Many Chinese sent virtual flowers and left messages on the net to show their respect for the dead around April 5, the Tomb-Visiting Day.
It is a Chinese tradition families visit tombs that day. They offer cake and fruit, and repair the tomb areas.
However, for people on the move in the modern world the tradition is difficult to observe, and the Internet has become the ideal alternate.
The biggest portal that provides such services, cn.netor.com, has set up 11,000 memorials for the dead, including ordinary people as well as such famous people as mathematician Chen Jingrun.
Chen's memorial is one of the most popular. His research into Goldbach's conjecture still leads the world in this field.
A net user named Gu Yingdan in the U.S. writes, "Chen was so smart and at the same time determined. Foreigners show their respect whenever Chen's name is mentioned."
Chen's wife You Kun says, "I was amazed to learn that so many people still remember my husband, who died six years ago.
"I wanted to log onto his website, but failed because too many people are visiting his memorial," she added.
Four memorials set up on cn.netor.com for Zhang Xueliang, a Chinese general, have attracted close to 30,000 visitors.
Zhang made historic contributions by helping realize the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CPC, and promoting a national resistance against the Japanese aggression in the 1930s. He died at 100 on October 15, 2001, and President Jiang Zemin sent a message of condolence to his relatives, describing him as "a great patriot and a hero of the Chinese nationa."
A net user named An Sheng said his grandfather was a soldier led by the general, and sent a virtual daisy on his behalf.
Wu Jianying, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Undertakers Association, said that rememberance of the relatives or friends of the dead is not confined by time or place and websites satisfy their demand.
It is said that a national Internet memorial system will be developed, besides the present five professional memorial websites.
Ordinary people have been writing touching words on the net. A mother tells her husband in the other world that their little daughter won a prize in school today.
A son writes to his dead father: ``Although the net is not real, it has neither rain nor wind. Dear Dad, I can talk to you here whenever I want to."
(People?s Daily April 5, 2002)
