Chinese Hotpot: The Bubbling Feast That Unites China

Night falls over Chongqing, and the city ignites. Not from its lights, though the neon glow of skyscrapers clinging to cliffs above the Yangtze could illuminate an entire galaxy, but from a red, greasy, pungent steam that pours through the open doors of thousands of restaurants and rises toward the sky like profane incense. In a narrow alley of the old Jiefangbei district, a round stainless-steel table seats six friends on plastic stools. Sunk into the center of the table, a pot bubbles with the fury of a miniature volcano. The liquid is blood-red, opaque, coated in a layer of oil where dozens of dried chilies, clusters of Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, chunks of ginger and garlic all float together. The smell grabs you by the throat: an intoxicating blend of roasted chili, toasted spices, and beef fat that seeps into your clothes, your hair, your memory. Around the table, plates pile up: slices of marbled beef shaved paper-thin, tripe cut into strips, rolled duck throat, fresh tofu, enoki mushrooms, lettuce leaves, translucent noodles. Everyone dips their chopsticks into the raging broth, pulls out a steaming morsel, swirls it in a small dish of sesame oil and crushed garlic, and devours it with a grimace of pure pleasure. Sweat beads on foreheads. Laughter erupts. Bottles of Shancheng beer empty fast. Welcome to the world of huoguo (火锅, literally "fire pot"), Chinese hotpot: a culinary ritual more than a thousand years old that feeds, gathers, and ignites a nation of 1.4 billion people.

Hotpot is not just a dish. It is a way of life, a philosophy of the table, a social act as codified as a tea ceremony and as anarchic as a wedding banquet. It has no chef: every diner is their own cook. It has no fixed recipe: the pot is a canvas, and each person composes their meal according to their tastes, their courage in the face of chili, and their ability to wield chopsticks in broth at a rolling boil. From Chongqing to Beijing, Canton to Yunnan, Inner Mongolia to Taiwan, hotpot comes in dozens of regional variations, each claiming its own legitimacy, superiority, and history. And that history stretches back a very long way.

A Thousand Years of Broth: The History of Huoguo

From Bronze Cauldrons to Spinning Tables

The idea of cooking food in a shared pot of boiling liquid is as old as Chinese civilization itself. Archaeologists have unearthed ritual bronze cauldrons called ding (鼎) dating to the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BCE), some bearing traces of meat and bone broth. These ding, objects of power and prestige, were used in sacrificial banquets offered to ancestors. Beef, mutton, pork, and game simmered in water seasoned with herbs and condiments. Of course, these cauldrons were not hotpots in the modern sense: diners did not serve themselves from the vessel. But the fundamental principle, a shared broth in which various ingredients cook together, was already in place over three thousand years ago.

The earliest explicit accounts of shared cooking in a communal broth date to the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-256 BCE). Ritual texts describe banquets where nobles dipped pieces of meat into vessels of boiling broth placed at the center of the table. The Liji (礼记, "Book of Rites"), compiled during the Warring States period, mentions broth-cooking techniques that foreshadow modern hotpot.

It was under the Song dynasty (960-1279) that the concept truly took shape. Texts from the era mention the gudong guo (古董锅), the "ancient pot," a dish in which ingredients were cooked in simmering broth right at the table. The name is thought to be onomatopoeic, mimicking the "gu-dong, gu-dong" sound of bubbling broth. Song dynasty literati, great lovers of food and poetry, describe scenes of conviviality around steaming pots that already look remarkably like a modern hotpot dinner. The poet Lin Hong (林洪) of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) describes in his culinary treatise Shanjia Qinggong (山家清供) a preparation called bo xia gong (拨霞供): thin slices of rabbit cooked in boiling broth and seasoned with soy sauce, vinegar, and ginger, a direct ancestor of hotpot.

Legend, as so often in China, blends history with romance. It is said that Mongol cavalrymen, during their 13th-century conquest rides across the steppe, boiled mutton in their upturned helmets over campfires. The anecdote is probably myth, but it speaks to a real truth about the nomadic origins of one major branch of hotpot: Mongolian hotpot, which developed in northern China and became one of the most refined dishes of the imperial court.

