"Thin blue mushroom" dish

On Oct. 19, Hunan University's cafeteria officially started to serve a fried dish called "thin blue mushroom," referencing a popular online buzzword. The dish enticed many students to have a taste, selling out in just half an hour.

Li Jianhong, manager of the cafeteria, described "thin blue mushroom" as a vegetable dish featuring stir-fried broccoli and mushrooms. The "blue" stands for broccoli, since Chinese for the color blue (lan) shares the same pronunciation a character in the Chinese for broccoli (xi lan hua). Li explained that students are likely to be attracted by the dish's name, and the components of the dish are quite healthy.

The phrase "thin blue mushroom" was popularized online thanks to a video in which a young man in Guangxi expressed disappointment over his bad luck in love affairs. When spoken in the regional dialect, the Chinese for "sad and feeling like you want to cry" (nan shou xiang ku) sounds similar to "thin blue mushroom" (lan shou xiang gu). The phrase has even been registered as a company's brand in Shenzhen, with capital of 500,000 RMB.

Some students at Hunan University spoke highly of the culinary innovation, while critics professed to be uninterested in the vegetable dish regardless of its name. Several students suggested adding some lean meat into the dish.