Slicing a fish and boiling rice noodles, 38-year-old Xiao Yuan is cooking a special local dish in East China's Jiangxi province. The dish, steamed fish with rice flour noodles, usually takes several hours to make, and Xiao has plenty of time.

Xiao is a video editor at a local TV station. Running on a tight schedule, she usually spends little time with her family. "This is a special period, and I have fun cooking for my family," she says.

A majority of Chinese canceled their travel plans and settled for a quiet extended Spring Festival holiday over concerns of being infected amid the novel coronavirus outbreak. For those like Xiao, staying at home is a rare opportunity to take a break and pick up new skills.

Zhou Jiaxiang, in the city of Ganzhou, gave himself a haircut with newly-purchased hair clippers. "The barbershop is still closed, and I haven't had my hair cut for over a month. So I decided to do it by myself. My wife further perfected the hairstyle with her eyebrow trimmer and we took a photo as a special memory," says Zhou.

Data from Douguo, a cooking app, showed that its daily active users surged by 113.5 percent year-on-year during this year's Spring Festival holiday. And on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform, "home-made food contest" has been a hot topic and received over 1.25 billion views. Additionally, topics such as makeup and fitness skills have also been viewed more than 260 million times.

Hu Shui, a 33-year-old artist in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, has taken advantage of the prolonged winter vacation to teach her daughter sand painting.

"Finding a way to entertain ourselves is helpful to soothe anxiety and win the fight against the epidemic in a positive way," says Shu Man, a professor with the research institute of psychological education in East China Jiaotong University.

"Everyone doing their part is the greatest contribution we can make at this moment," says Hu.