After a spate of body image photos became viral on Weibo, featuring women covering their body parts with an iPhone or white paper, it’s the turn on Nanjing University students to get the spotlight.
Liu Ke, an undergraduate student at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics, invited 20 of his classmates to participate in a video experiment which involves kissing a stranger on the lips while blindfolded. He began the video, aptly titled “Hello Stranger,” with an interview with the participants what they think of the experiment, why they agreed to take part and their kissing experience.
He then posted the video, which had become viral on Tencent, reported Shanghaiist.
More than just get views, the video elicited comments. Some Chinese netizens gave their thumbs up to Liu’s project because it is a lesson on building trust between strangers. Being blindfolded, the students showed they not only trusted who would be their kissing partners even if they do not know who they are kissing, and also trust that Liu would not give them a yucky partner.
Kissing partners were not all between male and female students. There were also between male and male, and female and female, and the photos that Liu posted showed his classmates gamely cooperating with the experiment.
But the netizens’ reactions were another matter. One admitted being confused by the experiment as a Weibo user asked “Why do we need to build trust by kissing strangers? Isn’t kissing supposed to be something you should do with people you like?”
Another user suggested holding hands and saying “Hello” would be sufficient, while one commenter dismissed the whole group as a bunch of “dumbass students trying to get famous online.”
Reacting to the video, Liu Fuliang, who teaches at the university, said, “I felt it’s going to far,” quoted CCT America. Liu explained that human relations should correspond to their behaviors. For him, during first meeting, a handshake is enough. Among acquaintances, a hug is desirable, but the kiss should only be for people in intimate relationship.
Liu Ke admitted he got the idea from foreign videos.