Wuhan cherry blossoms live stream launched amid coronavirus lockdown
- Decision to broadcast pictures from university campus meets with mixed feelings from residents who have lived with coronavirus restrictions for almost two months
- Annual blaze of colour across Hubei’s capital city is latest casualty of controls on movement across China
Chinese state media outlets are live streaming the famed cherry blossoms at Wuhan University for an internet audience, as the city where the coronavirus was first reported remains locked down and closed to visitors.
Xinhua News, the People’s Daily, and other mainstream media have put cameras at scenic spots around the campus, and the live video feed has had millions of hits since it started on Monday. It will be broadcast for 10 days between 10am and 4pm.
Wuhan University also posted the video link to its page on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging site, with the message: “Today, I will show you the cherry blossoms of cherry road.”
Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and the epicentre of Covid-19 outbreak that started in December, has been locked down for almost two months.
So far, more than 2,400 people in the city have died after contracting the disease and at least 50,004 have been infected.
Before the outbreak, Wuhan was a tourist spot known for its breakfast culture, hot dry noodles, and its spring blossoms.
Wuhan University is renowned for its cherry trees, which attract large crowds of visitors when they blossom in the spring. In the late 1930s, the occupying Japanese army planted the first batch of cherry blossom trees, and today there are more than 1,000 on campus.