The dance pop sensation "Gangnam Style," written and performed by Korean pop singer Park Jae Sung, better known as PSY, has spawned numerous parodies and copycat dance videos around the world.

Never last on the trend train, Chinese students are figuring prominently on the Gangnam video craze, with their own youthful versions of the worldwide dance hit.

Guo Xiaoyu, a senior at the Business College of Shanxi University in Taiyuan, recently directed, produced, and acted in a "Gangnam Style" dance video with his classmates and friends.

The video was forwarded about 8,000 times the day after it was first uploaded two weeks ago, and it has been viewed over 37,000 times on Youku as of Tuesday.

In the three-minute video, Guo wears a black suit with dark glasses and skillfully mimics PSY's signature trotting dance, which looks like someone pretending to ride a horse, while holding the reins and curling a make-believe lasso overhead.

Labor of Love

Guo played many roles in the production of the video: writer, director, instructor and actor.

After scouting several prime locations on campus, he settled on the dormitory for the opening scene, to be followed by a series of locations.

The settings cover an array of locations on the campus, including a lake, a dormitory, a playground and classroom buildings. Guo's sense of humor shines through in several of the scenes, like the one where he and his male costars bounce to the beat with their backs turned to the camera as they make use of a row of urinals.

Guo told the Global Times that he wanted to make the video because of his strong affection for music.

He added that he hoped the humor would help relieve the pressure placed on senior students who are preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination or highly competitive civil service examination, and those recent graduates looking for jobs.

Guo learned the "Gangnam Style" dance from the song's original music video, which he watched more than 50 times before he taught it to his video partners. Once everyone had learned; he borrowed a video camera and a tripod and started the shoot.

"It actually took us eight hours to complete the video - one hour practicing the dance, five hours shooting, and two hours in postproduction," he said. Guo shared that he did not expect such a strong response from netizens, adding that he only did it for fun, never plotting to become known for his online music video.

Widespread mimics

Guo's "Business College of Shanxi University Gangnam Style" is not the only copycat college version of the song on the Internet.

PSY's highly entertaining music video has become the inspiration for over 2,000 music videos produced by college students on Baidu Video, a Chinese search engine for videos, including "Sichuan University Gangnam Style," "Xiamen University Gangnam Style," and "Dalian Maritime University Gangnam Style," to name a few.

A video made by five female students at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong Province, released on Youku, had around 1,950,000 views as of Tuesday afternoon.

In the video, which was made to celebrate a friend's birthday, the female students perform the "Gangnam Style" dance in colorful stockings, using their dorm as the main setting for the clip.

Many netizens claimed that the performers have exceptional talent, while others have passed it off as just another online video looking for attention.

As "Gangnam Style" has risen to international popularity, it has also been performed by college students at events on campuses nationwide.

Over 300 students from Yangzhou University in East China's Jiangsu Province celebrated the opening ceremony of a school sports competition on October 26, prompting many spectators to dance with them, according to jschina.com.cn, a news portal in Jiangsu.

"The song is so popular on the Internet, so I knew I had to incorporate it into the performance. Students can't get enough of it," the dance instructor was quoted as saying by the website.

On Sunday, Peking University's 9th International Culture Festival, jointly organized by overseas and Chinese students,  was held at the Peking University Hall.

Overseas students staged a series of performances, among which the Korean students' "Gangnam Style" dance was the most acclaimed show.

It wasn't all smiles however. Students received a shock when after the ceremony ended, a large number of students went up on the stage to dance to "Gangnam Style," leading to the collapse of the stage, the Beijing News reported.