China coronavirus: new craze sees Shanghai residents pay amateur African actors to dance in videos and send well wishes to others in lockdown

These videos used to be for birthdays, but Shanghai has repurposed them as morale-boosting messages and a way to vent their lockdown frustration

The sudden demand from Shanghai has left video makers struggling to keep up; some are producing up to 200 videos a day to meet demand

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Video clips of African dancing well-wishers provide joy and much-needed relief for residents during the continuing Shanghai Covid lockdown. Photo: Tiktok

Published: 6:03pm, 18 Apr 2022Updated: 5:56am, 19 Apr 2022

Residents trapped by Shanghai’s weeks-long coronavirus lockdown are joining a new trend of hiring online agents to create tailor-made videos of dancing African actors offering well-wishes and uplifting messages to their neighbours locked down in the same compound.

Most of the city’s 25 million residents are still under a strict lockdown. Some have been quarantined at home for more than a month.

In the past week, a new fad where people pay to receive video well-wishes has become popular among residents. The videos feature foreigners — most of whom are Africans — sending messages in “poor Chinese” while performing simple dances and saying they hope that Shanghai’s lockdown will end soon and residents’ lives will return to normal.

Many of the videos feature African men, who are often topless and show off their muscles by flexing, as well as children, while some feature Caucasian women, believed to be from Russia or Ukraine.

Participants in the videos are primarily amateur actors from Africa, are often shirtless, and dance and sing and while speaking positive messages to Shanghai residents who purchase the videos. Photo: TikTok

The dancers in the videos hold up a blackboard with Chinese characters for specific residential complexes’ names and messages of support. The actors will follow a Chinese man who reads the blessing messages aloud in Mandarin.