Chongqing - The 2020 Cloud Hotpot Festival in Chongqing!

Follow iChongqing as James Alexander brings you the action from the Cloud Hotpot Festival!

Starting February 26th, 2020, there is a hotpot festival held as a cloud gathering. This unique event is open to the public, so everyone can take part by ordering home delivery. After this, people then share the experience with friends through video calls.

The Chongqing Hotpot Association organized the event in partnership with Hotpot World Ltd. Other partners were the mobile platforms Koubei, E'le'me and Yonghui. The Chongqing Business Committee also supported the event.

These online commercial platforms will feature the Cloud Hotpot Festival over their homepages. They hope to entice customers with discounts of up to 50 percent. There are also e-red envelopes that lucky recipients can use when paying online.

Their intention is to help revive the hotpot industry during the Coronavirus outbreak. They aim to promote over 200 brands on more than 100 online platforms nationwide.

At the same time, they will satisfy people's craving for the delicacy, since restaurants haven't been able to open for a long time now.

During the event, people can rekindle the atmosphere of a hotpot gathering by sharing live video calls with friends and family.

How it went

After Mr. Zeng and his assistant Jenny delivered the hotpot to the community entrance, we set the table and linked up with our online companions.

Our company for hotpot this day was my English friend Zak and his family.

I wanted to make the experience feel as realistic as possible, so I linked my laptop to a projector and set up a live video call during the meal.

This was my first experience of an online lunch gathering with friends, but despite the unusual circumstances, it was great to chat live after so long without meeting.

Check out my vlog post, and share my experience of the 2020 Cloud Hotpot Festival!