5th December 2022 – (Beijing) 62-year-old Taiwanese actor Winston Chao moved to the Mainland more than ten years ago and settled down. Recently, he revealed on Weibo that he was infected with COVID-19 and he revealed that he was not vaccinated. He thought he was the ‘chosen one’ for not being infected but he recently tested positive. Six days after the onset, his Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) showed negative result.
However, it took him a month to fully recover from sequelae such as loss of taste and smell. Chao, who insisted not to vaccinate, not only did not change his mind because of the epidemic, but even boldly said that: “I told many people around me who have been vaccinated that they will die within five years.” Some netizens reminded him that the joke crossed the line and it might cause some misunderstandings.
Chao said that everyone around him knew he was joking. Chao mentioned that when he was infected, he took the “Qing Guan No. 1” Chinese medicine and the symptoms disappeared after two days of drinking. He also revealed that in order to make up for the loss of his sense of smell, he ate more food, and as a result he fell sick and gained a lot of weight.
Winston Chao Wen-hsuan is a Taiwanese actor. He came to international attention for his performance in the 1993 film The Wedding Banquet and Kabali. He is also known for his roles in Red Rose White Rose and Eat Drink Man Woman, and for his five portrayals of Sun Yat-sen, notably in the films The Soong Sisters (1997), Road to Dawn (2007) and 1911 (2011). His notable television roles include the adaptation of Cao Yu‘s play Thunderstorm (1997), a double role in the historical drama Palace of Desire, the biographical mini-series The Legend of Eileen Chang (2004), the historical drama Da Tang Fu Rong Yuan (2007), the adaptation of Ba Jin‘s novel Cold Nights (Han ye, 2009), and the portrayal of Confucius (2011). He acted in the Indian Tamil film, Kabali (2016), in a villainous role opposite Rajinikanth. He has also appeared in the English-language films Skiptrace (2016) and The Meg (2018).