A short essay/vignette from the archives! This essay was first posted to Twitter on 27 February 2024. It has been edited lightly for long-essay format.
When I first wrote about Chinese urbanization rates, I mentioned in that essay that my reason for visiting Luotian County, in Huanggang City, Hubei was to try a local culinary specialty.
That specialty is called Luotian “’Hanging Pot” (罗田吊锅). It was delicious and you should try it if you get a chance.
It’s a simple country dish - clear broth that gets most of its flavor from the protein base. Our pot also had cured pork and fish, carrot, potato, radish, chives, mushrooms, tofu... Bubble away for 20 mins so the broth is fragrant and flavorful. Add rice and vegetables and you’ve got a full meal.
Luotian Hanging Pot is a hyper-regional dish with little national fame - a specialty of the Dabie Mountains region on the border between Hubei and Anhui. There’s only one restaurant in all of Shanghai that offers it. So when I was visiting Ezhou for the holiday, basically in Luotian’s backyard, I knew I had to make the trip out to try it.
We selected a top-rated place online, punched it into the GPS, and made our way to rural Luotian to Mr Qiu’s restaurant. I told him we came from Ezhou, 60km away, because I wanted to try authentic 罗田吊锅 at the source, and we chose his restaurant because of his great reviews online.
He was tickled by this and asked for a picture together...
The walls of of Mr. Qiu’s restaurant were decorated with pictures of other foreigners who had visited before. While we waited for our food, he proudly showed me the visual evidence of where he previously received guests from the USA, France, Russia, the Netherlands, and "Africa" (no country specified).
Qiu’s shop is on the outskirts of Sanlifan Town, close to a section of the Ba River with natural hot springs that are a minor tourist draw in eastern Hubei. Although there are dozens of places for Luotian Hanging Pot, his shop stands with out with over 3000 reviews online. The town, and the environment outside the shop is overall quite modest.
While we continued to wait, I asked Qiu about the drivers of the local economy.
"We have some tourism here, because of the hot springs. It's mostly people from Wuhan who come for the weekend, for the health benefits of the water.”
“Are they natural springs?”
”Yes, natural springs...the geothermal kind. They were always there, then the government dug them deeper and then the resort hotels opened up."
“Is business good?”
"Normally my shop is not so busy, but it's very good during holidays. May Day...National Holiday...Spring Festival...that's when we have a lot of tourists. Like last night, it was very busy here, every seat was full. If you’d come last night, you'd have to wait in line!" [it was the Spring Festival at the time]
Qiu said despite the success of his shop and his growing scale, he still uses homemade ingredients for his restaurant, including curing his own pork, fish, and beef for use in the pots, and of course sourcing the vegetables from local farms. He emphasized that for a hot pot that doesn’t use an oily or spicy soup base, you have to use very fresh ingredients, because there’s nowhere for the flavor to hide.
"It should be a clear soup with no oil, so the flavor comes from the meat and vegetable. This is the way we like to eat it here, in Luotian County. This is the traditional flavor of Hanging Pot. When we are not busy with tourists, even locals will also come to eat here."
Our dishes arrived, and we tucked in. Indeed, the flavor was not spicy or oily, but I still found it a bit on the salty side, thanks to the huge volume of cured meats in the dish. It was tasty, but by the end of the meal, my mouth and tongue were tingling from the sodium.
Later, Qiu revealed the trick to why his online reviews volume was so high, which had drawn us to drive all this way and try his restaurant in the first place.
"I’ll tell you what, if you give me a review on Dazhong Dianping, I'll give you a discount. You don't have to write the review now...you can do it after you leave - I trust you. Just don't mention I gave you a discount!"
Doing it like this, he's skirting the naughty side of Dianping's [Chinese Yelp] Terms of Service, since he isn't directly requesting me to write a positive review in exchange for a discount. Instead, he was giving me the discount up front and trusting my conscience would drive me to give a good review later.
Anyway, apparently it works, because he had a small village restaurant in Luotian with over 3500 reviews…
Update: That was as of February 2024. Today in September 2026, Mr. Qiu’s restaurant has a score of 4.8/5, with over 10,400 reviews, so his tricks are continuing to work!
In the end, the 2-person hot pot, the vegetable side dish, and a bottle of water came out to a total of 148 CNY(20 USD). He summed the three items, squinted at the total for a second and then said: “148...okay...uh... give me 100.”
So yeah, that’s a 32% discount for me to *maybe* write a review.
But after enjoying my discount, I indeed felt morally compelled to write him a nice review. It was delicious of course, despite slightly overdoing it on the sodium. so I didn’t mind. I even added publicity for him on Twitter, and now Substack, the big food influencer that I am. So…remember Mr. Qiu the next time you happen to find yourself in Luotian County. Not that his business needs the help…apparently!