In the midst of the stressful period of fighting against the novel coronavirus epidemic, a cartoon named "Fighting! Hot Dry Noodles" drawn by a female painter from North China's Tianjin Municipality has moved countless netizens across the country. 

In the cartoon, "hot dry noodles," a specialty in Wuhan, is a representation of the city as sick and quarantined in a ward. Another "hot dry noodles" wearing protective equipment represents a medical worker. Outside the ward, many specialty foods in other areas of China that represent the corresponding provinces and cities encourage the sick "hot dry noodles" to fight on. The cartoon was liked and re-posted by many netizens and media.

On the painter's Sina Weibo account "Chen Xiaotao momo," it had received 270,000 likes and nearly 20, 000 comments as of February 1.

Chen Yuting, the drawer of the cartoon, was born in Tianjin in 1994. Chen graduated from Beijing Normal University with a master's degree in 2019, and is now an independent illustrator.

Chen said she was inspired by the topic "using hometown food to encourage Wuhan's hot dry noodles" launched by the Weibo account of People's Daily.

"I used different specialty foods to represent different areas. For example, jianbing guozi (deep-fried dough sticks rolled in a thin pancake) represents Tianjin Municipality; pancake rolling scallions represents Shandong Province; hotpot represents Sichuan Province; and stinky tofu represents Hunan Province," Chen said.

"And you can see other foods are also injured, but they are united and encourage Wuhan together," she added.

Chen hopes that the epidemic will be eradicated soon and everything will be fine. "What I want to draw most is when 'hot dry noodles' recover and leave the hospital — all foods across the country will welcome its coming back. I will draw it when that day comes," said Chen confidently.

(Source: Tianjin Women's Federation and China Tianjin Radio and TV Station/Translated and edited by Women of China)