It was during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) that hotpot experienced its first golden age among the ruling elite. The Manchu emperors, heirs to the culinary traditions of northern peoples, brought to Beijing the shuan yangrou (涮羊肉, "rinsed lamb"), a lamb hotpot of aristocratic elegance. Emperor Qianlong (乾隆, 1711-1799), one of the greatest gourmands in Chinese imperial history, was a devoted hotpot enthusiast. Court records show that in 1796, to celebrate his abdication in favor of his son, Qianlong hosted a monumental banquet known as the Qiansou yan (千叟宴, "Banquet of a Thousand Elders"), at which no fewer than 1,550 hotpots were served. Over five thousand guests, elderly dignitaries from across the empire, feasted on mutton, beef, and vegetables cooked in copper pots. It remains one of the largest banquets in human history.

The Rise of Sichuan and Mala

While northern hotpot had conquered the imperial palaces, it was in southwestern China, along the banks of the Yangtze, that the most famous and fiery version would be born: Sichuan hotpot, defined by the mala (麻辣) flavor, that unique combination of numbing and spicy heat that has become the gustatory signature of an entire region.

Mala rests on two fundamental ingredients. The first is huajiao (花椒, "flower pepper"), Sichuan peppercorn, a small reddish-brown berry from the citrus family (not a true pepper) that produces a vibrating, almost electric numbing sensation on the tongue, which the Chinese call ma (麻). The second is lajiao (辣椒), the chili pepper, which arrived in China from the Americas via Portuguese and Spanish trade routes in the 16th century, providing the la (辣), the burning heat. The combination of these two sensations, numbing and burning, creates a taste experience without parallel: simultaneously painful and addictive, described by devotees as a kind of sensory trance.

Sichuan hotpot as we know it today was born on the docks of the Yangtze River in Chongqing (then part of Sichuan province, now an autonomous municipality) in the early 20th century, probably in the 1920s or 1930s. Dock workers, boatmen, and porters, among the city's poorest laborers, salvaged offal, tripe, organs, and cuts of meat that butchers could not sell. These pieces, often strong in flavor and tough in texture, were plunged into a violently spiced broth: chili and Sichuan peppercorn masked overpowering flavors, prolonged simmering tenderized the toughest cuts, and the heat of the spices warmed bodies worn out by physical labor in Chongqing's damp, cold winters.

From a survival food of the laboring classes, Chongqing hotpot gradually became a cultural phenomenon. In the 1940s and 1950s, specialized restaurants opened across the city, then in nearby Chengdu and the rest of Sichuan. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) briefly stalled its rise, but from the 1980s onward, with Deng Xiaoping's (邓小平) economic opening, Sichuan hotpot exploded. Within two decades, it conquered all of China, from Guangdong to Manchuria, Shanghai to Xinjiang. Today, Chongqing alone has more than 50,000 hotpot restaurants, and Sichuan-style hotpot is served in every city, town, and village in the country.

The Great Regional Traditions

China is a culinary continent, and hotpot is no exception to this rule of absolute diversity. Each region has developed its own version, adapted to its climate, local produce, medical traditions, and threshold for chili heat. Here are the four great families of Chinese hotpot.

Sichuan and Chongqing: The Reign of Mala

Sichuan hotpot is a sensory assault. Its red broth, the hongtang (红汤, "red soup"), is a concentrate of spices and animal fat whose preparation is an art form in itself. The base starts with niuyou (牛油, beef tallow) melted over low heat, into which one fries doubanjiang (豆瓣酱, chili-fermented bean paste, a specialty of Pixian near Chengdu), huajiao (花椒, Sichuan peppercorn), handfuls of dried chilies, garlic, ginger, bajiao (八角, star anise), guipi (桂皮, Chinese cinnamon), caoguo (草果, black cardamom), xiaohuixiang (小茴香, cumin), dingxiang (丁香, clove), shanji (山奈, galangal), and sometimes up to twenty other spices and aromatics. This mixture cooks slowly, sometimes for hours, until it forms a dark, glistening red paste called the guodi (锅底, "pot base"), which is then diluted in bone broth to create the cooking bath.

One of the most spectacular features of Chongqing hotpot is the jiugongge (九宫格, "nine-square grid"). The pot is divided into nine compartments by a metal grid, creating zones of different temperatures and turbulence. The center, directly above the flame, boils furiously: this is where thick pieces that need vigorous cooking go. The outer squares, calmer and cooler, suit delicate ingredients. This division is not just aesthetic: it lets each diner keep track of their own ingredients in the communal broth, avoiding the blind chopstick fishing that plagues single-pot hotpots.

