Me and Old Godmother

Half a Decade of Obsession with China's Original Chili Crisp

Guest Post by Kyle Muntz. Pre-order his upcoming novel from Clash Books. I read an early draft of this novel and loved it. It’s creepy and funny and sometimes the body horror will make your skin crawl.

If you’d like to submit your own writing for a future Guest Post, please see the post here.

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In 2016, when I left a northern Chinese university for a new job in the south, a student arranged a meeting to give me a very peculiar gift. She told me it was something “very special”—but we had to wait a few days, because she’d ordered it off the internet and it hadn’t arrived yet. I was both flattered and a little confused. What could possibly be worth the trouble? But whatever I had expected, I was surprised all over again to open the bag and see two jars of Laoganma staring back at me. Or, as she’s affectionately known in China, “Old Godmother.”

Old Godmother is a woman of many mysteries. For twenty years, I would later find out, this has been the face of China’s most popular chili sauce, one notorious for inspiring an almost fanatical devotion in its fans. Her distracted, vaguely melancholic gaze is the exact opposite of Aunt Jemima’s beaming smile. What was she thinking about, I wondered—and why had she allowed this moment to be captured, this one dour expression to be frozen in time? Why give a chili sauce such a bizarre name, a not-quite homonym that literally translates to “old dry mother” or even “old fuck mother”? And of course, why go through so much trouble for a gift—one that, in its humble jar, looks pretty much like any Chinese chili oil?

It would be nearly six months before I finally knew the answer to that question. My jars of Laoganma stayed with a friend in Shandong for the summer, packed in an over-stuffed suitcase with the rest of my worldly possessions, and later journeyed over a thousand miles south to Guangzhou. But even on the other side of the world, in America, Old Godmother never entirely left my mind. What exactly did this stuff taste like? The student had said I could “eat it with rice, or pretty much anything,” which did little to resolve the mystery. But six months later, reunited in a new kitchen and a new city, I pried open the lid to meet Old Godmother for myself.

It looked, I thought at first, unusually chunky for Chinese chili oil. This “sauce” was, in fact, mostly solids—a rocky accumulation of fried chilis, crisped shallots, crunchy black beans, and pungent garlic drenched in a dark coat of funky oil. It had seemed crimson from outside, but now those murky, flavorful depths appeared almost black. My spoon encountered resistance as it burrowed beneath the surface, an audible shift as the sediment churned. My early explorations of Chinese supermarkets had taught me enough to know that many Chinese “sauces” are actually more like flavored oils. But even the smell of this one was different: deep, smoky, shot through with a rapturous airy tang.

I ate that first bite right off the spoon. And the result was something beyond complexity: earthy spice, an explosion of umami, the numbing “ma” of Sichuan peppercorns, but most of all, texture. In contrast to the hard, inedible flakes of many Chinese chili oils, everything about Old Godmother is robust. There are whole chilies—and you can actually eat them! Every bite crunches just firm enough, a savory blast that somehow doesn’t overwhelm with heat. Skimming Amazon reviews, I discovered I had stumbled into a cliché: everyone always mentions eating this stuff right from the jar. But that doesn’t make it easier to resist.

Old Godmother has a story too, and it’s a good one. Tao Huabi began as the illiterate owner of a noodle shop in Guiyang province; she had no highschool degree, no professional training, only a recipe for chili sauce. Soon, she realized her customers liked the sauce more than the noodles. According to some accounts, children called her “Old Godmother” as they passed on the street; in others, her employees appreciated her “motherly” way of running her first factory, a small local building where she employed only 40 people. At this point, the stories flash forward with an inevitable, almost disconcerting smoothness. Soon, Tao had become China’s “Chili Sauce Empress,” the undisputed matriarch of its supermarkets and home-kitchens. No two accounts agree on the exact details of these early years—but the same is true, I suppose, of the founding of any great empire.

It’s such a remarkable story, in fact, that a part of me still doesn’t believe it. It feels like a marketing campaign written in an office somewhere, the ultimate tribute to China’s era of reform and opening up—that brief window when, indeed, many of the country’s super-rich had been working on farms only a few years before. It may be that China sees in Old Godmother everything it would like to see in itself. But, from what I can tell, Tao Huabi is an actual person. She still technically owns the company, though one of her two sons is acting president, and has gone to court multiple times to defend her brand against copycats. These days she’s looking a few decades older, but still recognizable, whatever her actual role in the company.

