LIFE / FAMILY
Chinese entertain themselves at home under shadow of novel coronavirus
Published: Jan 30, 2020 06:53 PM

A man gathered with his friends on games for celebrating the Spring Festival under the shadow of coronavirus. Photo: Courtesy of Weibo

The unprecedented coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan and many other cities in Central China's Hubei Province made Chinese New Year a bit of boring this year for local residents as well as people playing it safe at home elsewhere around the nation over the holiday. However, it did not stop talented Chinese people from making their lives at home interesting and colorful by posting all kinds of content on short video platforms.

On Chinese short-video platform TikTok, a lot of people posted videos that took "traveling at home" as their theme. The videos feature people waking up from their beds and then "traveling" room to room around their homes from bedroom to living room to bathroom and even huge gardens and swimming pools. Some netizens criticized these videos as vloggers showing off. 

"Through this special Spring Festival, I got to know China has many potential 'Kim Kardashians,'" one netizen joked on TikTok. 

Other Chinese netizens decided to take to TikTok to show how bored they are, shooting themselves counting grains of rice or sunflowers. 

"My daughter and I counted an entire bag of rice over two days. It had a total of 286,678 grains, including 146,320 grains with white hearts, 1,356 grains with chaff and 876 grains of sand," posted netizen Yanzi.

Another video that has gone viral shows two neighbors who live opposite each other enjoying a hearty meal "together" as they sit on their balconies and toast each other a happy Spring Festival. 

For many young people, playing games has been one of the best choices to kill time at home. 

"I communicate with my friends by playing Honor of Kings. We form a team and chat while playing the game," Huang Chen, a local citizen in Wuhan told the Global Times on Thursday. 

"Besides playing the game, watching films is another way I entertain myself," she said.