T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019 | 3

World

The bride wore a sparkling tiara and a

flowing red wedding gown, her fifth

matrimonial ensemble of the day. The

groom wore a silver tuxedo and the fa-

tigued look of a guy who had spent the

last dozen hours posing for pictures.

The photographer gave instructions.

Re-enact the proposal on bended knee.

Twirl in the dress. Kiss the bride’s hand.

But it was nearly sunset, and the cou-

ple still hadn’t captured that perfect

Santorini picture to display at their tra-

ditional wedding in China next month.

So their photographer, who is based in

Shanghai, rushed the pair across the is-

land’s whitewashed roofs and narrow

cliffside footpaths, coaching them in

Chinese at various scenic outlooks.

Above a luxury hotel renowned in

China as the setting for a popular ro-

mantic comedy, he told the weary groom

to lift his betrothed in an over-the-

threshold pose. The third try was the

charm.

For a grand finale, the couple stared

into each other’s eyes on a rooftop, and

the photographer framed their silhou-

ettes around the blood-orange sun, sink-

ing behind them into the shimmering

Aegean Sea. It was the stuff pre-wed-

ding-picture dreams were made of.

“Santorini is famous in China,” said

the 29-year-old groom, Yao Kai, after the

final click of the camera.

Unlike his parents, who he said had

sat stoically for their wedding photos in

China, the groom had the good fortune

to have seen the world — and wanted his

friends, family and wedding guests to

see him seeing it.

“This is a great moment for our coun-

try’s economy,” he added. “We are get-

ting stronger.”

Pre-wedding pictures have become a

multibillion-dollar business in the Insta-

gram age — particularly for Chinese

couples.

Many Chinese brides and grooms

who plan for traditional ceremonies

back home go first for professional pho-

tographs under the Eiffel Tower in Paris,

at Big Ben in London, and in the English

countryside. (“A Downton Abbey effect

on Chinese pre-wedding photo shoots,”

The South China Morning Post re-

ported.) New Zealand and Antarctica

are the latest pre-wedding destination

hot spots.

But the deep blues and whiteout

whites of Santorini exercise a particular

hold on the romantic imagination of

many a Chinese nearlywed.

“A lot of people come,” said Xu Kaiyue,

the photographer’s assistant. “Too

many people.”

Santorini is fatally picturesque. Ar-

madas of cruise ships and low-cost air

carriers carry selfie and Instagram ad-

dicts to its clogged towns. Airbnbs have

replaced residents. The island’s don-

keys buckle under the burden of portly

visitors. (“Fat tourists leave Greek is-

land donkeys CRIPPLED,” read a head-

line in Britain’s Express newspaper.)

To profit off the Chinese market,

Greek photographers have developed

websites with galleries of stunning

brides-to-be stretching languorously or

leading white horses on the beach.

The island’s officials, like their coun-

terparts across Greece, have pursued

Chinese investment during the coun-

try’s economic crisis, and appreciate the

lucrative surge in Chinese visitors.

Luke Bellonias, an island official, said

the Chinese had extended the tourist

season deep into autumn when most Eu-

ropeans and Americans have gone

home. “They just love to take photos,” he

said. “They don’t love the sun that

much.”

Still, he acknowledged, “This gets a

bit out of control.”

Foreign photographers, complete

with makeup crews, large stocks of wed-

ding dresses and stylists, live for

months on the island but dodge taxes, he

said. The financial police rarely enforce

the law, giving free rein, he said, to peo-

ple “holding wedding dresses above

their heads and two or three bags and

running from place to place.”

For many couples, fees running into

the tens of thousands of euros are a

small price to pay for an image that they

say encapsulates both true romance and

social mobility. “It’s as important, if not

more important, than the ring,” said

Olivia Martin-McGuire, the director of

“China Love,” a documentary about the

industry.

And for couples unable to afford the

real thing, there are photo studios in

Shanghai with Santorini sets. “It’s very

meaningful,” Ms. Martin-McGuire said.

Having pre-wedding pictures shot on

Santorini itself seemed to mean the

world to 26-year-old Tzuchi Lin, and his

fiancée, Yingting Huang.

“It’s very exciting. Actually, we didn’t

sleep last night,” Mr. Lin, who is known

as Kenny, said in his hotel room one re-

cent morning. His 30-year-old fiancée,

who uses the name Penny, applied hair

spray in front of two wedding gowns

draped from the window shutters.

“Now she can show off to her friends:

‘I went to Santorini to have my pre-wed-

ding photos,’ ” he said.

The couple, from Taiwan, where some

pre-wedding scholars say the industry

began, slipped into something less com-

fortable. Mr. Lin wore a tuxedo with a

maroon bow tie, and Ms. Huang an em-

pire-waist white gown with lace bodice.

