The role of arts in life and death education

What is the meaning of life and death, and how can people cope with the pain of losing loved ones?

Death is a taboo topic in China, despite a subtle shift in people’s attitudes on the subject. Life and death education has been absent and far from the public for the past three decades, since China’s contemporary interment and funeral professional education system began to grow.

However, it is now beginning to spread throughout the general populace. On Sunday, The Richness of Death, a forum hosted by Peking University’s School of Health Humanities and co-hosted by Fu Shou Yuan International Group, China’s largest cemetery and funeral service provider, brought together officials, experts and scholars, students and faculty, and people from various circles to discuss life and death and the diversity of commemorative culture.

It was streamed online, garnering more than 300 attendees at the campus and over 150,000 people online.

During the Qingming Festival, which takes place this year on April 4, Chinese people pay tribute to their ancestors.

According to Zhou Bin, an associate professor at Tongji University’s College of Arts and Media, universities in China have integrated aesthetic education into life education seminars.

Music, painting, dancing and opera are examples of nonverbal art healing methods used in life education classes to stimulate students’ perception and growth, she explained.

“Art plays a healing comfort role and the small breakthrough into traditional teaching has achieved delightful results and is promoted,” Zhou said.

“Understanding death is still a difficult task for the majority, involving a wide range of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, and economics,” stated Han Qide, former vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a Chinese Academy of Sciences academician.

“However, the discussion over death in China is getting more in-depth and death education is influencing and combining with other fields such as hospice care, medical treatment and funeral and interment,” he continued.

“It is hoped that thanatology (the study of death) will be established in China as a subject with the ultimate goal to make the public understand death and people enjoy utmost dignity and warmth in the last chapter of their life,” Han said.

“The development of technologies such as AI has made ‘digital human’ possible, and the digital immortal conveys a message of remembering and evokes past memory,” said Wang Jisheng, deputy director of China Funeral Association and president of Fu Shou Yuan.

“AI large model study has driven the body movement and communication of ‘digital human,’ and it leaves a spiritual legacy of the perished.”