It is worth distinguishing the Chongqing style from the Chengdu style, though outsiders often confuse them. Chongqing hotpot is rawer, oilier, wilder. Beef tallow reigns supreme, flavors are bold, and the amount of chili can be terrifying. Chongqing is a city of mountains, fog, sweat, and toil; its hotpot matches that character. Chengdu hotpot, by contrast, is more refined, more aromatic, more balanced. Vegetable oil sometimes replaces tallow, spices are measured with greater subtlety, and the broth lets you taste the individual flavors of the ingredients cooked in it. Chengdu is a city of tea gardens and scholars; its hotpot, again, reflects its nature.

The signature ingredients of Sichuan hotpot deserve a closer look. Maodu (毛肚), beef tripe with its rough texture and distinctive folds, is the undisputed king of the table. Dipped for seven to eight seconds in the broth, it emerges crunchy, fragrant, coated in a thin film of spiced oil. Yachang (鸭肠, duck intestine), another staple, cooks in a few seconds and delivers an elastic texture with a faint smoky note. Huanghou (黄喉, beef or pork aorta), naohua (脑花, pork brain), and xianxia hua (鲜虾滑, fresh shrimp paste) round out a constellation of ingredients that make Sichuan hotpot a total culinary adventure.

Beijing: Mongolian Lamb Hotpot

Thousands of miles to the north, Beijing hotpot offers a striking contrast. Here, there is no red broth, no devastating chili. Shuan yangrou (涮羊肉, "rinsed lamb in broth") is an exercise in purity and minimalism.

The pot itself is a work of art. The tongguo (铜锅), a hammered red-copper pot, is topped with a central chimney in which charcoal burns. This design, inherited from northern nomadic traditions, keeps the broth at a constant temperature and gives the pot its unmistakable silhouette: a ring of simmering broth around a smoking cylinder. The broth itself is staggeringly simple: water, a few slices of ginger, goji berries, a handful of dried jujubes, perhaps a green onion. That is all. The flavor comes entirely from the quality of the lamb and the dipping sauce.

The lamb used for shuan yangrou is traditionally Inner Mongolian lamb, sliced to extreme thinness with a special long knife. The slices, so thin they are nearly translucent, cook in two to three seconds in the simmering broth: you "rinse" them in the boiling water with a quick flick of the wrist, hence the verb shuan (涮, "to rinse"). The meat, barely seared, retains all its tenderness and flavor.

The dipping sauce, majiang (麻酱, sesame paste), is the soul of Beijing's shuan yangrou. Thick, creamy, tasting of toasted hazelnuts, it is enriched with furu (腐乳, fermented tofu), chopped scallion, fresh cilantro, chili oil, and sometimes Chinese chive blossom. Every restaurant has its own recipe, and regulars can identify an establishment by the taste of its sesame sauce alone.

The most famous shuan yangrou restaurant in Beijing is Donglai Shun (东来顺), founded in 1903 by a Hui Muslim named Ding Deshan (丁德山). Located near Wangfujing Street, the restaurant survived every upheaval of the 20th century, from the fall of the Empire to the Republic, from civil war to the Cultural Revolution, without ever closing. To this day, Donglai Shun is regarded as the definitive reference for shuan yangrou, and many Beijingers consider a visit to the capital incomplete without eating there.

Canton and the South: The Finesse of Clear Broth

Head south to Guangdong, and you enter a culinary philosophy that is the polar opposite of Sichuan. Cantonese cuisine, renowned for the purity of its flavors and its respect for ingredient freshness, has developed a hotpot in its own image: delicate, subtle, almost medicinal.

The dabianlu (打边炉), or Cantonese hotpot, is built on a qingtang (清汤, "clear broth"), a limpid consomme made from pork bones, chicken, sometimes fish, simmered for hours with ingredients drawn from traditional Chinese medicine: hongzao (红枣, jujubes), gouqi (枸杞, goji berries), dried longyan (龙眼, longan), shanyao (山药, Chinese yam), and lotus root. The resulting broth is golden, translucent, deeply gentle, and designed to nourish as much as to heal. In the Cantonese tradition, eating a clear-broth hotpot is an act of bu (补, "to nourish, to tonify"), a gesture of care toward one's own body.

