Guizhou: Chinese foodies pose as mourners to try funeral home's noodles

According to reports, food enthusiasts across China are flocking to an unexpected destination – funeral homes – due to the popularity of their canteen noodles on social media.

The funeral home offering these viral noodles is Erlong Funeral Home, located in Guizhou province in southwestern China. Initially, the canteen only provided catering services for funeral home customers, but as the reputation of its noodles spread, a large number of diners began to flock in, some even pretending to be mourners just to taste the delicacy.

Erlong Funeral Home has announced that it will allow some members of the public to dine on its premises, provided they do not disturb genuine mourners. The funeral home offers various types of noodles during breakfast and dinner, priced at 10 yuan (approximately $1.38 USD) per bowl. The most popular is said to be noodles with minced pork and peanuts.

According to Jiupai News, a staff member at Erlong Funeral Home stated that they "only provide services to people who come to the funeral home to handle funeral affairs." However, others have been sneaking in to eat the noodles. The staff member added that the queues at Erlong Funeral Home are sometimes very long, and diners sometimes have to wait several hours to get their food. "Some people pretend to be relatives of the deceased, and it is difficult to tell when there are many people, and it is also difficult to manage," he said.

To meet the demand, the funeral home has decided to offer 50 bowls of noodles to the public for free each day, provided that "they do not affect people's mourning," a chef at Erlong Funeral Home said in an interview with local media. While the noodles were already popular among locals, the craze seems to have intensified earlier this month after a social media user posted about the dish while visiting a friend in Guizhou, a province known for its spicy and sour cuisine. "My friend said the food at this funeral home is too delicious," they wrote earlier this month on Xiaohongshu. "There are more people lining up to eat than lining up to offer flowers to the deceased." "I didn't get to eat the noodles because my friend's mom didn't know anyone who was having a funeral."

Since then, many Chinese social media users have also shared their experiences of eating the noodles. On Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), one user shared a photo of a canteen ticket, appearing to show a crowd of people queuing for food. "I heard the noodles here are very delicious," they wrote. "I thought about how short life is, and ate another bowl."