She asked the internet for help with slaughtering two pigs. Thousands turned up in support
Responding to a social media post, thousands turned up at a village home in Chongqing to help an elderly man tasked with slaughtering the family pigs for Chinese New Year.
A screengrab of Daidai's original Douyin video seeking help to slaughter two pigs (left) and crowds of volunteers who showed up at her village in Chongqing. (Images: Douyin/Daidai, Xiaohongshu/山城漫姐)
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CHONGQING: It started out as a simple plea on social media: calling for volunteers to help an elderly man slaughter two family pigs, a traditional chore ahead of Chinese New Year.
What followed was far from ordinary. Thousands of people descended on a tiny village in southwestern China, turning a rural family ritual into a viral spectacle.
It began on the popular Chinese short-video sharing platform Douyin on Jan 9 when a user known as “Daidai” posted a video - inviting volunteers to her home in Hechuan, a northern district in Chongqing.
“My family is going to slaughter two pigs on Jan 11,” Daidai wrote, explaining that her father was old and no longer strong enough to restrain the animals on his own.
“I don’t think he has it in him,” she said in her post. She also shared her home address and offered a communal home-cooked meal in return for help.
She followed up with a hopeful message. “I wish to (see) a row of cars parked outside my house,” Daidai said. “Let me stand with my head held high in my village.”
The humble request intended to reach only a handful of people but instead went viral - garnering over 1.1 million likes and more than 652,000 shares on Douyin.
Videos and photos on social media over the weekend showed massive crowds at the family’s village home. Long queues snaked across fields as people waited for their meals.
Local authorities also stepped in, according to Chinese media reports - dispatching catering teams and workers to help Daidai and her family as well as distributing gifts and free tickets to popular tourist spots. Traffic police officers were also deployed to maintain order.
More than 10,000 people arrived in the village over two days, reports said, with thousands of vehicles also arriving in the area.
“By Saturday and Sunday, the roads leading to Qingfu village were gridlocked by a 10km traffic jam as visitors arrived from as far as Guangdong province, bringing gifts as if visiting long-lost relatives,” read an article published on the China Daily state news site.
“The turnout was so massive that Daidai's original two pigs were woefully insufficient. In total, five pigs were slaughtered to feed a rotating crowd of over 3,000 people,” the report added.
On Jan 13, Daidai shared a post thanking local authorities and volunteers for their trust and support in showing up.
She shared that she had barely slept and was very tired. Her mother was also exhausted after days of nonstop hosting and cleaning up, Daidai said.
On Xiaohongshu, users shared their reactions. “She's the first person brave enough to invite the whole country to dinner,” one user wrote.
A Xiaohongshu user known as Man Jie, shared her experience of heading to Daidai’s home on Jan 12. She saw crowds of people carrying bags - reminding her of visiting relatives during Chinese New Year.
Traffic jams were also long, she said. “Even if you wanted to drive there directly, you couldn’t - so I had to park my car and walk there.”
Due to overwhelming crowds, not everyone who turned up was able to enjoy the home-cooked food that was promised.
“There were no available seats,” said Man Jie. “We’ll have to wait for the next round.”
“There were probably a few thousand people (at Daidai’s place),” she added.
“It was (probably) even livelier than on Chinese New Year.”