The ingredients of Cantonese hotpot reflect the proximity of the sea and the abundance of fresh produce in Guangdong. Live shrimp, slices of rock fish, oysters, clams, and squid sit alongside vegetables of impeccable freshness: edible chrysanthemum leaves, watercress, lettuce, Chinese cabbage. Fish is sometimes brought to the table alive in a bucket of water, killed and cut in front of diners to guarantee absolute freshness. This Cantonese obsession with freshness, summed up in the word xianwei (鲜味, "flavor of freshness"), reaches its apex in hotpot.

Yunnan: Wild Mushrooms and Mountain Herbs

In Yunnan province, in China's southwest, hotpot takes on an almost mystical dimension. Yunnan is the mycological paradise of the planet: more than 800 species of edible mushrooms grow in its mountain forests, from porcini to matsutake, chanterelles to black trumpets, morels to endemic species found nowhere else on Earth.

The juntang guo (菌汤锅, "mushroom broth hotpot") is a hymn to this fungal wealth. The broth is prepared by simmering an assortment of dried and fresh wild mushrooms for hours, creating a liquid of amber color and staggering umami depth. Into it go fresh seasonal mushrooms, slices of Yunnan black chicken (a local breed with black flesh and bones, prized for its medicinal properties), wild herbs gathered from the mountains, and local tofu. The result is a hotpot of extraordinary finesse, with woody, earthy, and floral flavors that evoke a forest after rain.

The black chicken and medicinal herb hotpot, yaoshan ji guo (药膳鸡锅), pushes the link between cooking and pharmacopoeia even further. It features ginseng, Chinese angelica danggui (当归), astragalus huangqi (黄芪), and other medicinal roots that make this hotpot a true "meal-as-remedy." This tradition, deeply rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, is a reminder that for the Chinese, the line between food and medicine is porous, even nonexistent. The great Tang dynasty physician Sun Simiao (孙思邈, 581-682) famously said: "He who does not know how to eat does not know how to live."

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In a Yunnan broth, the mushrooms tell stories of mountains, rain, and forest floors. Every sip is a walk through the woods with your eyes closed, a conversation between the earth and the one it feeds.

The Art of the Broth

The broth, or guodi (锅底, literally "pot base"), is the soul of hotpot. Without a good guodi, the finest ingredients in the world are nothing but a jumble of flavors drifting in hot water. The Chinese know this: when choosing a hotpot restaurant, the first question is always "How is the guodi?"

The most popular concept in modern restaurants is the yuanyang guo (鸳鸯锅, "mandarin duck pot"), a pot divided into two compartments by an S-shaped metal divider. On one side, the red broth, spicy and oily; on the other, the white broth, clear and mild. Mandarin ducks, symbols of conjugal love in Chinese culture, lend their name to this two-headed pot because the two halves, though different, form an inseparable whole. The yuanyang guo is a diplomatic compromise: it allows mala lovers and sensitive stomachs to coexist at the same table, each dipping their ingredients into whichever side suits them.

Preparing a quality Sichuan red broth is a process that demands patience and expertise. Beef tallow is first clarified and melted. Then, in a precise order and at controlled temperatures, the various spices and aromatics are added. Doubanjiang (豆瓣酱) from Pixian, fermented for at least one year, brings complex heat and umami. Huajiao (花椒) is added near the end of cooking to preserve its volatile aroma and numbing power. Bajiao (八角, star anise) contributes sweet, licorice-like notes. Guipi (桂皮, cinnamon) adds warmth and roundness. Caoguo (草果, false cardamom), with its smoky, camphorous perfume, adds depth. Xiaohuixiang (小茴香, fennel seeds) offers an anise touch. Dingxiang (丁香, clove), pungent and powerful, is used sparingly. Every hotpot master jealously guards the secret of their proportions: changing a single gram of one spice can transform the balance of a broth.

Beyond flavor, hotpot broth follows the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. The concept of bu (补, "to nourish, to tonify") is ever-present. Each ingredient in the broth possesses, according to the Chinese pharmacopoeia, specific properties. Ginger warms the body and expels dampness. Jujubes nourish the blood. Goji strengthens the kidneys and improves eyesight. Astragalus boosts qi (气, vital energy). Even the spicy red broth has its medical logic: in the humid, foggy climate of Sichuan and Chongqing, pungent, warming spices are believed to expel internal dampness and stimulate circulation.

The temperature of the broth itself is a subject of debate among connoisseurs. The Chinese distinguish the moment when the broth "smiles," weixiao (微笑), meaning small bubbles rise gently to the surface without agitation, from the moment it "laughs out loud," meaning it boils vigorously. Some ingredients (thin meat slices, duck intestine) can only take a few seconds in a "laughing" broth. Others (radish, potatoes, cartilage) need a long soak in a broth that "smiles."

The Hotpot Table: Ingredients and Rituals

A hotpot dinner is a spectacle. The table gradually fills with dozens of plates, small dishes, sauces, and utensils in an organized abundance that looks like a Flemish still life transplanted to Asia. Every category of ingredient has its place, its role, and its moment.

Meats arrive first, arranged on plates with geometric precision. Feiniu (肥牛, "fatty beef"), sliced so thin that its marbling forms pink and white arabesques, is the most ordered ingredient in hotpots across all of China. Yangrou (羊肉, lamb), in slices rolled on themselves like shavings of precious wood, is inseparable from northern hotpot. Offal, the glory of Chongqing hotpot, holds a place of honor: maodu (毛肚, beef tripe), yachang (鸭肠, duck intestine), huanghou (黄喉, aorta), naohua (脑花, brain), yaoxian (腰线, sliced kidney), each piece requiring a different cooking time that regulars know by heart.

Vegetables form the second wave. Lotus root ou (藕), cut into rounds that reveal their flower-shaped chambers, absorbs the broth and develops a crunchy, sweet texture. Chinese cabbage baicai (白菜), spinach leaves, lettuce, and winter melon donggua (冬瓜) bring freshness and lightness to a meal dominated by fat and spice. Enoki mushrooms jinzhengu (金针菇), in white clusters as fine as angel hair, oyster mushrooms, and shiitake complete the vegetable tableau.

Tofu, in all its forms, is a hotpot pillar. Fresh tofu nendoufu (嫩豆腐), silky and fragile, absorbs broth like a sponge and melts in the mouth. Fried tofu youdoufu (油豆腐), golden and spongy, captures spicy flavors in its cavities. Tofu skin doufupi (豆腐皮), thin as parchment, wraps around chopsticks. Frozen tofu dongdoufu (冻豆腐), whose freezing has turned its texture into a honeycomb structure, absorbs prodigious amounts of broth with every bite. Coagulated duck blood yaxue (鸭血), cut into cubes of dark, trembling red, is a Sichuan specialty that the uninitiated approach with caution and regulars devour with passion.

Noodles traditionally come at the end of the meal, when the broth has been enriched by all the flavors deposited by previous ingredients. Fensi (粉丝, mung bean vermicelli), translucent and slippery, capture broth in their folds. Kuanfen (宽粉, wide sweet potato noodles), thick and gelatinous, are the favorite in Sichuan hotpots. Some restaurants also offer fresh wheat noodles or rice at the end, cooked in the concentrated broth to produce a final soup of extraordinary richness.

Sauces: The Expression of Self

If the broth is the collective soul of hotpot, the individual dipping sauce is its personal expression. Each diner assembles THEIR sauce from a buffet of condiments laid out on a dedicated table, and that choice reveals a great deal about their character, regional origins, and eating habits.

In Chongqing, tradition is radically simple: a bowl of pure sesame oil xiangyou (香油) with a few crushed cloves of raw garlic. That is it. The sesame oil, smooth and fragrant, counterbalances the violence of the red broth and shields the mouth's lining from the burn of the spices. Garlic, a natural antibacterial, is seen as a form of health insurance. Chongqing purists look with amused condescension at anyone who adds other ingredients to what they consider the perfect formula.

In Beijing, sesame paste majiang (麻酱) is king. To it, one adds fermented tofu furu (腐乳), chopped Chinese chives, fresh cilantro, chili oil, sometimes oyster sauce. The result is a thick, creamy, complex sauce that wraps the lamb in a coat of flavor. In the south, light soy sauce shengchou (生抽), mixed with fresh chopped chili, scallion, and a drizzle of sesame oil, accompanies seafood and vegetables with a restraint that lets the natural flavors speak.

Some modern restaurants offer dozens of condiments at the sauce bar: oyster sauce, Chinkiang black vinegar, shrimp paste, chili oil, crushed peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, garlic, ginger, scallion, cilantro, Chinese chives, XO sauce. Building your sauce becomes a creative act, almost playful, and the lively debates over the "best combination" are part and parcel of hotpot's social pleasures.

