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Paying your respects to the dear departed has just become a whole lot easier By ERIC ELLIS April 11, 2000 Web posted at 2:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 2:30 a.m. EST For many in Asia, last Tuesday (April 4) was just another day, and if you were embraced by the stock market, a rather wintry one economically as the first chill winds of the NASDAQ rout swept into the region. And so to many investors in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, all the better to have a holiday, lest the NASDAQ have another day to get over its 15% swoon before its effects rippled into Asian portfolios.
How do reconcile exam time at Stanford with paying your respects to your dear departed grandfather interred in the family crypt in, say, Xiamen, a man whose struggles and labors helped put you there in Palo Alto in the first place? How can you be a dutiful granddaughter offering your filial respect when you are a struggling student or a struggling peasant for that matter? Enter the Internet to help solve the problem. An enterprising group of Beijing techies have created what they grandly describe as the world's largest online memorials Website. It's called Netor.com (notice the .com, not .net or .org) and while it doesn't go and sweep grandpa's grave for you--not yet anyway--you can still log on and pay your respects electronically, as you can at a similar site at Qingming.net. Better still, I'll let the Netor.com people describe what they offer: "For real memorial, those who goes far from home may never have chance to visit. Internet is a virtual desktop through which the space barriers and time limited could be completely broke. Following with the click of mouse, at any time during the 365 days of one year, and any time during the 24 hours of one day, no matter where they are, mourners could visit memorials in Internet. There they could offer flowers, leave a melody, light a flash candle, check message book to look for the old buck who have not seen for long times, write down their retrospection and sentiments, or send an email to relatives." Whether leaving an e-mail for the "old buck" is enough to placate his tradition-steeped widow--your granny--is a moot point, but Netor.com is a fabulous example of how the Internet at first confronts ancient traditions and then tries to work around and cooperate with them. I was interested to see last week that an enterprising entrepreneur in Taiwan was even making paper computers for funerals so the departed can check their e-mails in the afterworld, or trade shares online in stock market heaven. Netor.com also deals with the surge in spiritual needs in China at a time when the absolute faith in the Communist Party is being found wanting by the enthusiastic arrival of the market. It's no coincidence the Falun Gong group has emerged as a rival to the suffering certainties of Maoist dogma. But approach Netor.com in another way. It is a permanent tomb, one located in cyberspace. On the face of it, Netor.com should be encouraged by Chinese authorities at a practical level. Across the mainland and in Taiwan, authorities have been urging less interring of bodies and more cremations. And, at the, er, end of the day, what is a departed relative but a spirit, or a memory? Better to have one there at the touch of your keyboard than in a windswept plot overlooking the Taiwan Strait. But then again, I'm not Chinese. Ticked off at Asia Buzz? Turned on? Talk back to TIME Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com Search for recent Asia Buzz
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