Her myth, however, only makes the sauce more real. I ate a quarter of the jar with an omelet over rice—and then just a second bowl of rice. What began as curiosity soon became an obsession. Within weeks, I was making Laoganma ground pork, which became the basis for Laoganma tofu with pickled vegetables. Soon, I had recipes for Laoganma chicken with peanuts; Laoganma beef with scallions; Laoganma noodles, hot or cold; Laoganma green beans; diced Laoganma mushrooms with celery and onion; cold Laoganma cucumbers; Laoganma mixed rice. I’ve now successfully created a Laoganma taco. And it turns out a Laoganma burger is not only possible, but delicious.

In 2016, I googled Old Godmother and I found only a few, isolated articles on food blogs with a tone of reverent, almost missionary dedication. Many converts spoke of “cooking with her” in a tone that recalled “living with Jesus”. Yet for years, somehow Old Godmother still felt like a secret—a remarkable achievement for a woman who already dominated the largest consumer market in the world.

Tao boasts her sauce “can be found wherever there are Chinese people,” which means pretty much everywhere. But like China’s ancient dynasties, the Chili Sauce Empress has shown surprisingly little interest in expanding beyond the country’s borders. Even today, the sauce sells for less than two dollars a jar in China, but that same amount will still cost you at least seven dollars from a reseller on Amazon—even if you buy in bulk. In general, despite growing interest and emerging competition (more on that soon), Laoganma is still available mostly at Asian grocery stores.

In 2018, two years after discovering Laoganma, I took a first shot at writing this article—but soon found I was too late. Serious Eats and most other large magazines had published features on this “new and exciting” condiment only months before. Food blogs overflowed with ecstatic gushing about chili crisps; Youtube chefs had already discovered quirky ways of working it into recipes. Still, in the real world, Laoganma remained obscure—though that summer, when I visited a friend in America, I played my part by serving Laoganma with cumin beef and got his wife hooked.

A bigger surprise came a year later, during another visit home. This time, walking through Kroger, I was surprised to notice a different brand of fried chili crisp in the store’s Asian isles: obviously a Laoganma knock-off. At first, I was just baffled. Why, I wondered, would anyone settle for this weak garbage when they could be eating the real thing? This wasn’t Trader Joe’s tame, vaguely European Chili Garlic Crunch. This usurper was obviously trying to steal Old Godmother’s throne—and of course, there on the front, was the expected tag proclaiming: NO MSG!

Strangely, in those days before Uncle Roger conquered Youtube, and Babish and Joushua Wiessman proudly sprinkled MSG into fried chicken, I found myself resenting this bland-looking pretender. How dare they STEAL a market which rightfully belonged to my Old Godmother—without any credit, or any form of acknowledgement—and then advertise cutting MSG as if that made it better, rather than worse? In fact, it reminded me of copyright issues the then-commander-in-chief wouldn’t shut up about: but rather than US corporate secrets or whatever.... now, at last, here was something stolen in reverse.

I resolved, right then, that I would never try one of these pale, bastardly pretenders to the throne. Later that day, I dropped by the Asian market where I’d done most of my shopping in university. In 2014, before I moved to China, they hadn’t caried Laoganma at all. But now, there she was, staring back at me—a whole section of Old Godmother—and I felt faithful, like I was being a good godson, as I bought not one jar, but two. Even today, some bizarrely loyal part of me is always relieved to see that many Asian markets don’t even carry competing brands of chili oil.

The same cannot be said for Instagram. Throughout 2020, every time I logged on, I was assaulted with advertisements for Laoganma imitators, including a bizarre slideshow of a white people at a picnic advertising “American chili crisp”, until eventually Fly By Jing (the current champion?) overtook them all. That was about when I realized this stuff must finally have caught on. Not only was the secret out, chili crisps were getting popular! Earlier this year, Eater was one of many magazines to publish a list of the ultimate guide to Chili crisps, which features over a dozen varieties of the stuff; and the Guardian did their part by labeling chili crisps one the year’s main food-trends.

But in the midst of these emerging variations, attitudes towards Old Godmother herself seem to be changing. At last—following the path of Sriracha and products like it—Old Godmother is getting old. Other brands now present themselves as “upmarket” chili crisps, for distinguishing consumers, including celebrity chefs like David Chang and Eric Sze, who have entered the race with their own, more elaborate takes on the sauce. Many utilize clever twists on Old Godmother’s original ingredients, like Chang’s reliance on Mexican chilis for his Momofuku brand sauce; and the vast majority of them, yes, have no MSG. 

