Melbourne's "Cloud Ancestor Worship": The "Digital Joss Paper Delivery" During Pandemic Quarantine
03 Dec 2025
On Qingming Festival in 2020, the early morning sun in Melbourne was filtered through the glass window of the hotel quarantine room, turning pale. Mr. Zhang sat at the desk, his fingers repeatedly stroking the photo of his parents on his phone—in the photo, the two elders were smiling under the cherry blossom tree in the nursing home. At this moment, however, he was 8,000 kilometers away, and even video calls had to be timed to the nursing home's visiting hours. The news notification on his phone about Australia's border closure was particularly dazzling. Staring at the words "temporarily closed" on the screen, he remembered his mother saying the day before, "The Qingming green rice cakes are all steamed, just waiting for you to come back and eat them," and his eyes suddenly welled up.
This was Mr. Zhang's fifth year working in Australia, but the first time he couldn't go home to sweep the tomb. On the tenth day of quarantine, he scrolled through the Chinese mutual aid group until the early morning, when he suddenly saw a recommendation for a "cloud ancestor worship platform." The poster said, "You can burn joss paper for ancestors even in quarantine, with real-time live broadcast and receipt notification." He clicked on the link with the attitude of giving it a try, and the "digital joss paper" category that popped up on the page made him pause—there were those printed with traditional gold ingot patterns, those engraved with the characters "Fu, Lu, Shou" (fortune, prosperity, longevity), and the most eye-catching one was a "Ping'an (Peace) Joss Paper" printed with a green health code pattern, with a line of small characters below: "May the mountains and rivers be safe, and loved ones be peaceful."
Following the platform's guidelines, Mr. Zhang chose the "Ping'an Joss Paper Package," uploaded recent photos of his parents, and typed a line in the electronic merit book: "Dad, Mom, I can't go home this year, but please take this money. Tell the caregiver to buy whatever you want to eat, don't save it." When the scheduled live broadcast time came, the scene of the worship site appeared on the screen: the staff, wearing plain Hanfu, lit the joss paper in front of the arranged altar. The flickering light and shadow of the flame came through the camera, bringing a real sense of warmth. He bowed deeply to the phone camera, and just as he was about to say something, he heard the video call notification—it was his mother calling.
"Son, we're in the activity room of the nursing home! The caregiver helped us connect to WiFi, and we're watching you 'burn paper'!" In the video, his mother held the phone up to the big screen, and his father sat beside her, holding a green rice cake in his hand, his eyes red but smiling. Mr. Zhang pointed to the flame on the screen: "Mom, look, there's a health code on this joss paper. It's to bless you both with good health. I'll come back to eat green rice cakes with you when the pandemic is over." His mother wiped away her tears and held the green rice cake up to the camera: "Your dad specially saved a box for you, frozen in the refrigerator. I'll steam it for you when you come back." The flame illuminated the three faces on the screen, and the loneliness of the quarantine room seemed to be dispelled by this cross-ocean warmth.
Ten minutes after the paper-burning ceremony, Mr. Zhang received an email from the platform. The attachment was a "receipt screenshot": the joss paper ashes in the flame rose into two vague cloud shapes, with the note "Ancestors have signed for it, merit value +999" next to it. He forwarded the screenshot to his mother, and soon received a reply—a voice message from his father, with a strong local accent: "Received it, received it! This platform is really effective. I dreamed that your mother was using the new money to buy peach cakes." That night, he shared his experience in the mutual aid group, and soon a dozen quarantined compatriots sent him private messages asking for the platform link. Some said, "My parents are in the intensive care unit, and I can't visit them. At least I can do my filial piety this way," while others said, "I didn't go home last year, so I must use this platform to burn paper for my grandparents this year."
Later, Mr. Zhang learned that the founder of the platform was also an international student who couldn't return to China during the pandemic. Having missed his grandmother's funeral, he made up his mind to develop this "cloud ancestor worship" tool. As more and more people used it, the platform added many new functions: custom joss paper patterns, which many people would add family photos to; support for multiple people to worship online simultaneously, allowing relatives from all over the world to "sweep the tomb together online"; the electronic merit book could also generate a memorial album, recording the words and photos of each worship.
On Qingming Festival in 2024, Mr. Zhang had already returned to China and swept the tomb with his parents in his hometown. He took out the "receipt screenshot" from that year and showed it to his parents. His mother smiled and said: "At that time, I was worried that you couldn't eat well abroad, but I didn't expect this platform could really 'send money' to us." The sun shone through the cypress trees in the cemetery and fell on his parents' white hair. Mr. Zhang suddenly realized that whether it was traditional paper-burning or cloud live broadcast, the form was never the most important thing—those concerns hidden in the heart and blessings across mountains and seas were the real meaning of worship.
Now, every time he video chats with friends in Australia, Mr. Zhang recommends this platform. He always says: "The pandemic made us understand that what is isolated is distance, not longing. And the most gentle part of technology is that it can build a cross-ocean bridge for longing at such moments."
Interactive Topic: During pandemic quarantine, what "cloud methods" did you use to express longing? Online memorials, digital halls, or "cloud burning" like Mr. Zhang? Share below
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