Wang Xin, an 87-year-old musician, plays violin for Liu Kai, a medical worker from Shanghai who tended him during the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan. [Photo provided to China Daily]

On her fifth day in the stadium, she recalls, the sun finally came out, and she was informed that her family members were not infected. Li said she felt so relived, and so she decided to draw to kill the time.

With a notebook and a gel pen, Li began to create cartoon characters of the doctors and nurses who roamed the wards to take patients' temperatures, conduct blood tests, distribute prescribed drugs and provide meals.

The medical staff, in their full white protective clothing, reminded her of Baymax, the fictional superhero that appears in the 2014 Disney animated film Big Hero 6.

"They buzzed around giving us meticulous care, in real life they are all Baymax, sent to protect us and bring us strength," she says.

As well as treating their physical illness, they also acted as psychological therapists to give patients mental support, she adds.

In Li's illustrations, readers can see medical staff leading patients in dance routines to keep their spirits up, doctors spending hours comforting anxious patients, as well as a patient performing sketch comedy to cheer up his wife, a cancer sufferer who had contracted COVID-19.

After being discharged from the hospital and undergoing a 14-day quarantine, Li returned home.

With professional equipment, she continued her paintings－and repainted some of her previous ones－with materials provided by friends and internet users.

While creating the drawings, Li also wrote down the stories behind them and shared her feelings of the people depicted.