The art of remembering lives

During this year's Tomb-Sweeping Day, Xu Hang moved slowly along rows of tombstones at Crane Lake Memorial Park in Xianning city, Hubei province. He brushed dust from the surfaces, and paused beside one he had designed years ago, lost in thought.

No one asked him to do this. It is simply something he has done for nearly 20 years.

The tombstones stand in silence. Each one holds a story that can no longer be spoken aloud.

And Xu's work ensures those stories are not entirely lost.

At 42, Xu is a tombstone designer. Over the past two decades, he has designed nearly 1,000 tombstones.

Having studied environmental art design at Xi'an Polytechnic University, Xu had not planned to enter the funeral industry. After graduation in 2006, he took a job at a cemetery in Zhengzhou, Henan province, and stayed for nearly a decade.

"I wasn't interested in the job at all back then," he recalls.

The setting felt far removed from his ambitions. But over time, something shifted — not through design theory or artistic pursuit, but through an encounter he still remembers clearly.

More than a decade into his career, Xu was organizing a burial ceremony when he presented a tombstone design to a woman in her 50s who had just lost her husband. After the ceremony, she suddenly dropped to her knees.

"Thank you, child," she said.

The moment stayed with him. The woman, whom he later referred to as Aunt Li, told him the tombstone carried the memory of their 30 years together. From then on, she said, this would be the place where she could return and "talk" to her husband.