A video of a young Sri Lankan boy selling flowers is going viral on social media and is especially popular among Chinese viewers with around 130 million views as of yesterday.
The young man who sells flowers to tourists with an enchanting smile and vibrant energy has been identified as 17-year-old Dilip Madushanka from Kotmale. Madushanka who gave up schooling at the age of 10 is now selling flowers as his main livelihood and to support his family.
His father and mother are engaged in a vegetable selling business, but as their income is not enough to meet the daily expenses of the family, Madushanka says he decided to sell flowers.
Madushanka runs after tourist buses in mountain roads sometimes for kilometers to sell his flowers. At times he is lucky and also there are disappointing days. But recently Madushanka’s efforts to stop their bus garnered the attention of a group of tourists from China.
They saw Madushanka emerging at least from four different locations while running through mountain roads to intercept their bus. They not only bought all the flowers he had that day but also had made a video which was widely shared on social media and is especially popular in China.
How popular the video has been is shown by the fact that a large number of Chinese children posting drawings of him selling flowers being posted on social media.
Rakshana Shriyantha