Lu Youqing had made a date with death, publicly on a Shanghai website and then repeatedly over the last months of his life in open letters to his "web friends". When he died from cancer on December 11 - the notice appeared first on the site - hundreds of readers posted messages, mostly in sorrow but some in hope. "It is you who have cured us of diseases ..." wrote one. "In today's world, your diary is like a breath of refreshing wind."
Lu's self-revealing letters, which were published in book form shortly before he died, have established a new standard for honesty in a society where reticence and considerations of face inhibit frank discussion of illness and death.
Lu, 37, was a former journalist with a degree in Chinese literature who, like many young intellectuals in the new era of "economic reform", went into business. He leaves behind his wife and 10-year-old daughter. His story, which was reported on China's main television stations and newspapers, and discussed on many other websites, has also focused attention on the rising incidence of cancer in China and the paucity of adequate treatment.
Most of Lu's last thoughts were gentle memories of happier times and wry reflections about the attention he was attracting. But he had harsh comments to make about overcrowded wards in which a bribe is often the only way to get quick treatment. He described the grim plight of "the cancer patient from outside the city, living in a small hotel beside the Shanghai tumour hospital, taking all the family savings with him and waiting for a sick bed and operation".
He also noted how Chinese society still ostracises those who are marked by misfortune. "From the moment you pick up a lab report stating that the doctor has diagnosed cancerous cells," Lu wrote, "life starts to get tough. If you're an official your career will stop dead, the personnel department will start looking for your successor and people will start positioning themselves to replace you ... If you're a business man, your credit will suddenly be devalued ... If you're a student you may give up your studies."
The medical authorities say that cancerous tumour cases are rising sharply. Not surprisingly in a country with high tobacco consumption, lung cancer remains the commonest form: the death rate from it is the highest of any developing country.
This year a national conference on tumour prevention was told that cancer now causes one out of every five deaths in China. Annual cancer-related deaths now total 1.3m a year. Advocates of healthy eating in the west have held out China as a model society with a high consumption of naturally unrefined plant food and a low consumption of animal protein. Both were thought to explain the country's low rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease. But Chinese specialists say that changes towards a less healthy diet and a less active lifestyle - the consequence of economic improvements in the past 20 years - have raised rates of the two degenerative illnesses dramatically.
Stomach cancer has always been an exception with far higher rates recorded in China than in the West. This has often been blamed upon the widespread reliance on fermented and salted preserved vegetables in rural areas.
Lu decided to keep and publish a diary both as a way of confronting death and to leave behind a memorial for his wife and daughter. After five years of cancer treatment, including two operations, a malignant tumour appeared on Lu's neck which grew rapidly. In February he was told he had only three months left to live: he decided to give up taking medicine and start writing instead. "People should choose their own way ..." he wrote. "This is my way of defying death and keeping my dignity."
He neither dwelt on his illness nor avoided it, but wove it naturally into the narrative. When the tumour on his neck bled, he recorded the event calmly, noting that it seemed to cause him difficulty in breathing. "Blood and oxygen which healthy people take for granted," he noted, "are matters of life and death for the sick.
"But enough of that, I don't want to send my spirits down like the falling Shanghai stock exchange. That is why I prefer to write in my diary about tranquil scenes."
Hundreds wrote on the bulletin board of rongshu.com where extracts from Lu's diary were published for three months until he was too ill to continue. Most applauded his courage and some came from fellow sufferers. Several appealed for help on behalf of other incurable patients. He was delighted to see a copy of the book several weeks before he died, commenting that he had "snatched it from death". It was instantly pirated although his wife, Shi Muyan, did not tell him in case it would "break his heart".
Messages flooded in when his death was announced on the site; they showed that Lu had touched many people's lives. "Mr Lu, you will always be in our hearts," wrote one, "but we should remember how many unfortunate people without names are still alive."
"Those who do not honour death cannot understand the meaning of existence," wrote another.
A small number of critical voices also wrote to the site while Lu was alive. Some accused him of seeking fame, others of dramatising his illness. "One day your child would like to read a unpublished diary by you, rather than this book published so neatly - if it can be called a book," wrote one of the most wounding. After he died, a message appeared criticising Lu's literary style and advising him to "go peacefully without making such a stupid noise". Infuriated supporters quickly rallied to denounce the anonymous carper - who had not even seen the notice of Lu's death.
Lu and Shi impressed all who came to know them with their dignity and humour. As the tumours grew, he would dictate his diary entries which she then transcribed. Later she posted her own bulletins. "This morning he could hardly swallow so we fed him some congee," she reported. "After lying on the sofa he went back to bed but I could tell he really didn't want to."
She continued to record her husband's thoughts on life and death when he became to ill to compose. "Human existence is splendid because it has an end," he told a visitor not long before he died. His website obituary began with this quotation and concluded with another remark he had made at the start of the diary. "Others may think that death is an important affair, but for me it has already lost its meaning."
