This study investigates cancer patients’ discursive construction of hope in an online support group on Douban and explores patients’ understandings of life/death. Theme-oriented discourse analysis of patients’ online posts shows that they constructed five types of hope, namely, 1) desire for life; 2) normal life trajectory; 3) let cancer take its course; 4) interpersonal connection; 5) reduce family burden. Most cancer patients still held expectations of a better health, and they oscillated between accepting the incurability of cancer and expecting a survival. Such contradiction is common in patients’ online posts. At the broader level of understandings of life/death, the construction of hope in cancer patients is largely influenced by the discourse habitus of “talking about life but not death” in traditional Chinese culture, whereby individuals are largely reluctant to publicly discuss their own death and dying. However, some patients’ rejection of aggressive cancer treatments and their preference for palliative care suggest that there is a room for dialogue between new understanding of life/death and the traditional discourse habitus in China. Based on the results of discourse analysis, the study provides practical implications for psychosocial support for cancer patients.