At a gleaming new factory in China’s central hinterland, masked workers in white uniform season and sift through mounds of latiao, a longtime popular snack that has found hungry fans overseas.
Spicy, sweet and curiously chewy, Chinese latiao — literally “spicy strips” — are made by cooking wheat flour dough at a high temperature and pressure.
Despite their reputation as junk food, the snacks originally developed as emergency supplies have grown into an industry worth more than 60 billion yuan (US$8.9 billion).
Photo: AFP
The Mala Wangzi factory in Hunan Province’s Pingjiang turns out nearly 700 tonnes per day of the spongy, red-colored strips, which look like squashed French fries covered in oil.
The company sells all of that domestically, but latiao have acquired new legions of foreign fans spurred by online enthusiasm for Chinese culture, or “Chinamaxxing.”
“Latiao are now exported to more than 160 countries worldwide, showing that the market is moving increasingly toward internationalization,” Mala Wangzi vice president Li Manliang said.
Some brands have expanded into East and Southeast Asia, where they are growing rapidly, while consumers from the US to Australia are snapping up the snacks in specialist grocery stores, e-commerce platforms and via TikTok.
The country’s largest latiao producer, Hong Kong-listed Weilong, made 117 million yuan from overseas sales last year, up nearly 50 percent from 2024.
TikTok and Instagram are awash with videos of foreigners trying the fiery snacks.
One influencer gained 1.5 million views by chowing down on a model house made entirely of the glutinous strips.
In another TikTok video with 2.6 million views, an Australian reviewer tucked into a giant latiao.
Latiao were created in Pingjiang in 1998 as an emergency staple food, after devastating floods wiped out the local soybean crop. They became ubiquitous in supermarkets across China, but gained a reputation as unhealthy and unsanitary — an image latiao brands have spent years trying to counter.
At the Mala Wangzi facility, an employee livestreamed the factory floor to showcase its hygienic conditions.
Li said these were based on standards used in the pharmaceutical industry.
The recipe has also changed to make the snack healthier, he said.
“We’re reducing the use of oil, salt, sugar and additives, and using more natural raw ingredients,” he added.
Mala Wangzi has opened pop-up museums around the country, held more than 4,000 latiao-themed weddings for superfan couples, and sponsored e-sport events, music festivals, and animation conventions.
A Chinese rocket carrying a communications satellite failed in its launch, state media said, attributing the failure to a “flight anomaly” as reports and videos suggested the spacecraft had exploded in mid-air. Beijing has plowed billions of dollars into its space program in the past few years to achieve what Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) calls the country’s “space dream.” Monday’s rare launch failure involved a Long March 7A carrier rocket, which lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s southernmost province of Hainan at 8:02pm, state news agency Xinhua said. An “anomaly” occurred when the rocket, which was carrying the
‘COCKROACH’ PARTY: The youth-led movement said it plans to travel across the nation to gather ideas for reforms directly from the public, but will not join elections The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which spearheaded one of India’s biggest student protests, yesterday accused authorities of violating an agreement by pursuing participants and reiterated that it would remain a pressure group rather than enter electoral politics. Police continue to investigate cases against some students who took part in the New Delhi protests last month, despite a government agreement to withdraw legal action, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka told Bloomberg Television’s Menaka Doshi. The group had called off the protests after the agreement was reached. “There were clear instances where this agreement was reneged,” Ranka said, citing cases that remained active in several
UNITED STATES Russia frees US Marine Russia on Tuesday freed a former US Marine jailed there since 2022, President Donald Trump said, as the man returned to the US to be greeted with hamburgers and milkshakes. Russia agreed to release Robert Gilman, 32, to receive medical care in the US after discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump wrote on social media. A Department of State plane carrying Gilman arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport late on Tuesday. Putin approved a pardon for him, US officials said. ZIMBABWE Ferry capsizing kills 15 At least 15 people were killed and 27 remain missing when
Artificial intelligence (AI) users are shopping around as US giants face fierce competition from Chinese rivals — and in Beijing’s tech district, drinkers at an AI-themed bar can even plug in to DeepSeek for free. A new generation of cost-efficient, high-performance Chinese AI is putting pressure on Silicon Valley’s leading labs to lower prices to grab market share as they try and find ways to turn a profit. ChatGPT maker OpenAI has slashed fees by 80 percent for its latest lightweight model “Luna” and Anthropic has unveiled a model approaching its most powerful system’s performance at half the price. Meanwhile, some of China’s
RSS