简体中文
The Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, is a centuries-old holiday for remembering one's deceased ancestors and loved ones.
But many paying their respects in graveyards this year, may wonder what people are doing waving their smartphones over tombstones.
It might not seem strange, but they're actually using two-dimensional quick response codes, or QR codes, affixed to the monuments.
When scanned with modern gadgets, these small, square images allow mourners to see a virtual obituary - where photos and video clips of the deceased can be found.
Cemeteries in Chinese cities including Shanghai, Shenyang and Fuzhou have seen a growing number of QR code stickers on headstones, right next to their engraved epitaphs.
And information provided by the codes, ranging from names and dates of birth and death, to life stories of the deceased, is making memorials more interactive.
SOUNDBITE:
"This QR code provides us with a new way to learn about the ordinary but precious lives of our deceased relatives."
In a country where the tradition of paying respects to deceased family members by sweeping their tombs every spring remains strong, it's taken little time for the high-tech innovation to gain popularity...
A worker with a cemetery in northeast China's Liaoning province told CNC that over a dozen QR code stickers have been put on tombstones since the cemetery started offering such services for free, just over a month ago.
Most of the applicants are aged between 35 and 45.
The machine-readable barcode, invented in Japan in the early 1990s, is now widely used in product tracking, document management and marketing.
And the application of the code in China is becoming increasingly familiar, with cyber-mourning set to connect more young people, to the ancient tradition.
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The national holiday runs from April the 4th til the 6th.
