Senior citizens play starring role

Most of his videos show him carving a square chunk of wood with a chisel and a small sander, creating the likenesses of famous characters from animation, comic books and video games.

In his bio, he writes: "I am Lu Zhengyi. I'm twenty-seven years of age, a young wood artisan." This is, in fact, a joke. He was actually 72 when he wrote that last year, and 27 is the age when he first started wood carving.

He is affectionately called xiaolu by his fans, meaning "little Lu". The term of endearment was first given to him by his cameraman, known as Awei. Lu accepted it with pleasure.

Lu is a craftsman who lives in Xianyou county, Fujian province, a place with a tradition of making classic furniture.

Initially a photographer working with Lu's son, Awei thought it would be a good idea to combine traditional craft with the anime culture adored by young people, so he approached Lu and showed him pictures of some of the genre's famous animated characters.

Lu was keen to try his hand at carving something new for a change. Awei then recorded Lu's process and uploaded the video on Bilibili. It quickly became a hit.

"I did not expect that young people would like wood carving. In the town in which I live, it's very rare for people under 30 to learn the craft or to even buy a wooden sculpture," Lu says.

"I'm very happy to be on Bilibili, because I get to know so many young people. Now whenever I have free time, I check the comments of my videos. It enriches my life a lot."

According to The 46th China Statistical Report on Internet Development released by China Internet Network Information Center in September, 2020, as of June, 2020, the proportion of internet users aged 50 and above had increased to 22.8 percent, indicating that the internet is further permeating the middle and senior age groups.

Internet users aged 60 and above account for 10.3 percent. The report shows that, by last June, there were a total of 940 million internet users in China. Consequently, approximately 96.8 million people over the age of 60 are now using the internet.

They are not only making use of basic functions, but showing skillful manipulation of the internet's many forms, as 99.2 percent of internet users are using their mobile phone to access online services and users over 60 have installed an average of 44 mobile applications on their devices.

The most frequently used mobile application categories are instant messaging apps, which account for 13.7 percent of total user time, while the second to sixth most frequently used are varied categories of video and music streaming apps, including short video and live streaming apps.

Sharing videos on social networking sites is now a form of entertainment for retirees. One of them, 60-year-old Tong Xueqin, started shooting videos and uploading them to short video sharing platform Douyin last August.

It has become an everyday routine for her to upload short videos of her dancing or singing, sometimes posting twice in a day.