She folded a second dress into a paper

bag.

They fueled up on eggs in the hotel,

but the waiter insisted Mr. Lin drink a

shot of ouzo.

“Now,” he said, “you can get married.”

In the parking lot, they met their pho-

tographers, Toto Kuo, a Taiwan native,

and her husband of three months, Geor-

gios Galanopoulos. They met “the old-

fashioned” way, Ms. Kuo said — “couch

surfing.”

The two photographers — who re-

fused to have any pictures taken at their

own wedding — led their clients to Oia,

the town on the photo-bombarded tip of

the island, where they set up shop in Mr.

Galanopoulos’s family art gallery.

They fought the crowds elbowing to-

ward a particularly sought-after blue

dome backdrop, but a Houston couple

posing for professional anniversary pic-

tures had already claimed the perch. Mr.

Galanopoulos, 50, said the island’s

Greek photographers had begun dis-

cussing whether there should be a five-

minute-per-iconic-backdrop policy.

At a crowded lookout point, Mr.

Galanopoulos instructed the couple to

keep their lips puckered in a suspended

near kiss.

“Novio!” shouted someone in Span-

ish.

The sun started taking its toll. Ms.

Huang sprayed sunscreen on her shoul-

ders and pointed an electric fan at her

throat. Her fiancé handed out water bot-

tles.

They took a breather in the gallery,

where Mr. Galanopoulos kept six wed-

ding dresses on hand. Ms. Huang

emerged from the basement in a red one

with a 20-foot train.

At the church down the street, the

caretaker shooed them away because

the priest didn’t approve of the picture-

taking.

With time running out, things started

looking up. Ms. Kuo noticed an auspi-

cious sweat stain marking her hus-

band’s T-shirt. (“Babe,” she said, “You

have a heart.”)

The priest had left, and the church

caretaker sneaked them inside the

courtyard, where the posing couple re-

ceived shouts of congratulations and

blessings for marital bliss from tourists

on the packed footpath alongside the

church.

After a wardrobe change into the

“sexy” dress, the couple got their blue

dome backdrop and nailed a rooftop pro-

posal shot.

“Will you marry me?” Mr. Lin said in

English.

“Say yes,” coached Ms. Kuo.

“Yes,” the bride said.

A crowd gathered below applauded

warmly.

A bride, a groom and a Greek photo shoot

SANTORINI DISPATCH

SANTORINI, GREECE

BY JASON HOROWITZ

AND LAURA BOUSHNAK

Asian couples’ desire

for pictures on Santorini

has crowded the island

Tourists gathering atop a castle ruin at the photo-bombarded tip of the Greek island of Santorini. Some of the island’s Greek photographers have begun discussing whether there

should be a five-minute-per-iconic-backdrop policy. Below, a couple from Taiwan, Tzuchi Lin and his fiancé, Yingting Huang, getting ready for their pre-wedding photo shoot.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURA BOUSHNAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Foreign photographers, complete

with makeup crews, large stocks

of wedding dresses and stylists,

live for months on the island.

An official in Beijing on Tuesday issued

China’s sternest denunciation yet of the

demonstrations in Hong Kong, saying

they had “exceeded the scope of free as-

sembly” and warning that the semiau-

tonomous city would not be allowed to

descend into chaos.

“I want to warn all the criminals to not

wrongly judge the situation and take re-

straint as weakness,” said Yang Guang,

a spokesman for the Chinese govern-

ment’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs

Office. He warned against underesti-

mating China’s “firm resolve and

strength to safeguard the prosperity

and stability of Hong Kong.”

But Mr. Yang offered little in the way

of concrete measures to resolve the po-

litical crisis, calling for more patriotic

education and encouraging residents to

confront protesters. “We need to stand

up to protect our wonderful homeland,”

he said.

The comments came a day after pro-

testers in Hong Kong carried out their

most widespread civil disobedience in

weeks of demonstrations, blocking

trains and roads and urging workers to

strike. Air travel was also snarled, with

more than 200 flights canceled after

2,300 civil aviation workers stayed

home, according to an estimate by union

officials.

The protesters called for a general

strike in an effort to halt daily life across

the city, wielding a potentially powerful

new tool in their weekslong campaign

against the Hong Kong government.

Hong Kong’s values of efficiency, hard

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

public protest are colliding as protesters

from across society test the limits of the

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

residential areas and arrested at least

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie

Lam, warned that efforts to “topple

Hong Kong” could destroy livelihoods

and push the city “to the verge of a very

dangerous situation.”

Monday was the last of three consecu-

tive days of large-scale civil disobedi-

ence intended to increase pressure on

the government as it confronts Hong

Kong’s worst political crisis since 1997,

when it was returned to Chinese rule af-

ter more than 150 years as a British colo-

n y.

