Before the Dawn: Young Chinese Reimagine the Last Goodbye
At just 17, and in the final stages of cancer, Bonny spent her final months drawing Olivia, an anime girl with cat-ear hairpins — someone who could keep going, even when she couldn’t.
On Jan. 19, her drawings came to life. The sterile white ceiling of her hospital room in Beijing lit up with stars. Olivia appeared on screen. Classmates read letters aloud. And cosplayers stepped quietly inside, bringing Bonny’s favorite anime world with them.
One, dressed as Diluc from the game Genshin Impact, stepped forward and gently took her hand before whispering: “Let’s travel together to the next world.”
Bonny’s mother, Carrie Xin, stood nearby and wiped away tears. She had asked for something gentle: no black clothes, no silence, no mourning. Just a way for her daughter to say goodbye — in a world that still felt like her own.
With her parents’ consent and support from Lu Guijun, Bonny’s doctor, a small team from Beijing-based Guicong Studio took on the planning — the lights and projection, animating Olivia, the music, even the cosplayers. They had never met Bonny. But once they heard what she loved, the path was clear.
But what normally took a month would have to happen in three days. So the Guicong team turned to Xiaohongshu, the lifestyle platform popular among young Chinese and known as RedNote abroad, posting: “Help a girl’s anime self reach the stars.”
The response was immediate. An artist used AI to animate Olivia, blinking and smiling just like Bonny. Cosplay groups sent videos. Four cosplayers volunteered to come in person — including the one who would play Diluc.
On the day itself, his team adjusted her medication to keep her as comfortable as possible. And before the farewell, Lu spoke with Bonny’s classmates, urging them not to talk about strength or resilience. Just tell her what she meant to them, he said.
“The truth is, illness isn’t a test of courage or determination,” Lu told Sixth Tone. “The outcome isn’t dictated by how brave or persistent someone is. What patients really need is not pressure, but love.”
That idea sits at the heart of Guicong Studio, a team working to rethink partings in a country where death remains a cultural taboo. Founded in 2023, Guicong specializes in personalized ceremonies for the dying and the bereaved, hoping to encourage open conversations about mortality.
They are part of a quiet but growing shift, led largely by young Chinese.
In a national survey of more than 8,000 people, over 90% of young respondents said they weren’t afraid of funeral culture, and nearly 80% said they don’t avoid the topic in daily life. Many felt that rigid, ritual-heavy ceremonies no longer fit modern life.
It’s slowly reaching older generations, too. In Shanghai, Ferryman Funeral Service, a well-established provider, says two in three clients now request personal touches — handwritten poems, holograms, AI voice and face reconstructions. Some older clients have even begun leaving instructions for nontraditional send-offs.
“One woman in her 70s, for example, requested purple clothing and decorations — a break from the traditional white and yellow typically reserved for those over 80,” said Shen Jiaying, Ferryman’s media director.
To Gao Guqi, founder of Guicong Studio and the architect behind Bonny’s farewell, a send-off isn’t just about remembering the dead — it’s about comforting the living. “A funeral defines a person’s legacy, yet over time, they become a flat figure,” he told Sixth Tone. “Our role is to restore depth, to show who they truly were.”
Gao likens his work less to event planning than to storytelling. He also draws on “po diyu,” or “Breaking Hell,” a Cantonese ritual meant to free the soul from suffering. But to him, it’s not just about the dead. “It’s about breaking the hell of the living — the grief that lingers between people.”
Back in Beijing, that night after everything was packed away, Bonny’s mother sent a quiet message to everyone involved: “Bonny said this was the happiest day of her life.”
In the days after her daughter’s passing, she carried a transparent card printed with Olivia — Bonny’s anime avatar — and photographed it wherever she went: parks, the seaside, the opera. She shared the images online with a final note: “It’s the seventh day of Bonny’s journey. Have a great trip.”
Taboo by trade
Gao started Guicong Studio in 2023, not long after losing both his parents. A designer by training, his goal was simple: to help people talk about death.
But in China, the word “death” alone is considered unlucky. Among older generations, even saying it out loud is taboo.
Last year, when the team tried to open a storefront in Beijing, nearly every landlord said no. They focused on areas with high foot traffic — hospitals, commercial zones like Sanlitun, dense neighborhoods like Beiyuan. Nothing worked.
“I lost count of how many landlords and agents I added on (messaging app) WeChat,” said Li Yu, Guicong’s curator and designer. “Probably 20 or 30.” Even when one agreed to rent, neighbors protested. The lease was pulled.
Vendors weren’t any more willing. As soon as suppliers or production teams found out the business involved funerals, they backed out. Even professional models refused to appear in promotional shoots.
“I don’t do this category,” was the standard reply. So Gao’s wife stepped in as their first model. For the shroud, he modeled it himself.
Even in their own families, silence was easier than explanation. Li, 34, still hasn’t told her parents what she actually does. “They assume I’m an interior designer,” she said. “I haven’t corrected them because I know they won’t accept it. Explaining would just be exhausting.”
As a newcomer, Guicong also struggled to break into an industry dominated by entrenched networks. Funeral shops near hospitals held the most business. When the team approached full-service firms to collaborate, they were turned away.
