Lü Jun has always cherished a Norse mythological fantasy in his heart. In that scene, all the dead critters will take the Rainbow Bridge to heaven, and between the Rainbow Bridge and Heaven is a large area of Yerba Buena, where countless small animals gather, waiting for their owners to pass through the Yerba Buena after a hundred years of old age, and then meet them. Since 2015, Lu Jun has been engaged in the pet funeral industry for 6 years, and for this industry, what is more important than properly disposing of dog and cat corpses is to soothe the emotions of pet owners, and sometimes, the funeralists can't help but cry in the process. Jiang Wen lost her cat last year, and she described the sad feeling, "The feelings of pets towards people are 100% pure, and 100% love will bring 100% pain."
Shenzhen pet funeral industry has developed so far, the biggest feeling of the industry is still "uneven", coordinates Shenzhen Bay store decoration cost of 3 million funeral shops have appeared, but open in the wilderness, the atmosphere of death is still there.
Pet Mortician:
A job with warmth and tears
"Yerba Buena" has both touching and sighing
About seven or eight years ago, Lu Jun saw a Taiwanese variety show, which mentioned that there is a profession in Taiwan that is dedicated to pets to cry and mourn, and he also has a dog, and he is impressed by such a subdivided occupational type. He recalled that at that time, there were less than 10 pet funeral shops with physical stores in China, and more were online intermediaries, who opened stores on e-commerce platforms and distributed funeral orders in different cities to different local institutions. More pet owners, who still have a shallow understanding of pet cremation, throw the carcasses of dogs and cats into the garbage can or bury them on the spot are common practices.
In 2015, Lü Jun opened a pet funeral shop, named "Yerba Buena", whose main business is to groom deceased pets, hold farewell ceremonies, cremate, and leave ashes to their owners. Most of the customers who come to the store are calmer, but the funeralists can feel the sadness in their hearts. Often, the owner can't help but cry uncontrollably during the farewell ceremony, because after the farewell ceremony, their treasures will be cremated into a pile of ashes, which is their last side.
There was a lady who had come to the farewell room with flowers for two hours, and there was also a gentleman who came to the store with the golden retriever corpse that had been washed clean but refused to let go of his hand and put it in the crematorium, Lu Jun remembered once, a Frenchman brought the body of his dead dog to the store, and he behaved very calmly, calmly asking a series of process questions, but when he put the dog into the crematorium, he turned back and found that the guest had knelt down and prayed to the crematorium, "You can feel, Their love for pets is very real."
In addition to the touching stories, of course, I have also seen scenes that make people sigh. Lü Jun remembered that he once received an order, came to the door to pick up the carcass of a kitten, the body was in a pool of water outside the balcony, there were maggots on the body, the whole body had been unrecognizable, but the owner insisted on sending farewell, and also found two lamas from Guangzhou to overdo, "Before they were born, they were not treated well, what is the use of doing this for their own peace of mind after death?" ”
The job is more and more self-healing for him
Yang Hui began working as a pet mortician at the beginning of this year, and before that, she was a middle-level member of a foreign trade company and lived the life of an ordinary office worker. Becoming a pet funeralist is a turning point in Yang Hui's life. Last year, Yang Hui's adopted dog began to deteriorate, "I don't know when it will go, every day is very uncomfortable." It was then that Yang Hui began to pay attention to information about pet funerals. Burial was the first option to be ruled out, and when cremated, she learned that Qingshuihe could be cremated en masse, but yang hui still found it difficult to accept it at the thought that it might be along with medical garbage and other pet corpses. Finally, she began to pay close attention to the news of commercial pet funeral companies in Shenzhen.
In the view of Yang Hui, who was still an ordinary pet owner at that time, the level of pet funeral shops in Shenzhen was uneven, "Some environments are particularly poor, and the shopkeepers feel that they are sharp at present, in fact, for pet owners at this time, making people feel warm and down-to-earth is the most important."
Yang Hui finally chose a funeral shop on the grounds that "people here are very stable and at ease." After thinking about it for a while, Yang Hui simply decided to come to the shop to work and learn to become a pet funeral parlor. At that time, Yang Hui's dog was still in a very weak stage, her emotions were always involved, she felt that working in the pet funeral shop was a kind of self-healing, but also a kind of healing, "I feel empathy for the pain of the guests, and I will do my best to take care of those small animals, they have spent their lives with us, we have to send them away with dignity."
