China’s Tomb-Sweeping Day Now Includes Pets

Tech and tradition collide

Qingming, the ancestral tomb‑sweeping festival, is expanding to include cats and dogs. What used to be a day for cleaning ancestral graves and leaving incense and paper offerings has morphed for some families into a time to honor companion animals with keepsakes, wool replicas and even AI‑generated holograms. The change is simultaneously intimate and high‑tech.

Reportedly, transactions for pet memorial products on Taobao (淘宝) jumped about 160% year‑on‑year, with customized items and AI services among the fastest growing offerings. One seller surnamed Yin began offering AI‑powered holographic memorial boxes that turn existing photos into moving, three‑dimensional likenesses; customers, it has been reported, obsess over small details such as coat color and the look in a pet’s eyes to capture personality. The header image circulating on social media comes from Xiaohongshu (小红书).

Commerce, culture and reaction

The trend dovetails with a booming domestic pet market. It has been reported that the 2026 China Pet Industry White Paper puts the urban dog and cat consumer market at 312.6 billion yuan ($45.4 billion) in 2025, with projections to exceed 400 billion yuan by 2028. Artisans like Kang Qin have spent years making wool‑felt replicas; other vendors sell paper funerary packages — “grand dog or cat funerals” — and low‑cost paper‑burning services priced as low as 19.9 yuan.

Public reaction is mixed. Millions have viewed related posts online; some users express sympathy, others see the offerings as commercializing grief. A folklorist cited by domestic media argued that burning joss paper for pets reflects contemporary emotional expression rather than a brand‑new folk custom, while a scholar said the practice underscores the growing emotional role pets play and should be treated as a personal choice so long as it remains lawful and within public morals. As AI and e‑commerce reshape private mourning, the question remains: is this a sincere extension of ritual, or simply another market opportunity?