Lin Dihuan's cartoons locate and disseminate amusement in life's challenges and even tragedies in ways that resonate with audiences, Wang Ru reports.

It wasn't a comical situation per se. But the comics still brought joy. "Let's eat hot-and-dry noodles together," reads the caption of one, depicting two people sharing the snack that has long remained an icon of Hubei's provincial capital, Wuhan, which was the hardest-hit city in China during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Lin Dihuan, a 45-year-old teacher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong province's capital, Guangzhou, sketched the cartoon.

He isn't a pro artist. But he's wildly popular online as a painter, photographer, calligrapher and author.

He sent 119 of his comics to the Dongxihu Keting makeshift hospital in February at the request of his fan Huang Xinwu, a nurse from Guangdong who went to Wuhan with a medical team.