The Order of Cooking

Hotpot has its unwritten rules, passed down through generations, that every Chinese person absorbs from childhood. You always start with meats, whose fats and juices enrich the broth for the ingredients that follow. Offal comes next: their quick cooking demands broth at a full boil. Then vegetables, which absorb the accumulated flavors. Noodles come last, to take advantage of a broth that has become, over the course of the meal, a concentrate of every flavor deposited by every ingredient.

The technique of qishang baxia (七上八下, "seven up, eight down") is the first lesson anyone learns. To cook a slice of meat to perfection, you grip it between your chopsticks, dip it into the broth, lift it out, dip it back in, seven or eight times in rapid succession. The meat, briefly seared with each immersion, cooks evenly without toughening. Leaving a slice of marbled beef sitting at the bottom of the pot for five minutes is, to a connoisseur, an unforgivable culinary sin.

Managing the heat is a collective responsibility. The broth must never overflow: spilled fat on the table could catch fire. When the level drops, you add hot broth (never cold, which would crash the temperature). When scum collects on the surface, you skim it off gently with a strainer. These gestures, performed instinctively by regulars, are the small liturgies of a food ritual that transforms a simple meal into a shared experience.

Haidilao and the Modern Hotpot Revolution

The story of contemporary hotpot cannot be told without mentioning Haidilao (海底捞, literally "fishing from the bottom of the sea"), the chain that revolutionized the restaurant industry in China and beyond.

Haidilao was founded in 1994 in the small city of Jianyang (简阳), Sichuan, by Zhang Yong (张勇), a former tractor factory worker who was twenty-three years old at the time. With an initial investment of 8,000 yuan (roughly $1,000 at the time) and four tables, Zhang Yong opened an unremarkable hotpot restaurant. What set him apart from competitors was not the quality of his broth, which was decent but unremarkable, but his obsessive focus on customer service. Zhang Yong offered free snacks to waiting customers, provided manicures and shoe shines during the queue, handed out plastic aprons to protect clothing from splashes, and distributed hair ties and phone cases. He trained his servers to anticipate every need: an empty glass was refilled before the customer noticed, a tissue was offered before the sneeze came.

This service model, revolutionary in a China where restaurant staff were often indifferent or brusque, transformed Haidilao into a cultural phenomenon. The chain grew slowly in its early years, then accelerated from the 2000s onward. In 2018, Haidilao was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with an initial valuation of over $12 billion, making Zhang Yong the richest person in Singapore (where he had established his tax residency). By 2024, the chain had more than 1,400 restaurants worldwide, from New York to London, Seoul to Sydney, Paris to Dubai.

Haidilao's innovation did not stop at service. The chain introduced robot servers in some restaurants, tablet ordering, customizable broths (customers choose the spice level, the base type, and extra seasonings), hand-pulled noodle performances by acrobatic servers at tableside, and even video game rooms in waiting areas. The Haidilao experience has become total entertainment: a blend of dining, spectacle, and technology that draws families and young social-media content seekers alike.

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At Haidilao, the broth is almost beside the point. What people come for is the joy of being treated like royalty in a palace of steam and chili, the surprise of a server bringing a birthday cake you never ordered, and the certainty that for one evening at least, the world revolves around your table.

The success of Haidilao has spawned an army of competitors. Xiaolongkan (小龙坎), founded in Chengdu in 2014, banks on the authenticity of Sichuan flavor and the use of pure beef tallow. Shudaxia (蜀大侠), also from Chengdu, stands out with theatrical presentation and broths from supposedly ancient recipes. Tangnayin (堂那吟) offers "terroir" hotpots with certified locally sourced ingredients. Hundreds of other brands compete in a market estimated at over 500 billion yuan (approximately $70 billion) in 2024.

One recent and revealing trend is the rise of "solo hotpot." In urban China, where single people are increasingly common and eating alone is no longer taboo, restaurants offer individual mini-pots, each with its own burner, arranged along counters sometimes equipped with tablets or screens. Hotpot, the quintessential social act, adapts to modern solitude without losing its essence: even alone at your pot, you are still your own cook, master of your choices and your cooking.

Hotpot Beyond China

Chinese hotpot, like tea, silk, and porcelain before it, has crossed borders to take root across Asia and, increasingly, around the world.