Yang Hui made the final grooming of the pet carcass very gently, gently grooming and stroking like a newborn baby. Once, Yang Hui gave a 15-year-old dog a final cleaning, because the dog had been sick for a long time, and the body was very poor when it was first sent. In the process of Yang Hui grooming the dog, the family stood next to her and thanked her for her careful care, Yang Hui cried out at once, "I told them that I myself am a dog, and I understand their mood."
After sending away many of the guests' dogs, Yang Hui's puppy Ula passed away in September this year. On the day Ula left, Yang Hui wore the dress she used to carry Ula home on the first day to send it away, and she sent a circle of friends, "You are my eternal baby, little Ula, said OK, we will not see each other." Yang Hui always felt that every puppy he had sent away before would become Ula's little friend in Wang Xing, because with this layer of thoughts, Yang Hui felt that he had gained more strength from this job.
New trend: From funeral to good death, Shenzhen has emerged a high-end format
Pets end up with high-end business coordinates Shenzhen Bay mainly light luxury wind
With the gradual development of the pet funeral industry, high-end pet funeral formats have also begun to appear in Shenzhen. In June this year, Tian pet pet opened the first store in Shenzhen Bay Science and Technology Ecological Park, and its main business is high-end pet hospice service. According to its brand introduction, this is currently the largest known pet hospice space in China, with an area of 360 square meters. Site selection of the central area, store decoration cost 3 million yuan, door-to-door to pick up pet remains with bmw five series, on social networks, Tianpet is more marked with "high-end" and "light luxury" labels, so there is a greater degree of topic and discussion.
Why do pet funeral stores take the route of light luxury? Yuan Shuai, the manager, believes that as the attributes of pets as companions become more and more obvious, pets need to be more and more humane, "the guests who come to the store must be very sad, we don't want to decorate into a death atmosphere too strong feeling, decoration is better, come and drink tea with them to chat, in fact, I hope they can be relieved."
How to spend high-end pets after a good death? How big is the market share in Shenzhen? According to the information provided by Tianpet, the store has a total of three kinds of hospice schemes, charging 499 yuan, 1699 yuan and 5200 yuan respectively, on the basis of which the actual weight of the pet must be charged. Between the different programs, mainly the difference between bathing and ceremony, in the most expensive plan, the store will be closed for two hours, only for a pet to carry out the farewell ceremony, but also customized special lute plaster. Yuan Shuai feels that such a fee is actually not expensive in shenzhen's pet funeral market, including cleaning, farewell, columbarium cup process, "there are also customers who come to cry with us, in other stores no farewell no cleaning was collected thousands of yuan, this market is actually quite chaotic now." In addition to the hospice service, the store also provides the use of pet ashes to cultivate diamonds, make necklace services, store staff revealed that in the Shenzhen store, there will be an average of several customers every month to customize the ashes diamond, the market demand is not small.
Crying stories almost every day at the beginning of the industry is the biggest gain
A few months after opening, Yuan Shuai said that when he first opened for business, almost every farewell ceremony would cry, behind each ceremony was the story of a small animal's life, and the ugly farewell ceremony was a story that made Yuan Shuai think of it now and would "get goosebumps". In June this year, the 16-year-old myna ugly was sent to the hospital for a gastric tumor, but after several treatments, he died. Ugly is a farewell ceremony at four o'clock in the morning, its owner Lao Hu told reporters that ugly is his wife from the teenage years old, accompany her to study, work, marriage, ugly farewell ceremony on the wife sad to be unable to write, the last write the farewell card, the wife only wrote a sentence, "You must come back to me." The next day, the staff of The Pet saw a mynah waiting for rescue in the stray dog rescue group, forwarded to the ugly family, everyone found that the starling had a shaved place on his back, exactly the same as the position where the hair was shaved at the ugly farewell ceremony, and the owner went to adopt the starling on the same day. Such coincidences, more or less "fatalistic", also make pet funeralists feel that their work is more valuable.
Lang Lang is a golden retriever owned by a pair of sisters, and when the dog was diagnosed with cancer this year, her sister was still in the United States. At that time, Lang Lang's state was already very poor, and he was living in a pet hospital without eating or drinking. The sister told Lang Lang that her sister had returned, but had to be quarantined for three weeks, "Can you hold out for three more weeks and let your sister see you again." After this exchange, Lang Lang suddenly began to eat, and after three weeks, he saw his sister who had rushed back from the United States. Seeing that the whole family had returned to Lang Lang, he began to skip food again, and the next day, Lang Lang left calmly.
These warm stories are the reasons why pet morticians stick to this job. Pets have passed away, rather than simply cremation, providing emotional comfort and emotional value for pet owners may be the real direction of the future development of the pet end-of-life industry.
