As much of the world looks

elsewhere, many of China’s 1.4 billion

people are turning to an ancient form
of humour born from sadness to help
lift themselves up.
 Share on Facebook

In early February, as the novel coronavirus gathered force, it was

impossible to ignore the heartrending news coming out of Wuhan, China. I
was about 945km away in Taiwan, where I started keeping a close eye on
WeChat, the do-everything messaging and social-media app that rules
China.

Among unsettling accounts of people collapsing on the street and bodies

being carried out of apartment blocks, something surprising soon began
appearing on my feed: a deluge of funny homemade videos made by
Chinese men and women, most with an unpolished, do-it-yourself charm.
This, of course, was the first glimpse at what the entire world now knows:
that while many people are fighting for their lives against coronavirus, the
vast majority of us are simply trying to stay sane and find some humour in
the midst of life under lockdown.

No-one faced that paradox earlier

than the Chinese. Yet, while much has
been reported on the many creative
ways that people in other nations are
coping with government-imposed
lockdowns, the narrative from China
has tended to just focus on
the reliability of coronavirus
reporting from the Chinese
government. Lost in this are the many
inspiring ways that China’s 1.4 billion
people are turning to humour in the
midst of pain to help lift their
neighbours’ spirits.

While Italians have been

defiantly belting out arias from their
windows and people from Madrid to
Mumbai have been gathering nightly
on their balconies to applaud
medical workers, the Chinese have
often brought a subtle and sometimes
self-deprecatory sensibility to their
creative expressions.