A robot arm helps pack components in a traditional manufacturing facility in Taicang, East China's Jiangsu Province. Photo: cnsphotos

More than 8 million netizens watched a live webcast of robots sorting packages at 3 am in the morning on China's largest short-video platform Douyin, media reported. 

The live feed was broadcast during the annual shopping festival, with its audience possibly waiting anxiously through computer screens for their packages to arrive.

The live webcast was launched on Sunday shortly after the Double 11 shopping festival kicked off. 

It broadcast the logistics scene throughout the day, allowing netizens to observe the delivery status of their packages in real time.

It received over 10 million views as of press time. 

The midnight view on the page came to over 8 million, most of whom were probably consumers too anxious about their package to go to sleep, Qilu Evening News reported on Tuesday. 

Netizens enjoyed the live webcast while chatting with others, and were particularly taken by a robot code-named "199" that was found to be idling around on many occasions.

"Has it been starving? It seems a lot lazier than the others," one netizen commented.

Another one wrote, "One package has been left out, could that be mine?" 

A similar situation occurred in January 2020 during the COVID-19, when tens of millions of netizens watched the live feed of the construction of Huoshenshan Hospital in the hard-hit city of Wuhan.

Global Times