Tianshui, a city tucked away in China's north-western hills, does not normally make headline news.
But a fiery soup that owes its unique flavour to locally grown Gangu chillies has lit up the internet.
Since March, the hashtag #TianshuiMalatang, referring to a popular type of street food,
has racked up more than 140m views on Weibo, a social-media platform.
Millions have flocked to the city to try it themselves.
A local chef was caught on tape looking so miserable at work that
local authorities had to give him a talking-to so that he remembered to smile.
Increasingly the Chinese palate is craving spice.
Last year Meituan, China's biggest food-delivery app,
reported that nearly 80% of restaurants now offer spicy fare, a taste known as la in Chinese.
Look back a few hundred years, though, and chillies were nowhere to be found.
Unlike ginger and Sichuan peppers, which are native to the region and widely used,
chilli peppers were brought to China from the Americas by Portuguese and Dutch explorers only in the 16th century.
At first, nobody ate them.
For at least 50 years, they were grown as decorative plants,
prized for their cheerfully bright colour and tiny white flowers,
and occasionally used as medicinal herbs.
During China's last imperial period,
a stringent system that taxed salt forced peasants in Guizhou province to look for an alternative to the condiment.
They chose chillies, which produce several crops a year and take up little land.