From AI-powered hologram boxes to wool-felt replicas and paper offerings, pet memorial products are gaining popularity in China during Qingming, the annual tomb-sweeping festival.

Traditionally, families mark the holiday by visiting ancestral graves to clean tombstones and leave offerings for the dead. For some pet owners, those acts of remembrance now extend to cats and dogs they regarded as family.

According to domestic media reports, transactions for pet memorial products on e-commerce platform Taobao rose 160% from a year earlier, with customized keepsakes and AI-powered services among the fastest-growing offerings.

One online seller surnamed Yin, who previously specialized in pet oil paintings, began offering AI-powered hologram memorial boxes last year that use existing images to create moving, three-dimensional likenesses of cats and dogs.

Yin said customers often fixate on specific features, especially a pet’s eyes and coat color, and may request multiple revisions to better capture its personality. In one case, a golden retriever owner said the dog’s expression looked too fierce and asked for changes to better reflect its playful temperament.

Online buyer reviews suggest the products can provoke strong emotional responses. One customer wrote that the resemblance was so strong it felt as if the pet had “come back,” though the display was smaller than expected.

The trend comes amid broader growth in China’s pet economy. According to the 2026 China Pet Industry White Paper, the country’s urban dog and cat consumer market reached 312.6 billion yuan ($45.4 billion) in 2025 and is projected to exceed 400 billion yuan by 2028.

At another online store, Kang Qin has spent more than a decade making wool-felt replicas of pets, trying to reproduce each animal’s appearance as closely as possible.

She told domestic media that one customer sent a reference photo showing a dog with dark, dirty fur around its nose. After Kang cleaned up the image, the customer asked her to restore the smudged look so the replica would feel more authentic.

Beyond customized keepsakes, online sellers are also offering paper memorial goods for pets, including paper food, clothing and shelters meant to be burned as tributes.

Some shops sell “grand dog or cat funeral” packages for 239.8 yuan, listing items such as paper money, shampoo, washing machines, air conditioners, gold and silver bars, and even servant and companion figures. Others offer paper-burning services for 19.9 yuan to 28.8 yuan.

The trend has also gained traction on Chinese social media, drawing millions of views and mixed reactions. Some users voiced sympathy for owners commemorating pets, while others questioned spending heavily on paper offerings they saw as another way to profit from grief.

A folklorist cited by domestic media said burning joss paper for pets should not be seen as a new folk custom, but rather as a product of contemporary emotional expression and commercial hype.

Separately, a scholar said the practice reflects the emotional role pets now play for some owners and can be seen as a personal choice, as long as it is lawful and does not violate public morals.

(Header image: An AI-powered holographic memorial box for a dog. From Xiaohongshu)