Do not weep by my grave. I am not here. I do not sleep. I am a thousand gentle winds that blow across the world. I am the precious jade and pearl ropes glittering on the snow. I am the flame above the ripe millet. I am the gentle autumn rain curtain. When you awaken from the tranquility of dawn, I will turn into a swift current with flocks of birds patrolling above. When you sleep, I am the gentle star shadow in the night sky. Do not weep by my grave. I am not here. I have never passed away.
A farewell ceremony is being held. The relatives and staff of the deceased are covering the floor with bright red petals all the way to the farewell hall. Inside the room, a Shih Tzu dog is lying quietly on a platform with closed eyes. Its coat is white without any dirt and is surrounded by petals. This is not a farewell ceremony in the ordinary sense. What has left the world is an elderly dog. And its owner is participating in the farewell ceremony.
The store of Xingbaidu is more in line with the ‘high-end’ route as a whole. Pushing open the door and entering the store, everywhere you look, various customized urns, commemorative ornaments, and jewelry are displayed on the display shelf and illuminated by lights. Entering the storage room, urns more than ten centimeters high are neatly placed in the display cabinet. Surrounded by photos of pets before their lives and their favorite toys, it seems that the warm scenes of the past still remain. On festivals, the clerks will replace fresh milk, pet feed, dried meat and other foods in front of the corresponding spiritual tablets to express mourning. For Zhang Shuai, the boss of Xingbaidu, the pet funeral industry will highlight the humanistic care that the service industry should have. During business operations, Xingbaidu will provide more personalized services compared to its peers, such as designing and selling unique souvenirs or improving the environmental conditions of the urn storage room. Customized farewell ceremony services will also be launched on holidays. In the eyes of the owners who say goodbye to their pets, pet funeral directors are people who build a bridge between the human world and heaven. They always call pets ‘furry kids’. By preparing a decent farewell ceremony, they bring comfort to the owners. The urns and souvenirs available for pet owners to choose. Second, focus on pets themselves and move forward by groping. The warm yellow light fills a space of less than ten square meters and illuminates the central platform. On the wooden table near the wall, the lotus stove is plated with a layer of gold by the light, and the handwritten scriptures for pet owners to copy are laid flat in the center. Pushing open the door and entering the other side of the space, you can see colorful polyester flowers scattered on the four corners of the platform, and the white gauze hangs down to the ground. This is the most common Chinese and Western farewell hall design in pet funeral stores. Under the guidance of pet funeral directors, the owners will have the final farewell to their pets here. At present, domestic pet funeral stores already have a relatively unified funeral system. The main process can be roughly divided into pick-up and delivery, cleaning, preparation for the farewell ceremony, and handing over the ashes after cremation. The store space is divided into waiting areas, cleaning areas, and farewell halls. Some stores will also set up the cremation area in the store. In the waiting area, various souvenirs and urns are often placed for pet owners to choose. However, compared to the industrial system architecture and regulations that have been formed abroad, the domestic pet funeral industry currently has no clear industry guidelines and legal norms. Lu Jun entered the industry in 2015. At that time, the domestic pet funeral market was almost blank. There were only two related stores in operation in Shenzhen. Without previous examples to refer to also means there is great potential. At the beginning of his entrepreneurship, Lu Jun gradually explored the most suitable whole process of pet funerals by himself – from driving to the customer’s home to pick up, to cleaning and grooming the hair, holding a farewell ceremony, until cremation. After a once vivid little life goes through orderly links and turns into a small pile of ashes, a work process is considered to come to an end.
Despite the widespread notion in internet self-media that ‘certifications are needed to enter the industry,’ there is no unified national legal regulation. In the eyes of most practitioners, certificates without legal force cannot prove that they have met the industry standards. Angel Boat’s hiring criteria focus on ‘like-minded individuals.’ As long as they possess basic operational skills and relevant ethics, Lv Jun will allow them to join and operate in every aspect of the work process. He will also explain and emphasize the details involved in the process, such as how to use cremation equipment and handle special situations, allowing novice employees to become increasingly proficient through continuous practice.
