Woman reveals the heartbreaking reason she pretends to be her twin sister every Christmas

A woman revealed that she deceives her grandparents into thinking she’s her twin sister every holiday season.

Annie Niu, from Washington, posted a heartbreaking video detailing the agonising ordeal she has to go through every time she calls her grandparents.

‘Point of view: your twin sister passed away three years ago but you still haven’t told your grandparents so now you have to call them every holiday pretending to be her,’ Annie wrote in a now-deleted viral video.

Annie’s video was viewed almost 10million times, with thousands struggling to understand the reason why she could not tell her grandparents about her sister’s fate.

‘Yesterday I made a video about how I haven’t told my grandparents that my sister passed away and it’s been three years,’ Niu began in the follow up video.

‘A lot of people don’t understand, this is really common in Asian culture. We try to shield the elderly from terrible news.’

Annie’s twin passed away from meningitis, a life-threatening infection that causes inflammation of the fluid and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.

The disease is primarily prevalent in children and teenagers. 

‘A lot of people say that they deserve to know, well, they don’t deserve to die and you can’t guarantee that won’t happen if you tell them,’ Niu said sadly.

‘My grandparents basically raised me and my sister so we are very close to them and we’re probably just going to continue making up excuses as to why she is not visiting them.’

Annie quickly began to tear up, and also revealed that she has frequent dreams about her twin.

‘So I treat it as I am spending half of my life with her still because I see her every night,’ she said. 

Annie’s video was viewed almost 10million times, with thousands struggling to understand the reason why she could not tell her grandparents about her sister’s fate

Thousands of people in the comments admitted that their cultures would encourage similar acts to protect the elderly. 

‘After my dad passed away, my grandmother stopped eating and basically died of a broken heart. She passed two weeks after my dad. She couldn’t bear the sadness,’ one commenter wrote.

‘It’s so selfless of you to do that to protect your grandparents even though it must be painful,’ another wrote. ‘Sending you so much love today.’