HANGZHOU: Housekeeping is no longer the exclusive domain of women in China, with some young men now offering to clean your house for a fee.
More than 300 home service companies have popped up over the past two years, and some have hired energetic men for housekeeping duties. They are challenging the idea that housekeeping is women’s work, at least according to a report from Urban Express in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
Generally, the cost of male housekeepers is upward of 25 yuan (RM16) per square meter, which is more than women earn doing the same work, although many male housekeepers are also asked to do more physically demanding tasks.
Shao Gang and Shao Qiang – twins born in 1990 in Shandong province – and their 30 male employees all wear uniforms to work. From cleaning greasy cooker hoods and fixing cracks in windows and even polishing the shell of your pet turtle, they do it all.
The twins originally came to Hangzhou at the end of 2015 to work as e-commerce livestream hosts, but when they turned up to film, they felt uncomfortable.
“It was as if there was nowhere to stand because the house was packed so full of products for the livestreams,” Shao Gang said.
He later learned that deep cleaning services were in great demand but because most cleaners were women and often elderly, they weren’t able to move beds or climb up to dust ceiling corners, and so the idea for a new business was born.
Before they opened Hangzhou Shenshi Housekeeping Service Co in May last year, the twins spent 10,000 yuan (RM6,500) on training to clean professionally by a household service company in Zhengzhou, Henan province.
Once their company was up and running, they advertised by posting videos on platforms like Bilibili and Douyin, which are popular with the younger generation.
Business has been good and can bring in up to 300,000 yuan (RM197,000) a month. As a result, the twins have opened new branches and now offer cleaning services in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and other cities, and have served thousands. — China Daily/ANN
