Hu Tao is the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, a person vital to managing Liyue's funerary affairs. She does her utmost to flawlessly carry out a person's last rites and preserve the world's balance of yin and yang. Aside from this, she is also a talented poet whose many "masterpieces" have passed around Liyue's populace by word of mouth.
In Chinese and Japanese, the two kanji that spell Hu Tao's name have the meaning of "walnut", but Hu is her family name while Tao is her given name. She is the only Liyue character with her family name displayed on the in-game character menu. Japanese fans sometimes accidentally (or deliberately) misspell her name as Kurumi, the Japanese word for "walnut"; however, her name is pronounced Hu Tao even in the Japanese version of the game.
Hu Tao is frequently (in the manner of her official art) accompanied by a ghost with a silly expression. She is sometimes drawn wielding the Staff of Homa, which was added to the game at the same time as she was, and is generally considered the strongest weapon for her.
