A screenshot of Cao Yuanyuan’s video, in which two people lead her to the hotel for quarantine. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Taking actions

Although most overseas Chinese students have no alternative other than taking protective measures and studying at home in a foreign country, some are trying in their own way to make a difference.

Wu Peng, a postgraduate student of international corporate law at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, proved that actions, that may be considered small by themselves, can be meaningful to others.

Since March 5, he has been voluntarily updating the COVID-19 line charts under the Twitter feed of the UK's Department of Health and Social Care. He has over 12,000 followers with his daily updates and lucid presentation of the statistics.

"The department publishes the statistics daily," Wu says, in a modest manner. "When I get a Twitter update notification from their account, I will simply input the official data into my already set-up data analysis software. It takes less than five minutes."