Editor’s note: In the age of the attention economy, social media has the power to change lives by propelling any ordinary Joe to celebrity status in an instant. But what happens when that 15 minutes of fame ends?

Sixth Tone is republishing five stories from “After the Spotlight Fades,” a 10-part series by The Paper that revisits people and places in China whose fortunes were transformed — sometimes only briefly — by viral fame.

In the video clip that made him a viral sensation, Na Guoping wears an expression that many of us will empathize with: utter exasperation.

Standing over a boiling pan filled with raw ingredients, the chef glances around at the sea of customers outside his tiny open kitchen and grimaces.

Although just a secondslong cameo in an update on the rising popularity of a food street in Tianshui, in the northwestern Gansu province — the so-called “home of China’s spicy, rich malatang soup” — Na quickly began trending on social media.

And unfortunately for the beleaguered chef, the subsequent attention only made him busier.

This was early 2024, when the country was gripped by a malatang craze that started after two Chinese influencers gushed online about this cheap, customizable dish, with one post receiving more than 242,000 comments and almost 1.5 million likes. The cuisine has long been available nationwide, but soon foodies from far and wide were flocking to Gansu for a taste of “authentic malatang.”

At the center of this storm was Ha Haiying Malatang, which shares a downtown courtyard with several other small eateries. For months, tourists were crammed in tight, with lines stretching more than 100 meters — some people waited up to seven hours for a bowl of soup with the ingredients of their choice — while tripod-wielding livestreamers jostled for position to film how the dish is made.

“I’d never seen so many people in my life,” says Na. “I didn’t even know there were that many people in the world.”

At that time, he was surviving on five hours of sleep a night, and he had already lost two fingernails while peeling the plastic casings from thousands of sausages, a popular addition in malatang. He says his pained expression in the viral video stemmed from exhaustion and seeing an endless stream of people waiting to be served.

When the footage went online and lines grew even longer, the local community management office decided to limit the store to serving 150 people a day to prevent dangerous overcrowding.

Today, only one phone is pointing at this once-famous kitchen — Na’s. He’s been livestreaming while preparing vegetables and other ingredients for customers, helping promote the shop’s own-brand seasoning products.

The courtyard is rarely packed these days, but there are still often lines outside Ha Haiying Malatang, with the wait for a table about 40 minutes at mealtimes. While the hype over malatang has faded, Na’s commitment to Gansu’s signature dish remains unchanged.

No overnight success

Na works at the shop in Tianshui’s Qinzhou District with his brother-in-law, Yang Jibing, who mixes the sauces, and the eponymous owner, Ha Haiying, who is also his cousin. He started out in 2006 washing vegetables and handling odd jobs before eventually becoming a chef.

The 45-year-old believes making a great bowl of malatang is not something you learn overnight — getting the taste right is crucial.

Since it opened about 25 years ago, Ha Haiying Malatang has always done well, says Na, citing that the business spares no expense in buying top-quality ingredients to guarantee an authentic flavor. But business noticeably picked up at the end of 2022. “The pot never stopped, the lines never stopped,” he recalls.

Most customers then were tourists from neighboring Shaanxi province who had seen the shop recommended on the Yelp-like platform Dazhong Dianping or the lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, aka RedNote.

Then, in late 2023, Na remembers a vlogger came to the courtyard to film how malatang is made. It was soon after that foodies began flooding in from across China.

This sudden influx of new customers with diverse tastes brought fresh challenges for local restaurants.

For years, chefs at Ha Haiying Malatang had followed a strict recipe to achieve its signature flavor, heating sesame oil in a wok before adding scallions, ginger, Sichuan pepper, thick broad bean paste, cardamom, dried chili, bay leaves, and a secret sauce. However, after out-of-towners said the flavors were too heavy, Yang began adapting the formula for each customer, depending on where they came from — for example, those from southern China tend to have a lighter palate, so he would reduce the salt and spice levels.

Na’s viral fame also led to offers for him to start his own business. “Some tried to stir things up and lure me away,” he says, adding that Yang ultimately talked him out of going it alone, explaining that managing a shop came with endless headaches.

The buzz around malatang eventually trailed off in November 2024, and traffic through the courtyard began to subside. By this time, 50-year-old Ha had branched out to launch a food production company.

Today, Na is not only responsible for blanching raw ingredients but also for livestream marketing. After putting in a 10-hour shift in the kitchen, he spends most evenings in the studio hawking dried bean starch sheets and various seasonings.

“No matter the hype, we need to keep true to malatang — same taste then, same taste now, same taste in the future,” Na says. Looking around his 50-square-meter shop, he adds, “As you can see, there’s not much room here. We can’t just add another pot. The only way is for me to hold down the fort and maintain the flavor.”

Ha says she recently turned down an invitation to open a second outlet in Tianshui. “It would’ve ruined our reputation,” she says. “We just don’t have the energy or time. A bigger, fancier space would mean more staff, higher prices, or smaller portions. In a market economy, you need to keep your feet on the ground.”

Flavor country

The courtyard housing Ha Haiying Malatang is known locally as the North Yard, while a short distance away, an area surrounded by two residential buildings is called the South Yard. Together, they have about 25 storefronts.

According to a market regulation official for Qinzhou District, when the food craze erupted in early 2024, the number of malatang outlets in the yards soared from three to 24, as noodle shops and snack bars quickly converted their businesses to meet the growing demand. One investor even paid above the odds for a barbershop in the South Yard and was soon slinging the spicy soup.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the average annual property rental price in the area is now at least 20,000 yuan ($2,920) higher compared with March 2024.

Ha Haiying Malatang sits at the center of the North Yard, which has always received far more foot traffic than its southern counterpart. However, tourists who wander in the wrong direction often find themselves dining in the similarly named Haiyang Malatang by mistake.

The store’s owner, surnamed Wang, initially opened a rice noodle shop in the South Yard at the end of 2022, but was among those who converted their businesses two years ago. When it came time to register a new name with the local market regulation office, he recalled a friend had suggested calling it Haiyang to trade on the popularity of Ha Haiying Malatang.

It seems the plan worked. After switching to selling malatang, Wang says his shop made about 100,000 yuan a month from March through winter 2024. In the summer, he doubled down by opening a second outlet in the unit next door.

“When there are that many people, everyone does well. The name hardly matters,” Wang reasons. “But with that kind of foot traffic, it was hard to run any other kind of business,” he adds, recalling that a fried noodle shop in the North Yard had to close for a month at the height of the craze because the crowds lining up for malatang made it impossible to operate.

Wang has since shuttered his second malatang shop. He will wait to see what the crowds are like in the summer tourist season before deciding whether to reopen it or sublet the space.

Across the district, more than 100 business licenses were issued for malatang shops between March and August 2024. “We had just under 170 in total,” the market regulation official says. At the start of this year, around 40 remained, with Ha Haiying Malatang one of just 10 in the north and south yards.

“Without the internet, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Ha says. “But this little malatang business is our livelihood. It’s our life. We look after it ourselves, and we’re sticking with it.”

Reported by Gao Yuting.

A version of this article originally appeared in The Paper. It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.

Translator: Kiong Xin Xi; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.

(Header image: Visuals from Douyin and VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)