I won't see you again in the future." ”Zichao attributed the fragility of the marital relationship of the young people around him to "material". He is 30 years old this year and got married in 2016, which is considered to be a relatively early marriage among the "post-90s". Eight years have passed, and he has found it more and more difficult for the young people around him to get married. "I took wedding photos, which means that the preparations are nearing the end, and at this point, it is not far from getting married, what can happen in a month or two? I guess it's probably because the issue of the two sides coordinating the gift money is unpleasant. After destroying hundreds of sets of wedding photos, Zichao still couldn't bear to see those unopened wedding photos, some of them still had marriage registration photos with red backgrounds, and there was a kind of heroism that fell before dawn. 
Because Love Has a Sunny Day" stills.
Those who do the destruction of wedding photos will see a hundred forms of modern love. Among the ** sent, there are wedding photos taken by same-sex couples, and there are roll-up banners for banquets, indicating that they have (at least intended) to make their relationship public. Some destroyed the wedding photos of the first two husbands at the same time, saying that they were about to start a third marriage, and they were afraid that they would not be able to explain it. There is also an underground lover who stole ** wedding photos, ** and the relationship can't see the light of day, and the two can't be together in the end. There are also people whose partners died suddenly, and they didn't dare to tell the old people in the family, and the bitterness in their hearts was swallowed alone, so they quietly sent **. Liu Wei treats everyone equally, never judges, and does not ask questions. After the symbolic farewell ceremony, no one pursued the dregs of love and ended up going **. The real end point is in the power plant, where the debris is poured into a pool and poured with dissolved liquid, which takes a week to turn into a powder and finally send it to the power plant to generate electricity. Liu Wei followed him to the power plant to see, two tons of bags were poured in, and the fragments were invisible, "I can't shoot it, it's all domestic garbage, and it is integrated with watermelon peel or something." "The people who come to me still have thoughts in their hearts."
After seeing the destruction of wedding photos, it is difficult not to have doubts about love, marriage and all its derivatives. We have enough material means to fix the moment of love, but love itself is becoming more and more empty. In this way, have we all become incompetent patients who have been kidnapped by consumerism? Liu Wei felt that it was the opposite. The destruction of this matter seems cold, but it is actually affectionate. He did a few months ago and found that 70% of his clients are women. Now that there are more consultants, he can't fully count them, but generally speaking, most of the customers are the ones who pay more and can't let go of the relationship. In addition to wedding photos, they have also received all kinds of emotional relics. Some things that could be handled at home were outsourced to a group of strangers they had never met. Zichao remembered a thick paper album, which was sent by the man, full of the daily life of the two from making friends, falling in love to several years after marriage**. Each one is full of words, where you have been today, what you have eaten, what you have done, each one has it. Zichao was stunned while recalling, "It's a pity, that woman missed such a good man." There have also been thick diaries, which may have been full of love stories in the past, and every page was crossed out with a pen when it was sent. Another boy sent a brand new set of sketchpads and sketch paper, saying that it was meant to be given to the woman, "but now it is not necessary". The final step of destruction is to send **. After receiving the crush**, many taciturn customers will suddenly open the conversation box and talk about their past. Liu Wei doesn't think that the destruction can really make people let go, "It's completely self-comforting." Don't say you can't let go of this past, it's that destruction scene that you can't let go of in your life, otherwise why do some people take the initiative to find me **? It's just that I still have thoughts in my heart." This kind of thinking is not necessarily to rebuild the old friendship, but to still keep the hope for the next part of life that is about to begin.
In addition to wedding photos, there are all kinds of love souvenirs that have been sent for destruction, they all symbolize the end of a relationship (photo by Wang Pan) After listening to the story of relationship breakdown, Liu Wei is a little numb when he talks about it, and only when he talks about the death of his partner does the client show some emotion. In December last year, a gentleman called** and said that he wanted to dispose of his deceased wife's belongings. Liu Wei even remembers the weather that day, "I took my wife and children to play in Changsha, and it was foggy in the morning." The gentleman was polite, saying that his wife had left a lot of bags and clothes from luxury brands, as well as wedding dresses, and that he did not want to give them away or sell them, and that he felt that it was a blasphemy. Liu Wei called **, wanting to explain that the bag and clothes could not enter the shredder, and they would be entangled, and the other party's voice suddenly choked. Liu Wei advised him to think about it, "This thing not only has economic value, but also commemorative significance." The other party still decided to send them all, and also agreed to Liu Wei's public release**. Liu Wei felt that he was definitely not greedy for dozens of yuan in exchange for **, but thanked himself for helping him share his sorrow. At the lunch table, Liu Wei told me stories through the copper pot of shabu-shabu. Over the course of several months, he has given dozens of interviews and has become proficient in asking himself the "most impressive customer". As he spoke, he put down his chopsticks and exhaled, "In short, it's all kinds of life, two of the three things sent are new, but it's the same thing after watching it for a long time." After becoming famous on the Internet, several directors, writers, and artists came to Liu Wei for materials, and the dark love story is very popular with the creator at the moment. Liu Wei talked to a director about the story of destroying his deceased wife's relics, and he couldn't figure out how a person with such deep feelings for his wife could bear to throw away all her things. The director said that if it were him, he would adapt this case into a suspense story, "The husband was crying on the surface, but in fact, he hurt his wife and didn't care about it, so he couldn't bear to destroy these things." Liu Wei disagreed, "If you want me to adapt this story, let's say that his lover has been sick for a year, and he has someone else outside, so he did it to show the newcomer and tell her that I eliminated all her things." ”
Stills from "Wife's Lies" Liu Wei, who is in his 40s, feels that there are not so many swings in the days, intrigues, and moths to the fire. Many people around me are divorced, and not being divorced does not mean that there is no problem, at this age, there will be no special views on feelings, "What love is dead and alive, and how passionate it is is fake, useless." Not pursuing insipidity and inclusiveness is all doomed". Liu Wei does not want to be called a "wedding photo destroyer": "I position myself as an entrepreneur and do personal privacy item destruction services. Being confined to the wedding photo scene, I couldn't do anything else. It will also give others the illusion that this thing can really be done as a profession." has been on fire for a few months, and there is still only Liu Wei on the whole network, a wedding dress destruction service provider, and the ** volume has not brought a sharp increase in the number of orders. The thunder of the destruction of wedding photos is loud and the rain is small, and most people are still using this gimmick to vent their doubts and dissatisfaction with marriage and love, and few people are really willing to pay real money for a sense of relief. He is ready to wait and see for another half a year, and if this track does not improve significantly, he will have to shift his energy.