A microblog user entitled "Thus Time Flies" looks different and almost all the entries he posted are about those who have deceased since he reposted the first obituary on July 3, 2011. He has a surname "Lin" and is a software engineer in Fujian in real life. He had "encoffined" 802 deceased persons with words over the past one and a half years.
Lin was born after 1985 and he called himself "microblogging encoffiner."
Lin's typical way of "encoffining" a dead is like this: "@ XX, male, 22 years old. He died of stomach cancer, which withered his body. He lamented how he can protect those he wanted to protect if he died. He struggled against the stomach cancer for one year before his death. He most admired Olympic players because they can drink functional beverages like a fish after sweating a lot."
Normally, Lin updates one or two piece of the similar obituaries describing the ordinary story of the dead with about 100 words every day.
In the opinion of Lin, the remains of a dead can be words, but he found after reading through the contents that the microblog of a dead is the whole world.
"I just wanted to try something no one had done before"
Lin admitted that his original idea was not so emotional and collecting information of the dead persons was more like an experiment for him. "I just wanted to try something no one had done before," Lin said, "I wanted to know how far I could go if I did not do propaganda and marketing and pay for fans, but just tried something no one had done before."
Lin was asked by many people what it means to open the microblog and what people can learn from it. The young man said, "I do not know because I had not any purpose since the beginning."
Death is dignified and equal wherever it happens
Because of the account, Lin was often asked what death means to him.
Lin answered the question with a clam that few of his peers have, "Life is a very ordinary existence and will be taken away at any time. There are more than 6 billion people around the world, so the death of a person is not especially grand news sometimes."
Lin had "encoffined" a lot of celebrities including post-1980s cartoonist Xiong Dun, a girl baby who donated her organs and actress Bai Jing. Lin said that everyone is equal in the presence of death, no matter how much influence they had had. "That what the death means to a person lies in how much the person knows about the dead."
Lin will first read the microblog of a dead no matter how negligible it is, and then post an obituary special for him or her.
People often ask him whether he can give an accurate description of the life story of a dead in just about 100 words. Lin answered, "Certainly not."
However, most of the friends and relatives of the dead will not correct it and they just recollect the stories of the dead after Lin's obituary and thank him who is like the hero of Japanese film "Departures" for his "gentle treatment" to the dead at the last moment.
Lin said in the latest post, "I had posted more than 300 entries. I found the impetus for me to continue is the warmth and affection brought by each of the stories."
Read the Chinese version: 85后”网上入殓师：一个逝者的微博就是一个世界; Source: China Youth Daily; Author:Wang Mengjie
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