‘China’s hottest woman’: the driving force behind crunchy chilli sensation Lao Gan Ma
Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chilli Crisp condiment. Photograph: Alamy
Tao Huabi rose from humble origins in south-western China to create a beloved condiment that can now be found in fridges around the world
here is a saying about the south-western Chinese province of Guizhou: “Not three feet of flat land, not three days without rain, not a family with three silver coins.” But, with the help of a spicy condiment, Tao Huabi, also known as China’s “hottest woman”, has well and truly defied this rule.
Tao Huabi is the woman behind Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chilli Crisp, a hot, crunchy sauce of chopped chillies that are fried to a red so dark it is almost black. The name means “old godmother” and everyone who picks a jar up must face the stern look of a short-haired woman. Open it, and you find the formidable combination of the odd peanut, a few crunchy, salty soya beans, MSG, and oil so infused with the chilli that it seems to glow. It looks almost dangerous.
Lao Gan Ma, iconic in China, is increasingly appearing in cupboards and fridges in the rest of the world. It is so popular in fact that Tao Huabi is worth far more than three silver coins. Forbes China estimates her fortune at $1.05bn.
Born in 1947, the eighth daughter of a poor family in a village of mountainous Guizhou, Tao did not go to school and did not learn to read or write. She spent her childhood hungry, and survived the Great Chinese Famine by eating plant roots, according to a biography in What’s On Weibo. When her husband died, she moved to the city of Guiyang and started selling noodles with a sauce that she made herself. She eventually opened the charmingly named Economical Restaurant in the 1990s. When a new highway brought truck drivers to Guiyang, she gave them free jars of the sauce and they spread the word. In 1996, she set a factory up in a house in Guiyang, and a year later Lao Gan Ma Special Flavour Foodstuffs Company was born.
continues at theguardian.com |