Moreover, another important reason for Lv Jun’s choice of the pet funeral industry is ‘humanistic care.’ He once received a special young customer who brought her deceased pet cat to the store and was reluctant to cremate it, holding onto the already decaying body until late at night. Lv Jun persuaded her to take the cat to a nearby hotel for the night. It was not until the next afternoon that she finally cried out loud under various consolations and handed the pet cat to Lv Jun. ‘The significance of pets varies from person to person; for some, it’s just ordinary companionship, while for others, it may be far more than that,’ he said. Contrary to popular imagination, the emotions of pet funeral directors do not fluctuate like a roller coaster, rising and falling with the emotions and stories of pet owners. Instead, they handle the situation with a more calm and objective perspective, ensuring pets are in a better state when they bid farewell to their owners. Zhou Xiaoci distinctly remembers that her first official pet funeral was for a cat that had jumped from a building. The cat had no external injuries, only some blood at the corner of its mouth. ‘It took more than an hour from the customer’s home to the funeral parlor, and during that journey, the owner was in a state of collapse, expressing their guilt.’ Before entering the industry, she was worried that she would ‘cry with the customers,’ but in that situation, she calmly cleaned the cat’s body, used a prepared cart to bring it to the farewell ceremony, groomed it, and trimmed its nails, leaving more time for the owner to say goodbye to their pet, ‘as if witnessing a stranger’s death. ‘ In Lv Jun’s view, just as morticians do not grieve daily because they face the deceased, this is a job for practitioners, and more importantly, they need to have the right attitude. As pet funeral directors, the key is to focus and give the greatest respect to pets and their owners, paying attention to every detail. When concentrating on the operation, his mood tends to be somewhat heavy, but not to the point of sadness. This is seen as a reliable performance by consumer Qin Dan: ‘At that moment, seeing a rational person by your side is very comforting.’We do not provide much emotional value to our guests; we simply assist our clients in stabilizing their emotions with sincerity and action. In this line of work, it is easy to empathize with others, but it is not necessary to be affected by them, says Lu Jun.
A mutual positive giving often leaves a lasting impression in our memories, turning into a precious memory. Most professionals in the pet industry are pet lovers themselves or have long-term pet-raising experiences. It is inevitable to occasionally feel empathy or be moved during work. Choosing to euthanize a pet can cause greater emotional fluctuation for Zhou Xiaoci compared to directly seeing a cold corpse. “Thinking that it can still wag its tail and come over at this moment, but in the next second it will be gone forever, sometimes it really makes one sad. I think it is difficult for people to accept parting.” There are some similarities between people and pets; as long as there has been an intersection in fate and a connection in life, no matter how brief, the heart is often touched when facing separation and death. Apart from the sorrow from parting, some warm moments can also be touching. Huang Junjie is a photographer in a pet funeral shop who records funeral stories, having switched to this industry for only a year and a half. During the shooting process, listening to the stories of the owners and their pets, and witnessing a tearful farewell, he admits that he cannot be as calm as a professional pet funeral director, “Sometimes I feel tears about to burst forth, and I can only try my best to control them and keep my hands steady. ” When mentioning the most memorable farewell, he referred to a little black dog. In Huang Junjie’s video, a small black-brown dog, about 40cm long, lies quietly in the center of a Chinese-style farewell hall table, with his favorite plush toy above, surrounded by well-cut white roses. This is a small local dog from the countryside, with no valuable status, died of natural aging. The dog’s owner is an elderly grandmother in her fifties, and this is her second pet to be farewelled. At the farewell ceremony, neither she nor other family members shed tears, “The farewell hall was very lively that day, with all five members of the family present. They did not cry, they just gently stroked the dog’s fur, as if bidding farewell to an old friend about to embark on a journey. Then, the grandmother read a long letter for it, which said: ‘We will meet again.’” Many moments that happen here seem to have merged into my life, becoming precious fragments of my soul. A sense of family-like bonds and attitudes towards parting also affect my own perspectives on facing matters. Pet funeral director Xiao Rong wrote this in her own notes.In shops filled with the emotions of parting, pet funeral directors often gain something beyond money and stories. For Zhou Xiaoci, this profession is more meaningful as it has allowed her to meet many like-minded friends and people who share the same values. Here, there is no societal opposition born from pets, only genuine hearts that treat pets as friends and family. Since entering this industry, she has found that the negative emotions pet owners experience during sad farewells do not transfer to her; instead, the attitude towards pets behind these emotions makes her feel a sense of belonging and closeness.
Like other professions, the trust of pet owners brings a sense of achievement and value to the work of pet funeral directors. Lv Jun has been in the industry for nine years and has been praised and reselected multiple times. Zhou Xiaoci has not been in the profession for long, only about a year and a half, but has interacted with hundreds of pet owners. Among them, a local customer from Shanghai, CC, left a deep impression on her. After completing all the funeral processes for CC’s first Shih Tzu that passed away due to illness, CC said goodbye to Zhou Xiaoci with red eyes. Zhou Xiaoci was taken aback and quickly told her that in this industry, they do not say goodbye to clients, “We can’t say goodbye! We usually just say take care.” A month later, CC’s other dog passed away due to natural aging. When Zhou Xiaoci saw her again, she felt an inexplicable sense of regret. Before leaving the shop, CC said goodbye to Zhou Xiaoci once more. “Don’t say goodbye to me, I saw you not long after the last time I said goodbye,” Zhou Xiaoci said with a hint of helplessness. But CC’s next words almost brought her to tears. “She said it’s okay, this goodbye is because we can be friends. We can meet again outside of this setting. Actually, that moment was really happy, and it gave a sense of being recognized. There are always moments like these that make me realize the value of my work.” For some customers who visit pet funeral shops, the most important thing is not the ceremony, but preserving a unique set of ashes that belong only to their “fur child,” while the significance of the ceremony is to provide an “outlet” and “cushion” for the pet owner’s emotions. Qin Dan is a practitioner at a pet hospital in Shenzhen, and in her understanding, pet hospitals can only treat pet bodies as medical waste and perform collective cremation, making it difficult for owners to obtain ashes. Before personally bidding farewell to her own pet, Niuniu, she had accompanied a colleague through the pet funeral process—a Poodle named Kamoka, who died in a car accident. Her colleague was “crying uncontrollably” during the farewell ceremony, and the atmosphere was very oppressive, “as if watching a tragic movie with strong emotional impact.”Although people in our profession often face such things, when it happens to oneself, one still can’t help being like others. Qindan’s little dog Niuniu left by euthanasia. She didn’t choose a ceremony. After cremation, she just took away a jar of ashes. Niuniu is a mixed-breed Papillon dog and has reached the advanced age of seventeen. It has long become an inseparable part of her family. Before leaving, Qindan judged according to industry knowledge that it had a case of opisthotonos and was almost unable to breathe.
