I remembered it was a news writing class last fall when I was assigned to write an obituary the first time, I thought, “How interesting! Obituary is a news category in the States and they even have an actual section of obituaries in print media!” It just never happened in China unless the deceased one is a well-known.

It doesn’t mean there isn’t any obituary of an ordinary person in China. It just never goes to media outlets. A common way for almost all the families and friends to memorialize someone is to have a physical memorial meeting at a funeral home, where all the related ones could gather to mourn the person’s death, with flowers, wreath or donations in some cases. As part of that meeting, a family member or friend may read to the public a person’s obituary, which tells the life story of him/her.

But that’s all. If you’re not related to the deceased or there is no close connection, it’s highly likely that you may never notice this person has passed away or happened to know it years after.

For younger generation, I remembered that it was popular to memorialize the ones who passed away at a very young age by creating a Webpage when I was in college. There were more such specialized Websites than today because it seems people would be more willing to do this on social networking sites nowadays, after renren.com, a Chinese Facebook, or such types of Websites emerged. However, nothing as an obituary comes along on the site. It functions more like a guestbook, where you can post comments, video or pictures of the loved one.

But when it comes to a celebrity, it’s huge for Chinese audience. Here’s an example of a very famous Chinese Anchor who passed away recently.

To help you know this person, it might be better to read this death notice first. (I didn’t find the obituary of him in English.)

Not surprisingly, the state-run Xinhua News Agency did a news package for his death, including his obituary, how people memorialized him, pictures and videos…Basically, everything related.

Personally, people also write blogs about their feelings of this anchor’s death. Some of them even function as an obituary based on their knowledge of this anchor’s life, like this.

So this is a general picture of obituaries in China, where people don’t feel it’s necessary to put obituaries on media since there isn’t a relationship between the deceased and the rest of the world. But referring to the well-known, even though there isn’t a direct relationship, it’s kind of an indirect one that people share a common knowledge of and can chat about.

Johnson mentions how she encountered Uri Dromi, the only obituary writer in Israel, for Ha’aretz, a liberal newspaper. Dromi writes only two short stories about people who died every week. Having lived in Israel for 11 years as a child, the fact that Ha’aretz publishes even two obituaries is quite surprising to me.

Johnson wonders, “How is it possible in any country, but especially a country like Israel, crammed as it is with history and violence and eventful deaths?” This really resonated with me. When I was a child, I never saw either obituaries or death notices in newspapers. Death notices, the kind that just give generic information about the death of the person, were only placed as signs on walls around the neighborhood.

It is possible that I was so young that it never occurred to look for such a thing in the newspaper, but I have never seen longer obituaries in any Israeli media outlets, whether print or online. This is the case in spite of the fact that Israel has fought several wars over the last 60 years and there have been several suicide bombings in Haifa, the city where I lived.  Tragic as it is, there were many opportunities to write poignant stories commemorating those killed. And yet, I did a quick web search to see if Dromi’s stories are accessible online on the Ha’aretz website and I could not find any.

So, what I take away from all this is that people come from different places, have different traditions and beliefs. Although this project is geared mostly to a North American audience, we should not assume that a published story commemorating a person’s life is a self-evident concept for people. I am American, but it wasn’t for me.