On the family’s Douyin account are hundreds of videos of Momo playing doctor, carrying out operations such as a caesarean section on her corgi. Momo first encountered a CT scan machine last year during a medical check-up and asked if her parents could buy her one afterwards. — SCMP
A five-year-old girl in China playing doctor, giving a “medical check-up” to her pet dog “patient” with a cardboard CT scan machine, has amused mainland social media.
In a video taken at the girl’s home in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, the girl, identified as Momo, is dressed in a miniature white hospital gown and a nurse hat. She pushes a button on a toy panel while pretending her pet corgi moves on a “conveyor belt”, operated by her father off camera, into the toy CT machine, local youth news site k618.cn reported.
A black cat seen standing by the corgi and touching it occasionally as if checking on a patient was playfully dubbed by online viewers as the “nurse”.
Momo’s mother said her daughter first encountered a CT scan machine last year during a medical check-up.
“After returning home, Momo asked her father, ‘How much is a CT machine?’ and ‘Can we buy it?’. Her father told her it was too expensive. But he thought he could make one out of old cardboard boxes,” said the mother, who was not identified in the report.
Momo, who wants to be a doctor when she grows up, often looks after her “patients” played by the dog, cat and family members.
The mother said Momo started to play doctor games when she was a toddler, giving “medical consultations” to family members with toy medical devices.
On the family’s Douyin account, named “Momo and Dad”, there are around 300 videos of Momo playing doctor. In one, Momo performs a caesarean section on her corgi and takes out its “baby”, played by the cat. Another clip shows Momo as a “dentist pulling teeth” from her father’s mouth.
In another video, Momo plays a doctor in a radiology department taking an X-ray of the corgi, which is seen standing upright with its front paws pressing against a wall.
“In the future, if she is still interested in medicine, we will definitely support her,” said her mother.
The girl’s cardboard CT machine video has become one of the top topics trending on mainland social media, where it has been viewed nine million times on Douyin alone.
“The child whose dream has been protected and cultivated is so happy!” one person said.
“The dog should be an actor. Look, it is so cooperative that it lies and stays still until the girl says, ‘You can leave now’,” another person commented.
Another person added: “The father is very creative and capable. He is great!”
Stories about loving parents playing with their children often trend on mainland social media.
In March, a mother in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China was praised for her thrifty inventiveness in turning old cardboard boxes into toys, such as a vast playhouse, a castle and a Transformer car. – South China Morning Post
