Do the math

A 90-year-old Chinese woman’s way of caring for her husband, who is suffering from memory loss, has gone viral on the social media platform RedNote.

Wen Bo and her husband, 92, have been married for 66 years, and she became his dedicated caregiver in 2023 when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. To slow down the worsening of the brain disease, she gave him mental exercises like painting and solving puzzles and math problems, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

The exercises were helpful, as he can still operate his electric wheelchair independently when they go out, and he occasionally reminds Wen to take a break, according to SCMP.

On 23 August, she recounted that her husband completed an arithmetic test, taking a bit longer than usual but making only one mistake, SCMP reported.

Wen shared a photo of the math test sheet on RedNote, where it was viewed by millions of netizens.

Meanwhile, a professor in the Mathematics Department at Peking University in China and a two-time Math Olympiad winner posted on social media on 18 August his first video on solving primary school math problems.

Wei Dongyi, 35, intended the video to promote his newly published workbooks on math solving for primary school and junior secondary students, SCMP reported.

When parents learned that the promo video was really from Wei and not from fake social media accounts, they swiftly bought the math workbooks. Some 26,000 copies of the books were sold in just four days, according to SCMP.

Online sales of Wei’s workbooks have ended, but they are still available in specialized bookstores.