I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is a Sunday story.

In the fall of 2022 there was a viral video of a man playing the piano in Wuhan, China.

The man is at an intersection,

his back to traffic in a busy part of town.

He faces these tall metal barriers that have been erected to block

the entrance to a commercial street. It's an upright piano, black, and he plays just one song.

A song by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. The title track to an old movie called

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

This was a title called Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

This was a time when China was experiencing this rise in COVID cases. John Ruich is a correspondent who covers Chinese affairs for NPR.

So these barriers had really been put up all over Wuhan, like they were there to keep people

from moving from one neighborhood to the next or to keep people from even leaving like their apartment complex.

In the video, the performance is interrupted.

So you see these police come up in the scooter there's a police van that then goes by and

you see you hear them talking through the the megaphone basically saying to the guy

hey man stop playing you can't be playing the piano. There's a pandemic going on.

Do you not know that?

Like, go home, get a mask on.

Like he's a risk to public health by being there or something.

So the piano playing guy turns around

and he starts to explain the police,

don't worry, the van is coming, I'll get my piano in and then I'll leave and they tell him

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