Life, love, legal docs: When young Chinese write their wills

BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A 24-year-old postgraduate student from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen recently made a will -- a document long associated with the elderly.

"I finally did something I truly wanted to do," said the young man, surnamed He. "It wasn't an impulse, nor was it pessimism. It was about locking in certainty for the uncertainties ahead."

This thoughtful move challenges a generations-old Chinese tradition of avoiding any talk of death, never mind end-of-life planning by the young.

He embodies a quiet shift that is reshaping China's younger generation. According to a 2024 white paper issued by the China Will Registration Center, the number of under-30s registering wills has surged twelvefold in just seven years. The youngest registrant? A mere 17 years old.

The shift runs deeper than numbers. Where wills once revolved around property and savings, today's young testators are crafting some "new packages" -- modern portfolios that include digital assets, pet trusts and intricate insurance plans. One Gen-Z girl, in her will, even requested that her ashes be compressed into a 0.3-carat blue diamond and entrusted to her bestie.

Chen Kai, director of the will repository project office at the China Ageing Development Foundation, noted that the young generation has grown up in an era of great uncertainty. They witnessed sudden disasters and endured the life-and-death trials of a pandemic, grasping the fragility of life more keenly than any generation before them.

For many young Chinese, writing a will is no longer about bracing for death -- it's about reclaiming a sense of control in an unpredictable world. The act marks a quiet but profound shift from passive acceptance to active planning, a way to script life's final chapter since its length remains uncertain.

The motivations are as varied as the individuals themselves. For some, like He, the decision took shape after witnessing a classmate's family crisis. His six-month journey to draft a will involved painstaking research into legal procedures and institutions, followed by thoughtful conversations with his parents. The final document assigns his bank accounts to his parents, sets aside a portion for charity, authorizes organ donation, and directs that his remains be used for medical research.

For others, a will has become an unexpected expression of love and responsibility. A 30-year-old husband, surnamed Shao, and his 26-year-old wife, surnamed Xu, drew up their wills just 10 days after getting married. Both had been married before, and Shao has a daughter from his first marriage.

Their reciprocal wills guarantee mutual inheritance, with Shao's share ultimately passing to his mother-in-law. This decision was made, in Shao's words, because his own parents are financially secure, while Xu's mother raised her on her own and has lived a relatively tough life.

"Making a will isn't unlucky," Shao said. He likened it to buying insurance for their marriage, a tangible way to take responsibility. To him, a good marriage isn't defined by words of love, but by the foresight to plan every possible retreat for one's beloved partner.

Sometimes, the emotional dimension of will-making unfolds as a journey of self-discovery. For a 28-year-old lady surnamed Huang, that journey began the moment she started drafting her own.

Raised by her grandparents, Huang found herself revisiting scenes from her childhood as she planned her will -- her grandmother rising before dawn to cook, her grandfather tucking her cold hands into his coat pockets on winter walks, their quiet sacrifices that made her education possible. "Making a will isn't an ending," she said. "It's like putting insurance on my wish to protect the people who raised me."

Chen Kai sees this reflective quality as central to the trend's significance. He noted that, for young people, making a will serves as a form of profound life education. By contemplating "what if I weren't here," they are compelled to confront fundamental questions about what they value most. This meditation on mortality, he said, gives their present lives a clearer sense of direction and meaning.

For many participants, the process brings an unexpected sense of peace. He said he used to believe in simply dealing with things as they came. But after everything was arranged correctly, he now feels able to focus more on his studies and spend time with his parents. "It's not about pessimistic preparation -- it's about letting my life continue in another way, which actually makes me feel more at ease."

Shao expressed similar relief, saying that after formally signing the will, he felt as though a weight had been lifted, and he could now focus entirely on building their life together.

In Chen's view, the phenomenon signals social progress rather than something to worry about. The shift from shunning conversations about death to confronting them openly, he said, helps people clarify their priorities -- and live with greater intention.

"These documents are more than legal paperwork," he said. "They're love letters to life itself, at once a calm acceptance of its uncertainty and a passionate embrace of its possibilities." ■