Cardboard dogs, crawling, crazy talk: Discover the bizarre methods locked-down students use to ease anxiety
After weeks of growing anxiety amid slowly tightening Covid-19 restrictions in her university and with her midterm exams approaching, Liang Zhaohui (who wished to use a pseudonym for this piece) decided on a novel way to reduce her stress. One night earlier this month, Liang, a third-year finance major at the Univeristy of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing, gathered some friends in her dormitory and began crafting a canine companion out of cardboard boxes.
Over five hours, finishing at 4 a.m., Liang and her roommates followed instructions they found on social media platform Xiaohongshu to create a suave-looking Doberman pinscher in sunglasses who now sits loyally outside Liang’s room. “Before, you could say I was very depressed. My midterm exams were coming up, I had lots of deadlines, the Covid restrictions kept ramping up,” Liang tells TWOC. “We made a huge racket as we finished [the dog], and we all felt proud…Now every day I’m happy to see the dog at the door.”
Wang Jiawei is a contributing writer at The World of Chinese. He is deeply passionate about multimedia storytelling and sees the fate of ordinary people in grand narratives.
