Chẳng biết vì lý do gì

thành phố có 4,7 triệu người, thì chỉ trong tháng 3/2023 đón 4,8 triệu du khách,

chợ rau quả ở zibo còn nổi tiếng hơn cả vạn lý trường thành,

vé tàu cao tốc từ bắc kinh tới, bán sạch sau 1 phút, chính quyền địa phương tổ chức 21 xe buýt chạy từ ga tới các nhà hàng barbecue, hội chợ barbecue mọc lên cạnh chợ hải sản, nơi duy nhất chứa được hơn 10.000 người, to bằng 12 sân bóng...

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The flame-shaped neon (đèn tuýt hình ngọn lửa) archway was visible from miles away, which was good since there was little other reason for anyone to be in that part of town, an expanse of fields outside an industrial city in eastern China. The lights flickered (bập bùng) between icy blue and red-hot, leaping toward the night sky beside a jumbo sign: “Zibo Barbecue Experiential Ground.”

And what an experience awaited. Inside this Coachella for barbecue, visitors could pose with a mascot (linh vật) dressed like a meat skewer. They could watch a concert against an LED backdrop of radiating flames. They could eat from one of the hundreds of grills (vỉ nướng) scattered across the grounds the size of 12 football fields — if they waited hours for a table, and if their chosen meat purveyor (người cung cấp hàng hóa) hadn’t run out of food.

Zibo, a once-obscure chemical manufacturing city in Shandong Province, has suddenly strangely — thanks to, of all things, barbecue — turned into China’s hottest tourist destination.

This city of 4.7 million received 4.8 million visitors in March, after it began attracting notice on social media (mạng xã hội). During a public holiday earlier this month, a Zibo vegetable market was more popular than the Great Wall (vạn lý trường thành), according to a mapping service. High-speed rail tickets from Beijing sold out one minute after their release.

The local government has set up 21 buses to ferry visitors from the train station directly to barbecue restaurants. They erected the barbecue festival on the site of a sprawling seafood market, the only place big enough to host 10,000 people.