An 11-year-old boy pretending to be allergic to homework by shedding tears has gone viral on mainland Chinese social media after his mother filmed the incident and posted a video online.

The unnamed Primary Five boy from Jiangsu province in eastern China appears in the video trying to get out of doing his homework by telling his mother that he can’t stop crying because of the allergy, local news platform Xibu Juece reported.

Last Sunday, he had spent some time doing his homework when he appeared to become unwell and can be seen in the video holding a tissue over his nose.

The boy’s mother, surnamed Yu, noticed and asked what was wrong, to which he replied that he had suffered from an allergic reaction.

“What are you allergic to?” Yu asked.

The boy replied: “I’m allergic to the smell of the books.”

Yu continued: “Are you saying you can’t do homework now? How can we stop, or ease the symptoms?”

The boy didn’t reply immediately, instead he crumpled the tissue into a ball and put it in his nose. A tear started running down his face followed by a sneeze. However, when his mother suggested they go to the hospital, he declined.

“Stop pretending! Pick up the pen,” Yu said.

“Why haven’t you had an allergy for the past five years, but this year you suddenly have the symptoms?”

“Because it was an incubation period,” the boy answered.

Yu said it is not the first time her son has tried something like this and said he has told fanciful stories from an early age.

The video attracted amusement online after going viral.

One person said: “Incubation period? Five years for the incubation period seems a bit long, hahaha!”

Another said: “The boy could be an actor when he grew up.”

However, some people were concerned after watching the video as they believed the allergy was real.

“Despite it looking very funny, I believe it’s true as strong smells from books are not rare these days,” commented one person.

“I also agree to trust the kid. He might be trapped in a psychological problem,” another said.

Public data showed that in 2017, Chinese students in primary and secondary school spent an average of 2.82 hours a day on their homework, 3.7 times higher than their peers in Japan and 4.8 times higher than in South Korea.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.