WHEN three months ago Shu Xin opened his "divorce company in Shanghai, he didn't imagine that his new marriage consulting business would turn out to be so successful.

　　Just a few hours before our interview was conducted last Monday afternoon, he greeted his 470th customer, a pregnant woman who had been angered by her flirtatious husband.

　　Like many other clients, she had come to seek professional advice about whether she should divorce her husband or not.

　　"For a long time, people thought divorce was something shameful," Shu said. To help explain how unacceptable divorce used to be in China, he cited an example. Just a few years ago in the local neighbourhood community offices, cadres still took it an important task to mediate between those who want to divorce so as to persuade them to give up such a thought.

　　"The situation is different now. More and more people have shaken off the old ideology," Shu said. His work now is focused on helping those whose marriages are no longer working to get a divorce as soon as possible.

　　"But that doesn't mean I would persuade all my clients to get divorced," Shu said.

　　"There is a set of criteria by which to judge whether an aching marriage has really reached its end."

　　Interestingly, 80 per cent of the people who visit his divorce company abandon their intention to get divorced. Guided by the advice of Shu Xin and his colleagues, they have continued with their marriages, adopting a more positive and active attitude towards them.

　　"The basic factors I use in assessing a marriage are the sex, love and benefits the relation brings to each of the partners," Shu said.

　　"If any of these areas has serious problems, it might be time for a divorce."

　　Shu remembered one of his clients, a woman in her 40s, revealed to him that her husband had not had sex with her for 16 years.

　　She had thought of divorce before, but her brother who works in a local court and her sister, a government official, stopped her by saying that: "You would die if you don't eat, but would you die if you don't have sex?"

　　"What they are doing can be called a crime," Shu said. He couldn't help feeling angry, even though it was already an old case.

　　"After I found out about her marriage, which existed merely in name, was bringing her only pain and sorrow, I helped her to obtain a divorce - telling her it was the right thing to do."

　　Marriage clinic

　　In the eyes of his clients, Shu Xin's small consulting company is more like a clinic, giving diagnoses and prescriptions for each "stranded" marriage.

　　In his company, there are six lawyers and 12 consultants providing services from marriage assessment to legal consulting.

　　He used to follow a method developed by the 'Family Saver' company, a famous marriage consulting and assisting company in the US, which involved giving out a questionnaire to clients. On the form there were some 50 questions covering different aspects of family life. The answers from the clients would clearly reveal the marriage situation between the couple.

　　"However, this proved to be less practical in Shanghai, since here many customers, due to their hatred for the other partner, were unable to give an objective appraisal of some questions," Shu said.

　　He has developed a new set of criteria himself, dividing the reasons for divorce into three categories.

　　"Sexless marriages, loveless marriages and marriages which - if they continued - would only harm the two partners and their children," Shu said.

　　"For the first two kinds, we would expect the party to defer their divorce decision."

　　Having no sex for a time may have different underlying reasons. For instance, the husband may have certain physical problems or be under heavy work-pressure which reduces his interest in sex.

　　"It is better to discover the underlying problem first," Shu said.

　　About 60 per cent of the clients belong to this first group.

　　Loveless marriages are those in which the partners no longer care about each other. They amount to 10 per cent of all the customers who come to seek help. "Sometimes the situation might see an improvement if one side could take a more active attitude in trying to communicate better with the other," he said.

　　While for the last category, when a marriage brings only harm to each partner, Shu's opinion is that divorce should taker place as soon as possible.

　　"We try to make our company different from a law office which can be quite cold, focusing exclusively on legal technicalities," he said.

　　"What we want to be is a helpful friend who listens to someone's sorrows and helps them to discover the source of the problem and then deal with it."

　　It was beyond his imagination that the business would tap into such huge unmet demand. Despite the high prices he charges, about 200 to 300 yuan (US$24 to US$36) an hour for consulting, he still received more than 10 customers in addition to roughly 100 telephone inquiries on Monday.

　　Most important

　　Sometimes it can be hard to associate Shu Xin, the young man, with trivial household affairs.

　　In China, there is an old saying - "Even an upright official may not be able to judge a household matter". These trivial disputes mingled with hatred and love can become especially complex, requiring a lot of patience. Despite that, Shu loves his work as a "marriage doctor".

　　"Actually, marriage is a most important thing which deserves to be worked hard at," he said.

　　Shu came to Shanghai in the early 1990s from his native town, the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. He worked first as a journalist with a newspaper affiliated to the State Council's countryside policies research institute.

　　During those years, topics relating to marriage and affairs were quite hot among newspapers. Pre-marital cohabitation was something quite new at that time. Discussions of the topic took up a large space in newspapers.

　　After reading some stories from other newspapers, Shu found himself very interested in the issues. Such questions as why a loving couple would later separate or even become enemies puzzled him deeply. And the puzzlement later led him to become a "marriage" columnist for several newspapers and magazines in Shanghai.

　　His stories became so popular that calls from readers flooded in every day, to such an extent that his harassed editors "forced" him to set up a hotline for himself in order to answer the questions the readers were raising.

　　By talking to them and listening to their stories, Shu gradually became an "expert" on the subject of marriage. He also took various psychology courses during his spare time.

　　Although Shu is now a marriage expert he acknowledged that there had also been quarrels between himself and his wife.

　　"But so long as quarrels are healthy and constructive, they only enhance a marriage." he said smiling.

　　"The Chinese, influenced by the centuries old Confucian culture, are very reserved when talking about love and sex."

　　Yet it was this very lack of communication that was actually the primary killer of marriages, certainly among the cases he had been familiar with.

　　By Pan Haixia