Yu Zhu started to learn piano when she was 4 and her enthusiasm for music stayed with her all the way from high school to university. Her parents thought there could be no better choice of career for her than a piano teacher or musician.

Yu, however, was more interested in starting a new business: the 30-year-old has opened the first pet funeral parlor in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan.

After graduating from a university in Moscow and returning home, Yu found her pet dog Wangwang was nearing the end of its life. Anxious about what to do once her pet had died, Yu asked her friend Zhou Xiaofeng, whose dog was also old, and the idea of opening a pet funeral parlor occurred to them.