Many protesters said they felt they

had no choice but to escalate their ac-

tions after the government failed to fully

respond to peaceful marches in June

that organizers said drew as many as

two million people.

The protests began nearly two

months ago in response to legislation,

since suspended, that would allow crim-

inal suspects to be extradited to main-

land China, where the courts are con-

trolled by the ruling Communist Party.

The movement, which has been driven

by longstanding fears of deteriorating

freedoms under Beijing’s rule, has ex-

panded to include a variety of griev-

ances, including the stalled expansion of

direct elections and accusations of ex-

cessive force by the police.

It was unclear how many people

heeded the call to strike on Monday. But

protesters began the day by blocking

roads and subway train doors using

flash-mob-style tactics.

Mass rallies were held at more than

half a dozen sites, including outside the

government headquarters on Hong

Kong Island. Officers fired tear gas at

several locations across the city.

Later in the evening, protesters in the

North Point neighborhood on eastern

Hong Kong Island were briefly attacked

by men wearing white shirts and wield-

ing sticks in a scene reminiscent of July

21, when a pro-Beijing mob beat pro-

testers and bystanders in the satellite

town of Yuen Long.

Since the protests began in early

June, the police have arrested 420 peo-

ple and fired 1,000 rounds of tear gas, a

spokesman said Monday.

That is significantly more than during

Hong Kong’s last sustained protest

movement in 2014, when the use of tear

gas against pro-democracy demonstra-

tors galvanized the public in support of a

sit-in that lasted 79 days. The police

fired a total of 87 tear gas canisters then,

and only on the first night of the protest.

In recent weeks, the protesters’ anger

has largely shifted to focus on the scale

and intensity of the police response. On

Monday, they surrounded and vandal-

ized several police stations, setting fires

outside at least two of them. Supporters

say the police have regularly shown re-

straint.

Mrs. Lam, Hong Kong’s chief execu-

tive, warned Monday morning in her

first public remarks in two weeks that

the city “has become unsafe and un-

stable” and that “a series of extremely

violent acts are pushing Hong Kong into

very precarious circumstances.”

Mrs. Lam is under pressure from Chi-

na’s central government to bring the

protests under control, and the Chinese

military hinted last month that it could

be called in to restore order. The Hong

Kong government has repeatedly de-

nied plans to make any such request.

The response by Hong Kong officials

to the strike on Monday “was a disaster,”

said Antony Dapiran, a lawyer based in

Hong Kong and the author of a book

about dissent in Hong Kong. “They

came out with a fairly hard line, no con-

cessions, nothing new.”

The Hong Kong government also

warned Monday that the unrest was af-

fecting the local economy, including

sales of luxury goods as mainland Chi-

nese visitors choose to avoid the city.

Hong Kong stocks have declined by

nearly 10 percent in the past month.

“The movement has had a lot of im-

pact on Hong Kong, the operation of the

whole economy and the operation of

many industries and businesses,” said

Ivan Choy, a senior lecturer in govern-

ment and public administration at the

Chinese University of Hong Kong. “But I

think this is the right of Hong Kong peo-

ple to demand more freedom and more

justice in society.”

Some commuters complained about

the transportation delays and con-

fronted protesters. Vehicles plowed

through barriers set up by protesters

along roadways at least twice, sending

demonstrators diving for safety. But

even those facing delays said the gov-

ernment was to blame for failing to ad-

dress public grievances.

“Carrie Lam has caused my absence

today,” said Dancus Au, 24, an employee

at a security company who was stuck in

a subway station for hours in the morn-

ing.

He said Mrs. Lam had made a mistake

by merely suspending the extradition

bill rather than formally withdrawing it,

as protesters have demanded. “She

should have said ‘withdraw’ at the be-

ginning of this fiasco,” he said. “She is

part of the root cause, while Beijing is

another part of it.”

Labor unions said hundreds of thou-

sands may have joined the strike, and

some groups, like workers at Hong Kong

Disneyland, did announce work stop-

pages. Others took a day of leave or

called in sick to join the protests.

Janice Lau, a 38-year-old teacher,

pumped her fist in the air in encourage-

ment as she and her 6-year-old daugh-

ter, Zoe, watched protesters drag steel

barricades to block traffic near the gov-

ernment headquarters.

“I’m proud of them,” she said. “Soci-

ety forced them to do this, and they did-

n’t harm the society. These days, people

are more afraid when the police appear

than when protesters appear.”

Mr. Yang, the Beijing government

spokesman, on Tuesday denounced the

tactics of protesters as “extreme vio-

lence that is shocking to see.”

Since protesters started to increas-

ingly target police stations this past

weekend, officers have appeared to be

more aggressive in making arrests. But

the increased assertiveness risked fur-

ther inflaming public sentiment.