Industry development: The industry calls for the establishment of industry standards
The lack of industry norms in the pet funeral industry does not match the growth rate of the pet economy
Even though Shenzhen already has several relatively mature pet funeral enterprises, the lack of norms and supervision for this industry is still an important reason hindering the positive development of the industry. In Tianyancha search for "pet" related enterprises in Shenzhen, nearly 62,000 results can be found, while the number of results corresponding to the search for "pet funerals" in Shenzhen is only 40. Shenzhen Pet Medical Association began to sign a pet carcass harmless treatment contract with various pet hospitals about ten years ago, before that, the more common practice in the pet medical community is to find a piece of land to bury the dog and cat carcasses.
The Animal Epidemic Prevention Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that no unit or individual may dispose of the carcasses, excrements, packaging and bedding of dead animals at will, and must be harmlessly disposed of in accordance with national regulations. But for many Shenzhen pet owners, what to do with their corpses after losing their pets is still a confusing problem. A number of pet owners interviewed by the reporter said that because they feel "obscure", when raising pets, they are unlikely to take the initiative to understand the situation related to pet funerals, when that day really comes, the owner often has to face the collapse of emotions and the handling of the aftermath at the same time, most of today's pet owners, in the face of pet death, are still helpless.
In Shenzhen Qingshuihe Sanitation Treatment Plant, there is a government-funded pet carcass collective cremation department, Shenzhen Pet Medical Association President Yu Xinyi revealed a data, the association will collect pet corpses from various hospitals every year to Qingshuihe cremation, in the past ten years, the number of cremations per year is about 10,000, as of mid-October this year, the association has handled a total of 6620 dog and cat carcasses. In clear contrast to the fluctuation of the number of carcass incineration, is the rise in the number of pets in Shenzhen in recent years, Yu Xinyi estimated that the total stock of pets in Shenzhen in recent years has risen at a growth rate of about 25% per year, and the number of registered dogs in Shenzhen has reached more than 200,000, and the number of cats is difficult to count, but Yu Xinyi believes that "only more will not be less." According to the "2020 China Pet Industry White Paper" released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, the number of urban dogs and cats in China has exceeded 100 million in 2020, and the pet population has reached 62.94 million, and in the future, these two data will continue to rise.
An industry that needs both norms and emotions
The total number of pets is soaring, but the number of incinerated corpses has not shown a corresponding increase, a research agency released the "2014 ~2019 China Pet Market Research and Forecast Report" said that the number of pets in China has reached 100 million in 2015, and there are more than 1 million pet corpses that need to be disposed of in a year. The pet industry is obviously one of the fastest growing tracks in the domestic consumer market, but compared with the hottest areas such as pet food and pet medical treatment, pet funerals are still an urgent industry that needs to be regulated. Industry insiders talk about the work they are engaged in, and they are touching stories, but many interviewees pointed out that an industry cannot rely on feelings for long-term development, the development of Shenzhen's pet funeral industry is in front of the policy, and the pet funeral industry still lacks industry standards.
Different from the relatively mature professional standards that have been formed in the pet grooming industry or the pet medical system, pet funeralists do not have strict entry thresholds or qualification examinations, all relying on the standards formulated by the owners of each pet funeral institution. A number of pet morticians interviewed by the reporter said that there is no relevant qualification certificate in the industry at present, and the entry training is completed in the company where they work, and the general time is about 2 weeks. The degree of completion of the work depends on the love and responsibility of the funeral parlor. According to a relevant person from the Shenzhen Pet Medical Association, this year, the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Department of the Shenzhen Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau and the Association held a special meeting, hoping to explore the industry standards for pet funerals in Shenzhen, mainly around the location, environmental protection, price and other factors.
In addition to commercial companies, the publicity and guidance of pet owners is also an important direction for the harmless treatment of pet corpses. The Shenzhen Pet Medical Association proposes that ordinary pet owners can be supervised by standardizing the pet owner to apply for a "death certificate" to form a closed loop of pet raising and ensure the harmless treatment of small animal carcasses.
From "harmless treatment of pets" to "pet good death", the pet funeral industry in Shenzhen and even the whole country still has a long way to go. In addition to industry norms and supervision, the quality and love of practitioners also affect the direction of the development of this industry, Yang Hui feels that in a city like Shenzhen, "many people are very lonely, pets may be their biggest concern", therefore, emotional services are the most important, "if the industry is separated from emotions, it is impossible to develop."
Writing/Photography Nandu reporter Wu Lingshan