Foreign blogger in Tianjin garners worldwide support against virus

Renowned foreign beauty blogger Alla from Belarus, who lives in Tianjin's Binhai New Area, made a video to encourage foreigners to support China in combating the coronavirus outbreak.

She welcomed foreigners to join her video campaign to say "China, jiayou!" meaning "Stay strong, China."

The video was first broadcast on her personal blog on Weibo and Douyin, two leading social media platforms in China, and soon gained widespread support around the world since Monday.

Her proposal was supported by friends from France, Poland, Israel, the United States, Ukraine, Belarus and the United Arab Emirates.

Alla is a beauty blogger and has 3 million fans on Douyin and 500,000 on Weibo. She came to China five years ago.

After noticing the booming e-commerce business a year and a half ago, she started an online blog on beauty and cosmetics.

The blogger prefers not to release her full name.

She said on her blog and some local WeChat accounts, including the account for the street where she lives: "Dear friends! Due to the situation in China, I want to make a video to support Chinese citizens. In the video, just need to say few words : "China, jiayou (Stay strong, China)!"

"In this video I want to show that all over the world people are concerned about the virus and we support (the people of China). If you have friends abroad, please, record a short video located outside or near some building (it should be understandable where are you from). Please send me your video, I will edit the video myself! Thank you so much for cooperation!"

Her efforts were supported by 338 expats living on the street with her among the local expats' WeChat group, according to Du Peng, a community worker of Teda Street.

He said he will help her gain more support outside the community, so he contacted China Daily.

Alla said she will continue boosting the video to build up more support and add more content with the slogan "China, jiayou!"

She said she has strong confidence in Tianjin and the Chinese people's efforts in surmounting challenges, due to her five-year working experience in the country.

"I made the video not because I want be famous on Douyin. I don't even show myself in this video. The most important thing is to show our care for Chinese people," she told China Daily. "Because I have 3 million fans, I can use my page to show it for people. That's all the benefit I'm aiming to find from this. I will be happy if some people will follow me and watch my art videos, of course. But this is not number one. Now there are more important things."