Coronavirus: TikTok user gains fame as videos of life in Wuhan amid lockdown go viral
- The TikTok videos generated an average of about 50,000 views each, amassing 17,200 followers and 155,000 likes
- His plan now is to go back to his ‘normal life’ in Sydney, where he works as a property agent
Masked and all packed, 21-year-old Daniel Ou Yang waited anxiously at Wuhan Airport for his repatriation flight, hoping to escape living under an indefinite lockdown in the city at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.
The Post spoke to him last week, just minutes before boarding the Air New Zealand charter flight, about life under lockdown and how he serendipitously became a TikTok user, posting virus-related video clips that have since gone viral, garnering more than 152,000 likes in total.
Every Lunar New Year, Ou Yang visits Hubei province to see his father and grandparents and this year was no exception. “I left Sydney on January 12, made a brief stopover in Guangzhou, and arrived in Wuhan on the 14th and have remained there since [before flying home at 1am on February 5],” said the Wuhan-born, Australian property agent turned-TikTok star.
While he was aware of what happened with Sars in the early 2000s and realised a new pneumonia-like virus was spreading, Ou Yang is a fit and healthy 21-year-old, so he was not worried – until he woke up to the news that around 56 million citizens in Wuhan and surrounding cities were now under lockdown.
“I had no idea of its severity until the morning of the lockdown [on January 23] when my aunt told me,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean?” he remembers asking her. “All public transport, the airport, everything in the city is closed down,” she responded.