Fighting novel coronavirus online

Chinese youth are sending their love, concern and care to Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus by means of filming videos and displaying them online, becoming an irreplaceable force in the national battle against the epidemic.

Lin Chen, 30, is a user of online entertainment platform Bilibili. Recently, he uploaded two video clips about the situation in Wuhan, which is temporarily closed off from the outside world to curb the spread of the virus. The two videos have been watched by more than 20 million viewers, receiving tens of thousands of supportive "danmu," one form of emoji stickers that fly across the screen on video-sharing platforms when viewers want to express their feelings.

Photo shows the screenshot of a video about Wuhan in the days following its quarantine closer (Photo/Xinhua)

After Wuhan was closed off for quarantine purposes, Lin, a video maker based in the city, took to the streets to record the real situation there with his camera and drone.

“In the first few days after Wuhan was closed off, a lot of people didn’t know what was going on as there were not enough video materials reporting the situation, so I filmed some videos, hoping to present the actual situation in Wuhan so that people outside the city could have a look and know,” Lin explained.

He said some people had doubted his motivation, adding that what supported him to persist in producing videos was that he wanted to be among the people who stay on their posts and make contributions to the city.

Zhou Ziyi is an influencer on Kuaishou, a short-video and live-streaming platform, who currently lives in Wuhan. He filmed a series of videos, such as Wuhan residents going out to buy vegetables on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year 2020, and Wuhan at night. The videos were watched by several million people.

A screenshot of a video filmed by Zhou Ziyi about Wuhan residents buying vegetables on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year 2020. (Photo/Xinhua)

Zhou went to a supermarket on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, where he saw adequate supplies of meat provided by the government and vegetables from Chongqing, which were all properly priced.

“I was touched seeing that my city is not isolated, but rather surrounded by warmth and care from our country. Then I recorded the moments to tell more people that with the love and care, us Wuhan residents will overcome any difficulty,” Zhou said.

Thomas Derksen is the son-in-law of a Chinese family and has been in China for many years. After the outbreak of the new coronavirus, he immediately interviewed top German virus expert Rolf Hilgenfeld upon the latter’s arrival in China and released the video on Bilibili.

Screenshot of a video of top German virus expert Rolf Hilgenfeld’s interview with Thomas Derksen, a foreigner living in China (Photo/Xinhua)

In the video, the German virus expert said he was full of confidence that China will win the battle against the new coronavirus. The expert came to Beijing and helped China fight SARS in 2003. Now, he, who is about to retire, came to China again to help curb the novel coronavirus.

For non-professionals, it’s difficult to make the video, especially to translate it into Chinese and added subtitles to it, Derksen said. The video contains a lot of medical terminologies, so he had to be very meticulous while translating it. After the work was done, he and his families proofread the content more than 20 times before releasing it. “I hope it could deepen people’s understanding of the virus,” he said.

“What I did was insignificant compared with people on the frontline of the battle against the virus. I’m just a citizen who wants to contribute as much as he could,” Derksen said.

While serving as a useful platform for users in fighting against the novel coronavirus online, the short-video platforms have been promoting publicity videos on epidemic prevention and control in a prominent place on their home pages. Kuaishou has offered guidance to users on how to make short videos, drives traffic to videos related to the novel coronavirus, and distributes the videos to target viewers.