“For me the most alarming thing is

we’re kind of on a knife’s edge here —

open disrespect for the police, police sta-

tions being targeted,” Mr. Dapiran said.

“We are on the cusp of what could be a

general breakdown of law and order. It

hasn’t gotten there yet, but the govern-

ment hasn’t done anything to stop it.”

Beijing warns Hong Kong protesters after strike snarls city

HONG KONG

BY AUSTIN RAMZY, MIKE IVES

AND TIFFANY MAY

Katherine Li and Ezra Cheung contribut-

ed reporting from Hong Kong. Elsie Chen

contributed research from Beijing.

Left, protesters blocked subway doors as part of a general strike in Hong Kong on Monday. Police used tear gas, right, to disperse the protests that popped up throughout the city.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAM YIK FEI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Protesters blocked trains and

roads and urged people to strike.

РРHong Kong” could destroy livelihoodsHong Kong” could destroy livelihoods
Е
Lam, warned that efforts to “topple
Е
Lam, warned that efforts to “topple
Hong Kong” could destroy livelihoods
Е
Hong Kong” could destroy livelihoods

Л

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie

Л

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie

Lam, warned that efforts to “toppleLam, warned that efforts to “toppleЛ

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie82 people, while the city’s leader, CarrieИИ

Lam, warned that efforts to “topple

И

Lam, warned that efforts to “topple

З

residential areas and arrested at least

З

residential areas and arrested at least

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie82 people, while the city’s leader, CarrieЗ

residential areas and arrested at leastresidential areas and arrested at leastПП

О

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

О

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

residential areas and arrested at leastresidential areas and arrested at leastО

Д

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

Д

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

fired tear gas near shopping malls andfired tear gas near shopping malls andДГ

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

Г

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

fired tear gas near shopping malls andfired tear gas near shopping malls andГ

О

from across society test the limits of the

О

from across society test the limits of the

city’s police force. Officers on Mondaycity’s police force. Officers on MondayОТ

from across society test the limits of the

Т

from across society test the limits of the

city’s police force. Officers on Mondaycity’s police force. Officers on MondayТ

О

public protest are colliding as protesters

О

public protest are colliding as protesters

from across society test the limits of thefrom across society test the limits of theОВ

public protest are colliding as protesters

В

public protest are colliding as protesters

from across society test the limits of thefrom across society test the limits of theВ

И

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

И

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

public protest are colliding as protesterspublic protest are colliding as protestersИЛ

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

Л

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

public protest are colliding as protesterspublic protest are colliding as protestersЛ

А

Hong Kong’s values of efficiency, hard

А

Hong Kong’s values of efficiency, hard

work and, increasingly, a dedication towork and, increasingly, a dedication toА

Hong Kong’s values of efficiency, hardHong Kong’s values of efficiency, hardГГ

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

Г

work and, increasingly, a dedication to

Р

against the Hong Kong government.

Р

against the Hong Kong government.

Hong Kong’s values of efficiency, hardHong Kong’s values of efficiency, hardРУ

against the Hong Kong government.

У

against the Hong Kong government.

Hong Kong’s values of efficiency, hardHong Kong’s values of efficiency, hardУ

П

new tool in their weekslong campaign

П

new tool in their weekslong campaign

against the Hong Kong government.against the Hong Kong government.ПП

new tool in their weekslong campaign

П

new tool in their weekslong campaign

against the Hong Kong government.against the Hong Kong government.П

А

the city, wielding a potentially powerful

А

the city, wielding a potentially powerful

new tool in their weekslong campaignnew tool in their weekslong campaignА

"What's

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

"What's

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

"What's

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

residential areas and arrested at least

"What's

residential areas and arrested at least

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie"What's

News"

public protest are colliding as protesters

News"

public protest are colliding as protesters

from across society test the limits of the

News"

from across society test the limits of the

city’s police force. Officers on Mondaycity’s police force. Officers on MondayNews"

VK.COM/WSNWS

public protest are colliding as protesters

VK.COM/WSNWS

public protest are colliding as protesters

from across society test the limits of the

VK.COM/WSNWS

from across society test the limits of the

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

VK.COM/WSNWS

city’s police force. Officers on Monday

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

VK.COM/WSNWS

fired tear gas near shopping malls and

residential areas and arrested at least

VK.COM/WSNWS

residential areas and arrested at least

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie

VK.COM/WSNWS

82 people, while the city’s leader, Carrie

Lam, warned that efforts to “topple

VK.COM/WSNWS

Lam, warned that efforts to “topple

Hong Kong” could destroy livelihoodsHong Kong” could destroy livelihoodsVK.COM/WSNWS

РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS