A young Chinese surgeon recently went viral online after he released a series of videos showing him operating on a variety of fruit, Heilongjiang broadcast TV station reported on Jan. 25.

32-year-old Wang Yexiao is an ICU doctor at People’s Hospital in Hegang of northern Heilongjiang province. He gained the nickname "Doctor Fruit" by carrying out an appendectomy on a mango, cutting “tumors” from a dragon fruit and simulating a caesarean by extracting seeds from a grape.

Four months ago, Wang posted his first fruit operation video on a short video sharing platform, and quickly became popular. To date, he has attracted more than 120,000 followers, and each video has been watched for over one million times.

Each short video generally takes about four to five hours to produce, including the time it takes to shoot and edit. As fruit skin has less connective tissue than human skin, sometimes, a hit video is the final result of several attempts.

On why he started this project on top of an already busy work schedule, Wang said that he hoped to spread medical knowledge to children in an interesting way, and also build trust and understanding in the relationship between doctors and patients, by revealing the details of surgical operations.

If patients and their families know the procedures and related risks of an operation, they may not be so scared to go and see their doctor in the first place, said Wang.

Now, Doctor Fruit has uploaded a total of 17 fruit operation clips on his video account, including operations on eggs and quail eggs. He said that he would continue to make these videos to raise public awareness of medical science.