To prevent Niuniu from leaving in such an extremely painful way, Qindan carried it to the pet hospital the next day and then took it to the funeral home. In her opinion, not choosing a ceremony is to reduce her sense of collapse. Although Qindan tries her best to restrain herself, the surging emotions and the bits and pieces spent with it still keep emerging. Her five-year-old daughter has spent time with Niuniu since birth. After it passed away, Qindan directly informed her of this situation, and then the two hugged and cried. Even after a long time, when talking about Niuniu in an interview, her voice still choked: “They will be like this one day. When it comes to one’s own baby, it’s really too painful. There are still two fourteen-year-old dogs at home. After raising them, I won’t raise any more.” Zhou Xiaoci describes the role of pet funeral director as “drawing a satisfactory full stop”. Most pet owners’ encounter with pets is a fateful beginning. They often make a lot of preparations and buy many items. They take photos day after day to record every moment of its growth. They achieve self-growth while the pet grows and integrate each other into their lives in mutual companionship. And farewell is often like this: choose the best-looking photo of the pet when it was alive, and important people in the family attend together. At the ceremony, tell the stories that happened after the encounter one by one – not only for the pet to hear, but also for oneself to hear. In her eyes, most pets are basically over ten years old when they die. They are very understanding and sometimes “accompany” pet owners to draw the full stop of this story. During the Spring Festival this year, it rained continuously for a month in Shanghai. A pet owner chose the only day without rain according to the weather forecast for the next twenty days and made an appointment for euthanasia for her pet suffering from old age and illness with gritted teeth, but she was still reluctant. The sunny day of that day came as promised. In the early morning, this pet passed away by itself in the sunshine. “We always feel that this pet can perceive the owner’s reluctance and doesn’t want her to make such a difficult decision.” She said. Many owners also express the wish to meet again.This ceremony serves as a concluding paragraph in a story, aiding pet owners in facing the end of their relationship with their pets. Similar to the undertones conveyed by the funeral director in the recently popular movie ‘Breaking Hell,’ the process of funeral rites is not only to guide the deceased to the afterlife but also to transcend the pain caused by the separation of life and death, the confusion brought by the uncertainty of the future, and the attachments of the soul. Amidst the immense waves of life and death, it helps the living find inner peace and regain the strength to move forward.
After her pet’s departure, Qin Dan ordered a sapling of an osmanthus tree online. On the eleventh day, she and her husband and daughter, armed with shovels, buried the urn given to her by the pet funeral service at the back of the mountain. Niuniu, a small dog that loved to go out and enjoy the scenery, often visited this back mountain with Qin Dan. As she chatted with friends, Niuniu would lie there, curled up small, enjoying the breeze and quietly gazing at the sky over the central book city for a long, long time. When her fur was blown by the wind, Qin Dan described her as ‘like a blooming dandelion.’ At the moment of completion, she felt relieved. In Qin Dan’s view, it should return to freedom, fulfill its own wishes, and be reborn. That small urn of ashes has now carried more meanings. ‘Our lives continue to move forward with memories of it, which is also what parting brings us,’ she said. The osmanthus tree planted by Qin Dan’s family. In Lv Jun’s store, the golden ginkgo tree still shines brightly under the top light, with pictures hanging under the ginkgo swaying gently with the wind, showcasing countless moments of mutual companionship. Some owners draw Q-version images of their family and pets on postcards, with phrases like ‘continue to live happily in another world’ and ‘remember us, meet again in the next life’ frequently appearing. Photos represent memories of the past, while postcards are expectations for the future. Lv Jun and his staff encourage pet owners to create these during their wait, using words to further express their inner emotions. ‘Parting is inevitable, and fully expressing all kinds of complex emotions in the heart is also one of the keys to moving forward,’ said the funeral director Xiao Rong. ‘And doing well in parting is precisely the greatest significance of pet funeral services. ‘