Zhang Yang

    nicolezyyy@163.com

    A WECHAT post about a 5-year-old girl in Shenzhen suffering from leukemia went viral over the past few days, causing the donation function of the official WeChat account where the story was posted to crash after an excessive number of readers donated money for the girl.

    Luo Yixiao was diagnosed with leukemia Sept. 8 at Shenzhen Children’s Hospital. Her father Luo Er, who has received no pay since the magazine he worked for closed down in January, started posting stories about his daughter’s fight against leukemia on a WeChat account he created in September.

    “Many readers donated money to me after reading my articles on WeChat. The donations reached 32,800 yuan (US$4,754) as of Sept. 21,” Luo wrote in the latest article posted on his WeChat account yesterday morning.

    After two months of medical treatment, Luo was delighted to see his daughter’s condition was getting under control.

    Luo said that as a Christian he decided to donate 30,000 yuan to 10 other children with leukemia, but his decision met with objections by people who had made donations to him because they wanted him to spend the money on his daughter’s treatment. “Because of people’s objections, I stopped giving out the money after I donated 12,000 yuan to four children,” he said.

    A cruel twist of fate occurred Nov. 20 when Yixiao got a severe infection and was transferred to an ICU.

    “The medical costs multiplied as my daughter’s condition got worse, and I panicked for the first time,” Luo said.

    Luo’s friend, Liu Xiafeng, founder of a Shenzhen-based online financing company, offered a solution to him. Liu posted an article on the company’s official WeChat account Sunday after rearranging several articles written by Luo about his daughter.

    Liu promised that his company would donate 1 yuan to the girl each time a reader reposted the article on WeChat, while readers could also donate money and the donations would go directly to Luo.

    The post triggered a butterfly effect on WeChat and the donations reached 50,000 yuan — the daily donation limit for a WeChat post — within five hours. After midnight when the donation function was available again, donations hit another 50,000 yuan again within two hours, leading to the shutdown of the account’s donation function for a week.

    The article has over 1 million views and the number continues to grow, according to Luo.

    Meanwhile, Luo’s official WeChat account has also received 50,000 yuan in donations each day for two consecutive days and the account’s donation function was suspended as well.

    “Many readers added my personal WeChat account and transferred money to me, but as too many new friends have transferred money to me, WeChat has stopped me from adding new friends,” Luo said.

    In an interview with local media, Luo said that the donations were enough to cover his daughter’s medical costs for now, and he didn’t want to take too much of the social resources.

    In his latest post, Luo said that he was overwhelmed when the number of his WeChat followers suddenly soared from 2,000 to over 40,000. He didn’t even have time to check every message and donation left by his readers.

    “There are so many messages that I haven’t read, so much kindness I haven’t repaid and so much money I haven’t counted,” Luo said. “All I can do now is write this article to show my gratitude for the great love offered to us by the public.”