A KFC restaurant that has opened up in Ordos Prefecture, Inner-Mongolia, is attracting online attention in China for its yurt-style building.

The KFC restaurant is located in Xiangshawan, also known as Whistling Dune Bay, a tourist area – China’s first desert-themed tourism resort – in the Kubuqi Desert.

Some web users praise the fast-food giant for “following local customs” (“入乡随俗”). Others jokingly wonder if their home delivery services are also done by camelback.

Although KFC is not China’s first fast-food restaurant, it is one of the most popular ones. Nowhere else outside of the US has KFC expanded so quickly as in China. Since the first KFC opened in Beijing in 1987, the chain had an average of 50% growth per year.

With thousands of locations across the country, KFC often adapts its restaurants’ style to the local environment. On Weibo, web users share various examples of local KFCs.

A KFC sign at a Fuzhou branch, by Weibo user @渭城朝雨玉清宸.

A KFC in Shanxi province, shared by Weibo user @sheep加水饺.

KFC in Suzhou, by Weibo user @是宜不是宣呀.

KFC in Pingyao, by Weibo user @车谦渊

KFC in Orange Isle, Hunan, by Weibo user @DzDanger_

One Weibo user (@阳山花非花) points out that KFC is not the only chain to adapt to the local environment in Ordos. Chinese fast-food chain Dicos (德克士) apparently also has a special restaurant in the area.

Besides adapting its buildings, KFC is also known to be quite localized in its product offerings. KFC China offers products such as Chinese-style porridge, Beijing chicken roll, and youtiao (deep-fried strip of dough commonly eaten for breakfast).

In 2019, KFC also made headlines in China for adding, among other things, hot and spicy skewers (麻辣串串) to its menu.

For now, the KFC yurt-style location is bound to gain more visitors who are coming to check it out. Already, various Weibo users are sharing their own pics of their KFC visit.

You might also like to read:

• Ordos: Chinese Ghost Cities Coming to Life
• Bizarre Buildings & Ambitious Architecture of Rural China
• These Are the 11 Most Popular Fast-Food Chains in the PRC
• KFC in Tibet: Kentucky Fried Chicken Opens First Chain in Lhasa
• China’s First Fast-Food Restaurant

By Manya Koetse (@manyapan)

With contributions by Miranda Barnes

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A man in Shenzhen has been arrested after trying to pull a scam in Haidilao hotpot restaurants twice in one day.

The man, Mr Cai (蔡), visited two different locations of China’s Haidilao chain of hotpot restaurants within twenty-four hours, and both times he managed to ‘discover’ a cockroach in his hotpot.

Cai complained to the staff about the roach in his food. According to Sohu.com, in order to keep the peace, both Haidilao stores compensated their unhappy guest; they gave him a free meal and 1000 yuan ($156) and 800 yuan ($124) respectively.

When the restaurants later inspected their security camera footage, they suspected they had been scammed and reported the incident to the police. Further investigation of the security videos revealed that the man actually held the cockroach in his hand, behind his phone, and dropped it on the table, after which he put it in the hotpot together with the vegetables.

When the man scooped the insect out of the hotpot, he immediately called the waiter to show the cockroach in his food.

After being exposed as a ‘pengci‘ (碰瓷), a scammer focused on pretending to a victim in order to get compensation, Cai was detained by the local police.

A similar incident occurred in 2018, when a man named Guo (郭) dropped a dead rat in the hotpot at a Haidilao restaurant, and then demanded a compensation of 5 million yuan ($780,000). That incident also went viral on Chinese social media at the time.

Guo was later sentenced to three years in prison for his scam, for damaging Haidilao’s reputation, and for filing a false report with regulatory authorities.

Also in 2018, a woman claimed she had found a sanitary pad in her Haidilao hotpot. This incident later also turned out to be a scam – the woman had placed the item there herself.

Haidilao is one of China’s most famous hotpot brands, and its restaurants have been in business for over 25 years. The restaurant is known for its good service, quality, and cleanliness.

On Weibo, the Haidilao ‘cockroach incident’ is attracting a lot of attention today, with one hashtag page regarding the issue receiving over 230 million views (#男子在海底捞自导自演吃出蟑螂#).

Although scams such as these are not uncommon, many people are surprised that someone would still attempt to fraud Haidilao in this way in 2021, when there are cameras set up everywhere in the restaurant.

Haidilao’s surveillance cameras have become a topic of discussion on social media before. The restaurant’s alleged reason for putting up so many cameras is in order to take better care of their customers, to monitor employee service standards, and to rely on their security footage when personal belongings go missing. The cameras also register the entire hotpot dining process; if something comes up in the hotpot that is not supposed to be there, the cameras will have captured how it ended up there.

“In this case, it’s good that there are so many security cameras,” one commenter writes.

Many others scold Cai for trying to scam Haidilao like this: “They should really make him eat cockroaches.”

– By Manya Koetse (@manyapan)

Follow @whatsonweibo

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