How Chinese Street Snacks Became Tiktok's Hottest Global Food Craze

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The spicy strip did not originate inside a modern corporate laboratory. In 1998, catastrophic flooding across Hunan province devastated local soybean harvests, crippling the region's traditional sauce and dried-bean curd industries. Facing severe supply shortages, three food artisans in Pingjiang County substituted cheap, widely available wheat flour for soybean paste. Running the flour through extruded puffing machines, they produced elastic, chewy strands, which they subsequently bathed in fermented chili paste, Sichuan peppercorns, cumin, and vegetable oil.

The resulting snack was cheap, savory, and aggressively spiced. Throughout the early 2000s, latiao served as an after-school staple sold for loose change outside elementary campuses across mainland China. For years, the sector carried an unsavory reputation for informal cottage workshops and poor hygiene standards. That domestic perception forced an industry consolidation, leading market leaders like Weilong to construct pharmaceutical-grade cleanroom facilities, automate packaging, and reposition spicy gluten strips as an everyday, branded packaged good.