Their pricing — modest by design — was seen as a threat. “They’re not losing money,” said Gao. “They’re just no longer making excessive profits.”
He found that products were often marked up 10 to 20 times, with little connection to service quality or emotional support. Even with strong online visibility, actual clients were hard to reach.
According to Deng Fei, a researcher specializing in archaeology and Chinese art history at Shanghai’s Fudan University, the challenge isn’t technology but tradition. Full-service agencies still decide how most funerals are done, leaving families with few real choices.
Gao also had to push back against a deeper suspicion: that funerals are just a way to profit from the dead. Some in the industry leaned into that idea. “Let them talk,” he heard more than once. “I’ll just keep making money with my eyes closed.”
Gao sees it differently. “We don’t see this as business,” he said. “It’s a meaningful, dignified craft — one that honors life, not just death.”
Ashes and echoes
Most of Guicong’s team — just nine people — were born in the ’90s. Few had ever stepped inside a crematorium before joining.
For Li Yu, the job came with a string of firsts: her first time in a funeral home, her first time seeing bodies pushed into the furnace, her first time watching the remains — sometimes broken down with hammers — reduced to ash.
“The change is almost instant,” she said. “It happens so fast, it’s hard to grasp that someone’s really gone.” Over time, she learned to step back, to observe without turning numb. That distance, she said, helped her empathize with grieving families.
Her friends were mostly supportive. Some saw it as a smart move — a niche market with rising demand. Others joked darkly: “At least when I die, I’ll have a better send-off now.”
Li’s views on death haven’t changed much. “Once I’m gone, it doesn’t matter how I’m buried,” she said. “Even if my ashes were scattered at sea, that’d be fine. To me, death just means… disappearing.”
What did change was how she valued time with the living. Before, she visited home only a few times a year — usually when her parents called first. After joining Guicong, she began reaching out on her own.
“I call my parents now just to check in,” she said. “During festivals, I make time for my grandparents. When I go home, I stay longer.” She also started taking more photos — group shots, quiet moments — knowing one day they’d be all that was left.
Beyond the ritual
For centuries, funeral rites in China were deeply personal — shaped by a person’s status, age, or role in the family. According to Deng, who also specializes in China’s burial culture, older customs were more intricate and warm, designed not just to mourn the dead but to honor their life.
In the Song dynasty (960–1279), scholars like Sima Guang and Zhu Xi helped make elite practices more accessible. By the Republic of China period (1912–1949), Western ideas — public cemeteries, memorial services, black as a mourning color — had begun to reshape tradition.
Much of that vanished during a 1960s campaign that targeted “feudal” ideas, customs, and beliefs in the name of progress. What’s returned in recent years, Deng explains, isn’t tradition but commerce: jade or rosewood urns, lavish displays — less about grief, more about spending.
Today’s funerals, Deng says, may be the most stripped-down in Chinese history. The grief is still there, but the space to express it isn’t.
“Unlike ancient mourning traditions like ding you (a mourning period observed by sons after a parent’s death, sometimes lasting up to three years), modern funerals follow an unspoken rule — three days, and no more than seven,” she told Sixth Tone.
In Shanghai, for instance, farewell ceremonies are capped at 40 minutes to an hour before the next family takes the room. “Everything is compressed,” Deng said. “There’s no room for real emotional immersion.”
Gao echoed the concern. Too often, he said, the structure itself gets in the way of feeling. A host leads the ceremony. Family members give short speeches. The words stay the same — only the names change.
“The result? A formal, impersonal script that thanks leaders and guests, but says little about the person.”
Still, Deng doesn’t dismiss the role of tradition. Whether newly invented or passed down, she said, these customs exist for a reason — to honor emotion, show respect, and offer comfort to those left behind.
Even when families want something else, tradition often pulls them back. Shen from Ferryman Funeral Service underscored that personalized ceremonies require the approval of relatives — and in moments of deep grief, many, especially older family members, fall back on tradition.
Even with consent, the tools have limits. Digital reconstructions of a loved one’s face or voice still struggle with accuracy, and can sometimes feel more uncanny than comforting.
Young Chinese are far more open, at least about their own funerals. In one national survey, 65.8% said honoring the deceased’s wishes came first. Only 10.3% said they preferred simplicity for its own sake.
That gap between ideals and reality has made even Deng more cautious.
“Phrases like ‘farewell with love’ or ‘honor with love’ sound beautiful,” she said. “But in practice, they often feel hollow. Hard to implement.” After years of academic work, she even paused her own funerary studies teaching — unsure how to teach a system still struggling to evolve.
For both Deng, the researcher, and Lu, the doctor, the path forward starts with the same idea: teaching people how to say goodbye.
“Preparing for death without avoidance — that may be the key to easing personal grief,” Lu said. “And breaking the stagnation within the industry.”
To Deng, a good funeral should allow for emotion, for creativity, for space to truly say farewell. “Weddings have evolved in countless ways,” she said. “Funerals should too — and they will.”
At Guicong’s studio, the team is already working on their next project: a farewell built around modern dance, where a dying dancer will take the stage one last time.
Editor: Apurva.
(Header image: The ward decorated for Bonny’s farewell, Beijing, Jan. 19, 2025. Courtesy of the interviewees)
