How an egg fried rice recipe landed this celebrity Chinese chef in a soup

A Chinese celebrity chef has landed introuble for uploading a video of himself, cooking egg fried rice. The chef, Wang Gang, with millions of followers on Weibo (a Chinese microblogging site), faced the wrath of angry Chinese netizens as they believe that he mocked Mao Zedong’s son by uploading a video of how to cook egg fried rice. Buy, why so?

Mao’s eldest son, Mao Anying died in the Korean War in 1950. One story, though denied frequently, behind his death was that he was trying to cook egg fried rice instead of taking shelter, and the smoke from the fire exposed his position to enemy forces.

People in China are pretty serious about this and any reference to the dish is seen as an act of disrespect to leader Mao. In 2021, a netizen was detained for 10 days after he posted a comment saying that “the best thing to come out of the Korean War was egg fried rice.”

Chinese celebrity chef apologises after upsetting netizens with his egg fried rice video

“As a chef, I will never make fried rice again”, Wang said in his apology on Monday after taking down the video. The video of Wang preparing the dish was uploaded on Weibo on Nov 27, two days after the death anniversary of Mao Anying. He made a video apology on Nov 28 and posted the video on X.

He further said in the video that his video was posted by his team without his knowledge and that his grandfather, a Korean War veteran, later taught him to admit his mistakes and “live honestly".

Wang made the apology after he faced the fury of upset netizens who took to social media to condemn his egg fried rice recipe video.

“It seems that Wang Gang knows the story of Mao Anying’s death. It’s normal that he didn’t know it the first time. But he didn’t know it the second time? I think he was really mocking Mao Anying,” an X user posted in Chinese.

What is to be noted is that this is the second time that Wang has faced the music for his egg fried rice recipe. In October 2020, he was accused of mocking Mao’s son by posting the same recipe, for which he later apologised.

In 2019, Wang faced heavy scrutiny for cooking a critically endangered giant salamander in one of his YouTube videos.

But some netizens came to his defence as well. An X user posted in Chinese, “It’s pitiful that such an excellent chef who only teaches people how to cook can be criticised like this. It’s really sad.”

In 2018, the Chinese government criminalised the act of insulting “heroes and martyrs” who have sacrificed themselves for China or the Communist Party cause.

(With inputs from agencies)