This street cleaning couple will renew your faith in love

Behind all the fanfare that attends the craze of Spring Festival travel every year, there is an army of unsung public employees whose livelihoods preclude them from returning to their native places and reuniting with extended family for the holidays.

Chief among them are sanitation workers, for whom the Spring Festival is the busiest season of the year. Some cities recognize the burden this entails and offer overtime compensation to street cleaners for their trouble. Yiwu, a city in Zhejiang Province, even treated its sanitation workers to an early New Year’s Eve banquet last week:

Still, this time of year is especially difficult for those who stay put and clean the deserted streets of the major cities hollowed out by those returning home.

Earlier this week on Chinese social media, a viral video of a street sweeping couple in Quanzhou warmed netizens’ hearts. Married for 33 years, in which they claim not to have quarreled once, the pair from Jiangxi remained in Fujian for the holiday, rising early every day to work side-by-side as usual.

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=v0552fcbfl8&width=500&height=375&auto=0

“He spoils me constantly,” the wife, Liu Aijuan (刘爱娟), said of her husband, He Shuangfa (何双发). “He dotes on me like a princess. If other people are eating something delicious that I’ve never tried before, he’ll stealthily find a way to buy it and give it to me.”

Liu said she really misses home at this time of year, but that for her family, it’s not the end of the world to be apart.

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