And while Weiguang allowed them to enjoy a movie together, the experience paled in comparison to a real movie date, Liu said: “The cinema has a bigger screen and better environment, and we can hold hands.”

Love in the time of coronavirus: outbreak hits valentines, and businesses

Although it originated in the West, Valentine's Day is widely celebrated in China, where couples traditionally give flowers and chocolate as gifts to each other and celebrate the occasion with movie dates or candlelit dinners on February 14 each year.

On Friday, the top trending hashtag on Chinese social media platform Weibo was #Valentine'sDay, with more than 12 million posts gathering over 5.5 billion views. Creative ideas for long-distance romance that users shared included video calling each other during dinner, sending gifts of digital money, singing sessions on popular karaoke app Quanmin K Ge, and even flying drones to greet each other.

Kevin Lin, a 21-year-old from Wenzhou city in Zhejiang province, had to cancel plans to join his girlfriend in Hangzhou – where they both study – for shopping and a candlelit dinner together on Friday as the situation worsened and their school semester was postponed. Instead, the couple had a virtual “double date” with friends on Honour of Kings, another popular Tencent game where two teams of five players each fight against each other.

“Four of us plus another random player formed a team,” Lin said. “When we were playing the game, we talked on the phone about the strategy. It's a lot of fun.”

Instead of chocolates or flowers, Lin spent 131.4 yuan (US$18) – a figure popular among lovers for sounding like a saying meaning “forever” in Chinese – to buy Valentine's Day costumes for Chang'e and Hou Yi, two characters in the game and also a famous couple from a Chinese folk tale.

Other couples got creative with their Valentine’s Day gifts, ordering them online in advance so they would reach their loved ones on time. In the three days before the occasion, searches for masks, goggles and antiseptic cotton on delivery app Meituan Dianping tripled from the week before, the platform said, adding that there were “quite a few” requests for orders to go with loving messages.

The more conventional gift of chocolate remained popular, though, albeit people were ordering it online rather than buying the sweet treat in stores to hand to their partners in person. Chocolate sales on JD.com's local delivery affiliate Dada-JD Daojia soared seven-fold from a year before between last Saturday and Tuesday, the site said.

Pornhub, the world's largest adult video website which is officially blocked in China but can be accessed through virtual private networks, also did not miss the opportunity to appeal to those stuck spending the day at home in China. On Friday, its homepage featured a special offer in Chinese – free access to premium content this Valentine’s Day.

Additional reporting by Minghe Hu