A Chinese man cryogenically froze his 49-year-old wife after she died from lung cancer in 2017. But in spite of the implicit promise that he was waiting for future technology to bring her back to life, now he’s ready to move on.
As the BBC reports, Gui Junmin revealed in a recent interview that he’s been dating somebody else since 2020, sparking a heated debate on social media in China.
Junmin’s wife, Zhan Wenlian, became China’s first cryogenically preserved person, with Junmin signing a 30-year agreement with the Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute to keep her on ice. According to the South China Morning Post, the institute first teamed up with Shandong University in 2015, offering free procedures to early volunteers.
Despite his hopes of one day thawing her remains — after being submerged in 2,000 liters of liquid nitrogen — to allow her to live once more, there’s still no scientific evidence that cryogenically preserved bodies could ever be resurrected. According to estimates, there are around 600 people who have been cryopreserved, but whether any of them will have the chance to tell the tale is anything but certain. Experts have pointed out that freezing live tissues causes cell membranes to burst, effectively destroying them in the process.
That reality hasn’t stopped a cottage industry of companies across the globe from offering services to rapidly cool down the bodies of the recently deceased with the hopes of a future technological revolution that will somehow allow them to be brought back to life.
Junmin lived by himself for two years after his wife’s body was frozen, but started dating once again in 2020. He concluded that living by yourself is simply too dangerous after experiencing a severe gout attack, he says.
“If something really happens to a person when they are alone, there is nothing they can do,” he told Southern Weekly, A Guangzhou-based newspaper, as quoted by the SCMP. “You could die at home and no one would even know.”
He started seeing insurance sales representative Wang Chunxia, an arrangement that Junmin claims was “utilitarian,” and not based on romance.
Despite starting to date following his late wife’s cryogenic procedure, Junmin claimed he hasn’t given up on his deceased life partner, saying that Wang hasn’t “entered my heart yet.”
Complicating the bizarre love triangle is the fact that Junmin is now relying on Wang to walk after undergoing coronary stent surgery.
“She can never replace my wife,” he told Southern Weekly. “I cannot just forget the past, but I still need to move on with life.”
Netizens were outraged, arguing Junmin was wrong to move on.
“Gui might seem deeply devoted, but in reality, this is emotional detachment,” one person wrote in a social media post, as quoted by the SCMP. “His so-called love for Zhan is more like an obsession with playing the role of the ‘grieving husband’. Just look at how cold and distant he appears with his current partner.”
More on cryogenics: Rich People Who Get Cryogenically Frozen Are Hoarding Their Money for When They Get Thawed Out
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