New | China's latest internet sensation: young man's hand-drawn guide to WeChat for his parents

Teaching ageing parents to use new mobile applications can be time-consuming, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be painful or tedious as a young man from Beijing has demonstrated after creating a nine-page guide to an instant messaging application for his parents.

The handwritten guide book by Zhang Ming, a 26-year-old man who works in Beijing, went viral on China’s online social networking community on Tuesday after his former schoolmate displayed photos of his gift to his parents on its Sina Weibo microblog.

Photos seen on Sina Weibo showed a small notebook with hand-drawn illustrations of the interactive screens of Wechat, a popular mobile messaging application, and a step-by-step guide of the various functions like sending photos, voice messages, and video chat.

Tricky steps needing close attention are highlighted in red while emoticons that illustrate various facial impressions are laid out in vivid colours and treated with a cartoon approach.

The guide book prompted a number of major news outlets to repost the photos on their blog accounts.

Zhang told Chongqing Evening News that he had prepared this pictured booklet hoping that it would help his ageing parents to learn to use Wechat better, so he could more easily communicate with them. They currently live in Shandong province in eastern China, hundred of kilometres from Beijing.

“Since [you] may not be able to master WeChat quickly, just slow down and thumb through this little book. Hopefully it can reassure your anxieties,” wrote Zhang on the booklet’s cover page.