Here’s a lucrative new industry: Mistress-dispelling, or as we would call it, Querida-banishing.
An escalating divorce rate shows the depth of gender inequality in Chinese society. Illustration by Malika Favre
China’s Mistress-Dispellers
How the economic boom and deep gender inequality have created a new industry by Jiayang Fan
Yu, a gentle-looking man in his early forties, with the placid demeanor of a yoga instructor, works as a mistress dispeller, a job that barely existed a decade ago but is becoming common in major Chinese cities. His clients are women who hope to preserve their marriages by fending off what is known in Chinese as a xiao san, or “Little Third”—a term that encompasses everything from a partner in a casual affair to a long-term “kept woman.” Mistress dispellers use a variety of methods. Some Little Thirds can be paid off or discouraged by hearing unwelcome details of their lovers’ lives—debts, say, or responsibility for an elderly parent—or shamed with notes sent to friends and family. If the dispeller or the client is well connected, a Little Third may suddenly find that her job requires her to move to another city. A female dispeller sometimes seeks to become a confidante, in order to advise the targeted woman that the liaison will inevitably crumble. In certain cases, a male mistress dispeller may even seduce the woman. Like all the mistress dispellers I spoke to, Yu said that he never resorts to this tactic, but he acknowledged that there are those who do.
Read it in The New Yorker.
Reminds me of that Romain Duris movie, Heartbreaker, in which he plays a professional hired by a businessman to break up his daughter’s engagement. So the heartbreaker woos the woman by, among other things, learning the big dance in Dirty Dancing. Mmmmm, Romain Duris.
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