Setting Up Random Stalls, the Whole Internet Chases Me

Food | System

After three years of being exploited by her unscrupulous agent, dance-model Sheng Manzhi is so thin she's unrecognizable. She terminates her contract on the spot.

She binds to the Heavenly Chef System. Her first task: set up a stall on Financial Street and sell braised meat wraps for 188 yuan each, with no discounts allowed.

The entire internet mocks her for being crazed about money.

Then Shen Yan, the anorexic CEO of Dingxian Group, eats seven in a row and asks with red eyes, "Can I get a monthly subscription?"

Finance professionals queue for three hours, happily squatting by the roadside to eat their wraps.

Her former agent shows up with people to smash her stall? Thousands of office workers join hands to form a human wall.

The capitalists cut off her ingredients? She rides her tricycle straight to the outskirts to pick out a pig herself.

A prepared-food giant blackens her name across the internet? She strikes her copper pot in public, and diners across the city rally to protect her stall.

Shen Yan takes off his bespoke suit and squats by the roadside to help her chop scallions. "Can I have an extra spoonful of braising sauce?"

Without even looking up, she says, "Get in line."

From a roadside cart to the national intangible cultural heritage awards stage, Sheng Manzhi uses one pot and one ladle to pry open a window of warmth and life in the cold empire of industrialized food.