Orange farmer sees online orders go from 100 to 15,000 per day after he donates fruit to Zhejiang University student
- The farmer initially donated one box, but sent more when he realised the student needed different sized oranges
- Other students heard of his generosity and flocked to his store, eventually the story became a viral news item
An orange farmer in southeastern China saw his online orders jump 150 times after he donated a few boxes of the fruit to a Zhejiang University student for experiments, because he wished to “make contributions for the country”.
Chen Kai, a farmer in Linhai of Zhejiang, eastern China, has had to deal with more than 15,000 online orders per day, previously the number of daily orders at his shop on Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo was fewer than 100, the Zhejiang Daily reported.
It happened after Chen decided to send oranges for free to a student from Zhejiang University last week after learning she wanted to buy the fruit for an experiment and the story ended up going viral, the report said.
“Can oranges be used for experiments?” Chen asked the student during an online conversation.
After being told they could, he asked if the experiment was for the benefit of the country.
“You could say so. We are graduate school students,” the student, identified by her surname Xiao, replied.