Ahem. Anyhow, one Chinese restaurateur decided to take a shortcut to achieve that addictive flavor and, instead of taking the time to prepare consistently delicious food, he elected to just dump some opium in there, according to CNN. A restaurant owner in Shaanxi Province identified only as “Zhang” ground opium up into powder and used it in his noodles, which is well-known to be a vast improvement over MSG.
This gets a lot less funny (if unsurprising) when you consider how the police figured out what Zhang was doing: during a routine traffic stop of a customer of Zhang’s named Liu Juyou, the police tested the hapless noodle fancier for opium, because individuals’ rights are something the People’s Republic heard of once, but didn’t really think was for them. Juyou was then detained for two weeks until police had tested several of Zhang’s other customers (the story doesn’t say whether they were likewise detained, although it’s China, so we can probably safely assume so) and figured out that unless all these opium addicts were really, really into the same noodle place, something was probably going on.
Zhang is now in police custody awaiting, I don’t know, presumably a trial. Does China even have those? Given that the customer who unwittingly ingested opium was in for two weeks, I assume Zhang will be sentenced to 732 years hard labor.
Image via svry/Shutterstock.
