'Dad Is Just Going on a Trip': A Daughter's Final Lesson From Her Most Clear-Minded Father

In a funeral home, staff showed Dong Sanbai sample elegy couplets: "Diligent and hardworking," "A life of devotion," "Frugal and modest."

Eighty to ninety percent of families choose these, they told her.

Dong said no. None of them fit her father.

The two lines she finally chose: "A life chasing wind and moon. A departure wandering into clouds."

That was Dong Chaoming – a man who believed life was for experiencing, not for suffering. He believed hardship wasn't something to praise.

The video that went viral

In October 2025, Dong Sanbai posted a video online. In it, her father – just told his cancer had spread and he had three to six months left – spoke calmly to the camera.

"I hope you won't be too sad," he said. "Dad leaving is normal. Just think of it as me going on a trip."

He described the pain to come. The weight loss. Everything.

Dong recalled that her father didn't care whether she was ready to hear it. "He wanted to desensitize me to his death," she said.

The video went viral. Media called him "Shanghai's most clear-minded dad."

No regrets

Dong Chaoming was 67 when he died on Feb 5, 2026. Four months earlier, he had calmly told his daughter: "Three to six months."

He never wanted aggressive treatment. At 40, he had already told her: no intubation, no heroic measures. "Live well. Die quickly."

When the end came, Dong Sanbai followed his rules. No ICU. No beeping monitors – he hated the sound. Just a finger clip to track his pulse.

In his final days, he could barely eat or drink. He survived on IV fluids. The pain grew so bad he needed morphine. One shot. Then another. Then no more allowed.

At 3am, Dong Sanbai felt her father's pulse fade. First the wrist. Then the neck.

"He decided everything himself," she said. "The treatments. No intubation. What to wear. Where to be buried. I just followed."

That, she says, is why she has no unfinished regrets.

A life of experience

Dong Chaoming grew up poor. In his twenties, he worked in a factory while teaching himself Japanese – sleeping three or four hours a night, wearing out two Japanese-Chinese dictionaries. He got into Shanghai International Studies University.

He worked abroad, started businesses, built his worldview through travel. At 35, he started a clothing company. His daughter was born soon after.

At 45, he felt financially free – not rich, just free – sold his shares, and retired. He spent 20 years traveling, fishing, taking photos, cooking. He made the family's shepherd's purse wontons, the springtime yanduxian soup.

Then came the cancer.

A pocket of flowers

Her father loved narcissus flowers. Every winter when she was young, he grew them on the balcony.

Near the end, a friend brought a pot to the hospital. Dong Sanbai kept it in an empty room.

The day her father died, the flowers bloomed.

She cut a few stems and slipped them into his pocket.

"That late fragrance," she said, "could accompany him on his final journey."