Fitness apps
The closure of gyms across the country has seen exercise addicts turn to fitness apps, with classes being livestreamed.
Mobile fitness community Keep used Douyin to broadcast its classes online, hosting three livestreaming sessions a day. Although the classes are free to view, the Keep instructor asks participants make comments and "like" the broadcasts.
Sun Feifei, an information technology engineer in Beijing, said she followed the classes every day during the Spring Festival holiday. "Exercise is part of my life, no matter what happens. Thanks to the internet, I can watch Keep classes at home during self-quarantine," she said.
On Jan 27, digital fitness and wellness brand Lefit launched a public exercise campaign. In cooperation with short video platforms, including Kuaishou and Douyin, the fitness startup, based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, has uploaded more than 16,000 video clips to instruct people on exercising at home. The clips have been viewed more than 270 million times.
On Jan 30, the General Administration of Sport of China issued a notice, calling on sports departments at all levels to promote "simple and scientific" exercises at home, introduce "fitness knowledge" and advocate healthy lifestyles via television and the internet during the epidemic.
Some leading athletes, including former diving champion Gao Min, swimmer Sun Yang and ultra-marathon runner Chen Penbin have posted videos on social media showing their workout routines and offering advice for those exercising at home.
In her video, Gao said people can "gain strength from sports to overcome the pandemic".
To combat boredom at home, people nationwide are becoming increasingly creative, with videos posted on social media ranging from footage of fishing in an indoor tank to playing ping pong on a dining table.
Cao Qian, a librarian in Yantai, Shandong, used water bottles as quoits to play with her 7-year-old daughter.
"The game had all the family laughing, which I will long remember after all we have gone through," Cao said.
A video on Weibo showed patients with mild symptoms of the virus dancing at a temporary hospital in Wuhan on Feb 10.
Yan Hao, a doctor at the hospital, who is encouraging patients to take part in dancing to relieve their anxiety, said: "Confidence is our 'sunshine'. It is important to help the patients to build their confidence and defeat the disease."
On Tuesday evening, many thousands of people nationwide discovered a novel form of entertainment when the Broom Challenge went viral on Chinese social media platforms. Netizens posted pictures and video footage of brooms standing upright, unaided.
The participants were responding to a rumor that NASA had said that Feb 11 was the only day the standing broom trick would work, because the Earth was at a perfect tilt. They spent many hours making brooms stand up unaided.
Gu Yanfeng, 41, a mother of two in Beijing who posted pictures on WeChat Moments of a broom standing up, said, "I didn't believe it at first, but it really did happen."
NASA later took to social media, stating, "There's no 'special gravity' that only affects brooms, but the moon's gravity creates tides on Earth."
