Soup · Boiled, self-serve

Malatang (Self-Serve Spicy Broth)

📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

The usual origin story traces it to boat trackers on the Yangtze near Leshan in Sichuan, who boiled whatever scraps they had in a pot of chili-and-peppercorn broth on the riverbank.

Diners pick skewered or loose ingredients from a self-serve display, hand them to a vendor who boils them in a shared pot of numbing, spicy broth, then eat on the spot.

Why it's made this way: The name literally means "numbing spicy hot," and its shift from riverside laborer food to a nationwide self-serve format reflects how cheaply a shared pot could feed a crowd.