In time, I suspect, Old Godmother’s transformation into old news will be complete. New food trends will take her place; the endless string of imitations will stop being advertised on my Instagram. But still, this peculiar brand loyalty remains. I don’t quite understand this vaguely personal connection I feel to Tao Huabi—a woman I know mainly from that single, ever-present portrait. Perhaps because she was the one and only condiment ever given to me as a gift. Perhaps it’s the lingering pride of discovering her before most Americans did. Or maybe it’s a side effect of all the proselytizing: by this point, I’ve got half a dozen friends finishing off their rice with Laoganma.

But one convert has proved especially illusive: my girlfriend. For the last three years, she and I have cooked many of our meals together—and dozens of them have ended with the same ritual. Rather than eating my rice along with my food, I eat it slowly: carefully saving half a bowl for the end, so I can turn it into a mixed rice “banfan” with the last few scraps of dinner and a scoop or two of Laoganma.

Years before, when we first began to date, I had tried to impress my girlfriend with my still-shiny recipe for Laoganma chicken. My previous attempts to cook for her had gone great (and most of them since). But I still remember how her eyes scrunched with the first bite. Her lips pursed; her throat quivered. She attempted—nobly, sweetly—to keep chewing, but eventually spat the wretched mouthful out into a napkin.

“What’s that flavor?” she asked, coughing, even as I happily worked my way through my serving. The result was the same when she tried a second bite: “It’s terrible!” And we had the same experience again and again—even, with dumplings, when I used the faintest hint of Laoganma with vinegar for dipping. Laoganma smashed cucumbers or mapo tofu have long been out of the question.

On occasion, she’s speculated it’s because people from her region of China rarely eat spicy food. But whatever the reason: my girlfriend just doesn’t like Old Godmother. And by now this has become one of our private rituals: the mischievous, self-mocking laugh as I stand up near the edge of a meal, emphasizing that—yes, really—I’ve forgotten the most important ingredient, and her familiar, faintly disappointed sigh as I open the refrigerator.

“Laoganma again?” she’ll ask, with the studied patience of an adult humoring a problematic child. And yet I take an obstinate, tenacious joy—the bliss of a fanatic—in scooping my chili crisp onto my rice and downing it, even as she says, “Doesn’t it taste good already?”

“Sure,” I said. “But this way it tastes better.”

Half a decade now, Laoganma has been the only large corporation to inspire this uncanny, persistent loyalty. Otherwise, I’m a compulsive sampler who rarely buys a brand more than once; for the most part, I just make my own sauces. But six months ago, something changed. I noticed... not that I was getting bored, no. It crept up on me slowly, but....

At last, when we went to buy groceries from the Asian market, suddenly I was looking at other products. At first I felt like a married man contemplating infidelity: how could another brand ever take Old Godmother’s place? That first time, the idea was squashed nearly as soon as it emerged... but two, three more trips, and the scintillating notion only grew more powerful. Once, I even picked up another brand, tossed it in my basket, then—just before checkout—took it back to the shelves.

But at last, I too have started trying other brands of fried chili crisp. The vast majority pale pitifully in comparison... but on occasion some of them are actually pretty good. And it seems I’m not alone: even in China, some sources say Tao Huabi’s dominance may be waning. Her sales have been dropping ever since 2017; according to Euromonitor, in 2018, Laoganma accounted for only 3.6 percent of China’s seasoning market, less than other prominent brands. And her products now consistently fail to make it into the “top ten” of large Chinese internet commerce platforms.

I suspect the reign of the Chili Sauce Empress isn’t over yet, even as her territory shrinks—and, on the other side of the world, the Krogers and Walmarts and Wholefoods of America fill with jars of other chili crisps, while hers remain confined to specialty markets. Someday, these other brands might obscure her memory entirely: and I can’t help but wonder. In ten, twenty years, will I be like the loyalists of China’s Ming Dynasty—who, decades after the country was conquered by the Manchu, still pledged loyalty to a vanished dynasty... even on pain of death? Will I still finish my bowls of rice with this sauce that was once such an amazing discovery, but is now familiar, even passe?

Or will I, too, leave my Old Godmother behind?