China's Stir-fried Stones / Suodiu

About

China's Stir-fried Stones, also known as China's Stir-fry Pebbles, is a street food fad in China in which small rocks are stir-fried and mixed with spices then given to the customer who sucks on the stones and then spits them out. In China, the food is called Suodiu (嗦丟), which translates to "suck and discard" in English. It's also called "炸石头," which simply translates to "fried stones" in English. A video from CNN's travel channel went viral on Twitter in June 2023 showing a man cooking the stones and customers eating them. The video was originally posted to Douyin, China's version of TikTok. After the video went viral on Twitter, it led to viral discourse and memes about the food trend, mostly related to stones, in general, being seemingly inedible.

History

The Chinese dish of stir-fried stones known as "suodiu (嗦丟)" translates to "suck and discard" in English.^[1] The dish reportedly dates back hundreds of years and is from the Chinese province of Hubei.^[1] It was created by boatmen in Hubei who'd often run out of animals and vegetables while traveling along the Yangtze River.^[1] The dish consists of stir-frying smooth river pebbles with garlic and chili then sucking on them to gain the nutrients, only to spit out the pebbles when done.^[1]

According to The Guardian,^[1] the dish fell out of popularity when cars were invented and spread to the Hubei region. The dish later rose in popularity in the 2010s and early 2020s due to viral videos of the dish being prepared and eaten on Chinese, short-form video apps like Douyin and Kuaishou.^[1]

Online Presence

As stated, suodiu gained popularity in the 2010s with the rise of social media. For instance, an early, viral discourse about suodiu was an answer posted to Quora^[2] by user Feng Jiaxin on August 6th, 2017. The answer was to the question "What is the weirdest dish you have seen in China?" to which Feng Jiaxin gave suodiu as an example, including many images of the dish from Chinese social media. Over the course of six years, the answer gained roughly 7,000 upvotes (shown below, click to enlarge).

Going into the 2020s, videos about suodiu started appearing en masse on Chinese, short-form video apps like Douyin.^[3] For instance, Douyin^[4] user @猪头新一 uploaded a video in early June 2023 that showed a street food vendor making suodiu, gaining roughly 19,800 likes in three weeks (YouTube upload shown below, left). In June 2023, English-speaking internet users started to discover and discuss the food trend, such as YouTuber^[5] China Fact Chasers who uploaded a video on June 19th called "Are People in China Seriously Eating Rocks?" gaining roughly 13,700 views in one week (shown below, right).

On June 24th, 2023, the Twitter^[6] page for CNN International (@cnni) tweeted a video from CNN's travel channel that used multiple clips of suodiu being prepared and eaten. The tweet read, "World’s hardest dish? Stir-fried stones are China’s latest street food fad," and gained roughly 10,700 likes in two days. The tweet received various, viral quote retweets in the days that followed. For instance, on June 25th, Twitter^[7] user @DocStrangelove2 captioned the video, "I like to think the last time China had a major food riot/uprising happened some dude was given a bowl of rocks to eat and it just sent him over the edge," gaining roughly 6,200 likes in one day (shown below).

Other viral quote retweets^[8] surfaced in late June 2023. For instance, Twitter^[9] user @TAGASAING speculated in a QRT (which gained roughly 8,300 likes in one day) that the tradition of eating suodiu was "popularized as an ironic joke thing by younger chinese online," likening the "ironic joke" to "Gen Z irony." Twitter^[10] user @TAGASAING further suggested in a reply to their own tweet, "It was done in the past as a struggle food because food was scarce but it’s done now bc younger ppl online think its funny. Is it that hard to understand" (shown below).

Various Reactions

Search Interest

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External References