There 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 sauce, Tao Huabi, also known as "China's hottest woman", has well and truly opposed this rule.
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 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.
Miranda Brown, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Michigan, who is writing a book on the history of Chinese food, says that in China, Lao Gan Ma's popularity is mainly because her products are natural. Chinese consumers tend to want foods that perfectly mix regional flavors and use ingredients grown from the soil of those regions. And today Lao Gan Ma is also increasingly popular overseas, especially in the US.
According to its website, the company produces 1.3 million bottles daily, helping the historically poor Guizhou achieve 10. 5% growth—the second fastest of every Chinese province that year, and ahead of the national rate of 6.7%.
As for the godmother herself, an article in Yicai Global describes her as the Queen of a "red kingdom" of chili fields.
