Can food tourism help China’s cash-strapped cities?

At a food alley in the industrial city of Zibo in eastern China’s Shandong province, every barbecue restaurant is empty or closed, except one.

Mu Yang Cun Barbecue has some 100 people sitting outdoors on low chairs around metal tables with mini-charcoal grills.

It’s busy, but not as packed as last summer, when people would have been lining up for hours and, according to vendors, every other barbecue joint down the alley would be full too.

Further east in town, another barbecue restaurant has seen a drop in foot traffic.

“I think tourist levels are half of what it was last year,” said Gu Juan, who has been running a barbecue joint in Zibo for 20 years.

In March 2023, Zibo’s unique style of barbecue went viral on Chinese social media. Millions of tourists flocked to the city for grilled meat. Previously, the area was known more for chemical manufacturing. Local news hailed Zibo as a model for local governments that are desperate for revenue after the pandemic lockdowns and during the continuing housing slump.

In 2023, tourist volume and spending in Zibo grew 68% over the previous year, with 61 million visits and 63 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) spent, according to official statistics. The figures are impressive in part because of the low-base effect from 2022, when much of China was under pandemic lockdowns. The Zibo barbecue craze also gave tourism a boost.

Zibo’s government has not published tourist figures so far this year, but residents and vendors say foot traffic is down between 50% and 80%.

Diners eating Zibo barbecue often order partially cooked meat skewers, which are finished off on mini-charcoal grills at the table. This do-it-yourself aspect is what sets Zibo barbecue apart from other Chinese barbecue styles. That, along with the custom of adding fresh spring onions and wrapping the goodies in thin Chinese pancakes.

“My friend and I plan to eat barbecue every meal [for the next two days] before we go,” tourist Wang Yaxing said. “We’re going to head to the hottest restaurants listed on the app Xiaohongshu.”

Xiaohongshu, meaning Little Red Book, and other Chinese social media platforms are key in driving this barbecue craze, according to Zibo native Zhu Bolong.

“If you posted content about Zibo last year, it would get a lot of traffic. Why? Well, because of college students, for starters,” he said.

Those students, according to a widely repeated story, had to quarantine in Zibo during COVID and were treated so well, including being fed meat skewers after losing their taste for bland, boxed meals, that some of them returned to the city when health restrictions were lifted in 2023.

Later reports suggest the story was exaggerated and that instead of thousands of students, only hundreds were sent to Zibo for quarantine, and an even smaller number returned to the town. Still, the heartwarming tale was amplified on the internet.

“This is a great story. When the students came back, they ate well. The barbecue was good and cheap. They wrote about it online, and the posts went viral,” Zhu said. “Then the local government stepped in.”

Zhu said local officials told him they paid some platforms to boost certain terms online, like hashtag #Zibobarbecue, and invited influencers to make videos about the city. They provided buses for food tourists who wanted to come and organized barbecue festivals. Local banks offered cheap loans for people to open barbecue eateries. Civil servants even stepped in to help with crowd control.

“Before Zibo barbecue became popular, there wasn’t enough money to pay some civil servants for a while. Once Zibo became a barbecue hot spot, there was enough revenue to pay them,” Zhu said.

Other municipalities that were short on cash took note. Last year, Harbin in northern China pushed its frozen pear. This spring, Tianshui in northwest China went viral for its malatang, a dish of meat and vegetables boiled in spicy, tongue-numbing broth.

It’s not clear how much food tourism contributes to local finances. In the case of Zibo, a finance official in Shandong province told the Chinese business news site Yicai that barbecue and other service industries contribute relatively little, but that tourism is good for the growth of the overall economy.

Barbecue in Zibo is a low-margin business. Skewers sell for around 2 yuan (about 30 cents) at restaurants. Officials said they would investigate and punish hotels if they raised prices on tourist accommodations.

The barbecue craze created two other tourist attractions in Zibo that don’t seem to rake in a lot of money. One site, which some residents told Marketplace was never a go-to place for locals and has no entrance fee, is the Han dynasty-style Haidai Tower. A bookstore inside had a steady flow of people when Marketplace visited, but few tourists appeared to be buying books or other items.

Even more baffling to locals are the scores of tourists stopping at the Badaju market. It had been a place where mostly elderly people would shop for groceries, snacks and everyday items. Tourists initially marveled at the low-priced food there.

However, as more and more people visited, almost all the meat and vegetable sellers were pushed out in favor of snack vendors geared toward tourists. They sell low-cost snacks such as purple rice cakes and buns filled with pig intestines. Many stalls now offer a wok-fried pancake, which is billed as a local favorite.

“I’d never heard of this snack growing up. It was created after Zibo barbecue became famous,” Zhu said. “But it is tasty.”

Tourist Zhao Na from Beijing wasn’t sure about replicating Zibo’s success elsewhere. “I think a city should play to its strengths. China is a big country, and every place has its own unique selling points,” she said.

But developing a brand can take time, and in China, people are in a hurry. The Badaju market now stretches across four blocks and looks like the noisy food streets featured in every tourist stop in the country.

“Zibo doesn’t attract me as a tourist destination,” said visitor Ni Ji of Shanghai. He has been coming to Zibo at least once a year since 2017 for business rather than pleasure.

Food tourism isn’t pulling in the tourists like before. However, business is still good at Gu Juan’s barbecue joint, thanks to her regular customers. She said that before the pandemic, she took in $1,400 a day on weekends and between $800 and $1,100 per day the rest of the week. Once Zibo barbecue became popular, she made up to 10 times that.

In 2023, Gu said, “revenue was 40,000 yuan ($5,600) to 60,000 yuan ($8,400) a day.”

Now, her sales are more or less back to pre-pandemic levels on weekdays, but she said she earns a bit more on weekends.

Gu also taught people about the barbecue business. “More than 100 people came to learn from me last year,” she said, adding that two-thirds of her students are still running their own barbecue establishments.

That includes Zibo native Zhu Bolong, who has a Zibo-style barbecue restaurant in southwest China’s Chengdu city, where he spends most of the year. He said business is not as good as last year.

“Customers are not spending as much in Chengdu. I make profits mainly from alcohol sales, but people do not drink much,” Zhu said, adding, at least “we are not losing money.”

For him, the payoff for Zibo is that the city is now famous across China for its hospitality. 

“When I negotiate business, if I say I am from Zibo, I’m seen as more trustworthy,” Zhu said.

Some residents told Marketplace they are surprised that tourists still come to Zibo for barbecue. Other locals, like Guo Mingxing, said they are happy about it. As someone who eats barbecue up to four times a week, he says tourists don’t need to eat at the city’s most popular barbecue establishments.

“I think the taste of Zibo barbecue is equally good at any restaurant here,” he said. “The prices are similar too.”

Back at the Mu Yang Cun restaurant, tourist Wang Yaxing’s beef and lamb skewers are ready to eat.

She takes a thin Chinese pancake, folds it in half and in half again. She dips the straight edges into red garlic sauce, crushed peanuts and cumin powder. Wang opens the pancake and the sauce and seasoning slide down in an X formation. She wraps the pancake around two skewers and slides the meat off. Then she adds a stalk of fresh spring onion.

“It tastes so good. It has a unique aroma from Zibo,” she says. “Totally worth coming here just for the barbecue.”

A meal for two sets her back just 150 yuan, or about $20.

Perfect, she says, since her salary is not that high.

Additional research by Charles Zhang.