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China combats 'seven year itch' with love letter service
China's post office has come up with an inventive way of stemming the country's rising divorce rates – offering newly-weds the chance to send sealed love letters to each other to be delivered seven years on from their big day.
That is the time, says China's state-run 'China Daily' that "eyes tend to wander", reporting that the initiative launched jointly with Beijing's Civil Affairs Bureau, was already proving a hit with couples determined that their love should never succumb to the 'seven-year itch'.
China's rapid economic development has been accompanied by a sharp rise in the divorce rate as the demands of finding work as migrant workers, managing children and making mortgage payments stretch many relationships to breaking point.
Divorce-rates in Beijing, where the love-letters scheme was launched have nearly doubled since 2004 from 11,582 in 2004 to 21,013 last year, according to Chinese government data.
Nationwide, China's divorce rate has more than quadrupled since economic opening up began in earnest in 1985 – from 0.4 per 1,000 people to 1.85 per 1,000 people in 2009 – but still compares favourably to Britain's 2.8 divorces per 1,000 population, the highest rate in the EU.
"We hope the love letters may save some marriages in the future," said a post office official to China's state media as the love-letters scheme was launched on September 9, or "jiu jiu" in Chinese, which is a homonym in for the Chinese word for 'forever'.
Last month China's courts reinterpreted the country's marriage law to ensure that any property bought by the groom before the marriage would not be shared in the event of the divorce in a move apparently designed to entrench marriage, but one that angered many Chinese women.
"We came up with the services not only to expand our business but also to offer the public another way to express their love," Liu Jingmin, manager of the Beijing post office, told China Daily.
"No matter what, the sweet moment of taking an oath is worth recording, even if people break up years later. Hopefully, when the letter arrives seven years later the couple will receive it together." Others were quick to see the potential downside of the idea.
"It'd be more than depressing if I received a love letter from seven years ago and I was no longer with my then-loved one," observed Sun Lubin, a graduate from Beijing's elite Tsinghua University.