In Southeast Asia, the concept of shared cooking in a communal broth has produced fascinating local variants. In Thailand, mookata (หมูกะทะ), a hybrid of barbecue and hotpot, is served on a domed plate: the top is used for grilling meat while broth simmers in the outer moat, cooking vegetables and noodles. In Malaysia and Singapore, the steamboat (a name inherited from British colonial days) is a communal-dining classic, often served with a coconut milk broth and local spices. In Vietnam, lau reprises the Chinese hotpot principle with Vietnamese flavors: lemongrass, galangal, fresh chili.

The most famous cousin of Chinese hotpot is arguably Japanese shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ). Imported to Japan in the 1950s, probably by Japanese businessmen who had tasted shuan yangrou in Beijing, shabu-shabu gets its name from the onomatopoeia of meat being "swished" in broth (a sound the Japanese render as "shabu-shabu"). The broth is a delicate dashi made from kombu (dried kelp), the meats are wagyu beef and pork, and the dipping sauces are ponzu (citrus sauce) and sesame sauce. Gentler and more refined than its Chinese ancestor, shabu-shabu perfectly illustrates the Japanese ability to absorb a foreign influence and transform it into something entirely new.

In the West, Chinese hotpot has experienced spectacular expansion since the 2010s. Major cities (Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney) now count dozens of hotpot restaurants, often opened by the Chinese diaspora but attracting an increasingly diverse clientele. In Paris, the Belleville district and the 13th arrondissement house several Sichuan hotpot establishments whose quality rivals that of restaurants in Chongqing. In New York, Flushing in Queens has become a pilgrimage destination for hotpot lovers, with restaurants serving until three in the morning and lines worthy of Haidilao.

The "hotpot at home" phenomenon has exploded in recent years, accelerated by the 2020 pandemic that forced millions to cook at home. Asian supermarkets worldwide now sell ready-made guodi packets made by Haidilao, Xiaolongkan, and other brands, allowing you to prepare hotpot broth in minutes. Pre-sliced frozen meats, noodles, tofu, and pre-packaged vegetables complete the offering. Home hotpot has become a popular social ritual, an alternative to dining out that preserves the essence of the experience: the pot at the center, friends around it, and the freedom to choose your own ingredients.

Local adaptations range from bold to bewildering. Vegetarian hotpot, driven by the global vegan wave, replaces beef tallow with vegetable oil and bone broth with mushroom or tomato stock. Cheese hotpot, a fusion invention that appeared in Taiwan and South Korea, adds a slice of melting cheese to the broth, creating a creamy emulsion that horrifies purists and delights the curious. Collagen hotpot, popularized in Japan and China, features a cube of collagen-rich gelatinous broth said to beautify the skin (a marketing promise that makes dermatologists smile and consumers swoon).

Hotpot has also become a social-media phenomenon. On TikTok, Instagram, and Xiaohongshu (小红书, "Little Red Book," China's lifestyle recommendation platform), hotpot videos have racked up billions of views. The ASMR of simmering broth, the hypnotic motion of chopsticks dipping and rising, the steam spiraling upward, the incandescent color of red broth: everything about hotpot is inherently photogenic and videogenic. Restaurants have caught on, designing their presentations for "food content": meats arranged in rosettes, two-tone broths shaped like yin and yang, tables lit for selfies.

But beyond the trends and fads, the deeper reason for hotpot's universal success is simpler and older than any algorithm: hotpot speaks the language of sharing. It requires no culinary skill, no prior knowledge, no specialized equipment. All you need is a pot, a flame, fresh ingredients, and people to eat with. Hotpot is the most democratic meal there is: everyone cooks what they want, at their own pace, according to their own taste, with no hierarchy and no protocol. It is this fundamental simplicity, this ability to bring strangers together around a shared cloud of steam, that makes hotpot a universal dish, understood from Chongqing to Chicago, from Canton to Copenhagen.

The next time you sit before a bubbling pot, steam rising to your face and the scent of spices seizing your senses, remember that this gesture, dipping your chopsticks into a shared broth, has been performed by millions of human beings before you, from the bronze cauldrons of the Shang dynasty to the connected tables of Haidilao. Hotpot is a fire pot, yes, but above all it is a pot of memory: a vessel in which the Chinese art of eating together has been simmering for three thousand years.