Bathhouse ‘hotpot pool’ spices up Net

A CHINESE bathhouse has expressed its utmost love for hotpot by opening a hot spring pool that resembles a hotpot with “boiling broth.”

The “spicy hotpot” pool has become an instant hit on social media after it was opened in Chongqing, a southwestern city known for its spicy food and rich hotpot culture, earlier this month.

The round pool, 6.7 meters in diameter, gained a spicy red color from the addition of herbs and wine, and a gushing spring adds to the likeness of a seething soup.

“Hotpot epitomizes the culture and spirit of Chongqing, and the pool pays tribute to them,” said Wang Mi, manager of the Ronghui Hot Spring that operates the pool.

To make the customers feel more like food being cooked, the bathhouse filled the soup with chili- and onion-shaped toys and placed gigantic chopsticks and plates around the pot.

On China’s vibrant Internet, avid netizens are buzzing with tongue-in-cheek questions about how it feels to take a bath in a “spicy” soup pot.

“This hotpot only contains vegetables, you need to bring your own meat,” joked one user on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo.

Popular across China, hotpot allows eaters to cook almost any food in a boiling, often spicy, pot.

Excluding the latest batch of tourists, the most common ingredients put in the pot include thinly sliced mutton or beef, offal, seafood and vegetables.