MUZIChinese Matrix
Street Snacks · FFET10301
A Sichuan-Chongqing snack in which diners pick vegetables, meat, tofu and noodles that are cooked to order in a spicy, numbing broth.
A deep white porcelain bowl holds glossy red hot pot broth with fermented rice, wide sweet potato noodles, black wood ear, tofu skin, enoki, fish balls, small potatoes, greens, thin meat slices with scattered crushed peanuts.
Snacks sold in portions on streets and at markets.
Malatang is a snack in which vegetables, meat, tofu and noodles chosen by the diner are cooked in a spicy broth seasoned with Sichuan pepper, counted by the stick at stalls and weighed by the bowl in shops. Origin accounts conflict: one traces it to Qing-era boat trackers, dockworkers and salt workers around Leshan but lacks a dated source; a 2026 account traces it to Yangtze dockworkers in the 1980s and the hot pot of Chongqing’s Jiangbei wharf; another places its precursor, chuanchuan xiang, in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2025, Wutongqiao District in Leshan was promoting Niuhua town as the birthplace of Chinese malatang and seeking a collective trademark; this is local promotion, not a title that has been granted.
Malatang is a snack in which diners choose vegetables, meat, tofu and noodles to be cooked in a spicy broth seasoned with Sichuan pepper.1,2,6,7
Origin accounts conflict and lack dated sources: one traces it to Qing-era boat trackers, dockworkers and salt workers around Leshan; a 2026 account traces it to Yangtze dockworkers in the early 1980s and the hot pot of Chongqing’s Jiangbei wharf; another places its precursor, chuanchuan xiang, in the 1980s and 1990s. This entry assigns no origin year and names no inventor.1,2,5
Sichuan and Chongqing. In 2025, Wutongqiao District in Leshan promoted Niuhua town as the birthplace of Chinese malatang, a local promotional claim. The Tianshui, Gansu version uses potato noodles; the Northeast version uses bone broth and a sesame-peanut sauce. A malatang shop opened in Japan in 2007, and Tianshui malatang boomed in 2024.1,3,4
Stalls keep skewers in a pot of broth and count the sticks; shops weigh a bowl of chosen items. The broth uses Sichuan pepper, chili and herbs. One recipe fries aromatics, then bean paste, adds chilies and soaked spices, and simmers about 15 minutes. The Northeast version uses bone broth and a sesame-peanut sauce.1,2,6,7
A 2026 account traces it to the cheap hot pot eaten by workers at Chongqing’s Jiangbei wharf, with bamboo sticks as a new way to eat standing up; another describes boat trackers, dockworkers and salt workers cooking in one shared pot on the riverbank. Neither account has a dated source.2,5
In July 2025, Niuhua had nearly 600 chain stores. Malatang spread in the 1990s with laid-off workers in the Northeast.1,3,4
Legend has it that boat trackers, dockworkers and salt workers around Leshan cooked pre-cut ingredients in one shared pot of Sichuan-pepper broth on the riverbank.
Told in: A folk account told in English Wikipedia as origin lore, with no source given.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is the single-bowl malatang I make at home with a ready-made hot pot base, which is my simplification. The amounts and times follow one recipe by a named author. A second signed recipe makes its broth from scratch, but its ingredient card and its method disagree on the amounts of oil and bean paste, so I used it just for the idea of the broth and rely on the former recipe for the amounts. The conversions from cups and spoons to milliliters are my own estimates.
Allergens: peanut, sesame, soy, wheat, fish
Grandpa Li
Picks come from public lists and guides and were checked on the dates shown; places can change, so confirm before you go.
Niuhua town, Wutongqiao District, Leshan
Order: Malatang
A Chuanguan News report of July 29, 2025 describes Bapo as a family-run malatang shop in Niuhua that has been in business for several decades, and the October 1, 2025 report on the Niuhua malatang festival names it again among Niuhua’s malatang shops.
Checked on 2026-11-02
Niuhua town, Wutongqiao District, Leshan
Order: Malatang
The Chuanguan News report of October 1, 2025 on the Niuhua malatang festival names Zhouji together with Bapo and Lüyuan as malatang shops in Niuhua.
Checked on 2026-11-02
