The sweat glistens on Jay Chou’s brow as he grasps the microphone, pouring all his energy into an emotional rendition of his legendary ballad, “Blue and White Porcelain.” “I’m crying!” someone writes in the comments. “You were my first love!” writes another. The Chou staring back from the stage is decidedly younger than he looks in his recent Instagram posts, without the stubble and tiredness of a man in his mid-40s.

That’s because this is not the Chou of 2022, but of 2016. As Shanghai’s city-wide lockdown entered its second month in May of 2022, millions of viewers had flooded to Tencent’s TME Live platform, coming together to relive the songs of their youth and the days of offline concerts through this one-off re-screening.

Online concerts had started to become popular even pre-pandemic on the back of viewers flocking to streaming sites. But the pandemic has made them explode into a worldwide trend over the past two years, as wave after wave of restrictions made attending concerts in person uncertain or impossible.

Covid-19 initially hit China’s live performance industry hard, but the mainland’s early lockdown meant the country largely managed to continue offline concerts well into 2021.

Now, however, the rapid spread of new coronavirus strains and the accompanying “dynamic-Zero Covid” policy lead to the number of live performances falling by 25 percent in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the year before.

Just as the pandemic birthed a new wave of Chinese gamers in early 2020, so the number of viewers of online concerts sky-rocketed. Levels reaching 150 million in March 2020 and highs of 190 million by December of the same year, while the re-screening of Chou’s concert alone hit over 100 million views on its release in May.