A ‘Big White’ bunny dance for morale-boosting fires up China’s internet amid Covid battle and spotlights PPE-wearing heroes
- China’s fight against Covid-19 supported by selfless volunteers who wear white hazmat suits
- They often come from all walks of life, and some travel from across the country to help at hotspots
Over two years into the global Covid-19 pandemic, legions of heroes have emerged worldwide, and, in mainland China, they feature one characteristic unique to our times: nobody knows what they look like.
These workers, including a considerable number of unpaid volunteers, are nicknamed the “Big Whites”, which is also the moniker of the chubby and inflatable robot Baymax, a warm and supportive protagonist in the 2014 film Big Hero 6.
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Rabbit dance goes viral as Chinese Covid-19 volunteers work around the clock amid a new surge
One viral video from early January featured a group of these volunteers dancing and hopping like bunnies to the cheery tune “Penguin’s Game” in a freezing winter morning in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province in northwest China that was under a lockdown between December 22, 2021, and January 24, 2022.