The Boss of Mo's Chicken Pot Says Diarrhea Is Your Problem — It's Dampness

A lot of this comes from chat records with my Guangdong bestie. She said: I never thought smilax glabra would have its moment in the spotlight!

So about Mo's Chicken Pot — Uncle Mo opened a tiny shop in a Shunde alleyway six years ago. Then a blogger with millions of followers came to review it, and he joked: "If you make me too famous, I won't be able to handle it." That joke went viral.

Now his daily customer flow has broken 8,000. The more he tried to discourage people, the more they came. He even put up a notice: "Some people might get diarrhea after drinking the soup."

I sent a screenshot to my Guangdong bestie. She said: "Figure out how much dampness you have before you drink it."

She explained: the soup base centers on smilax glabra and Radix Fici Hirtae. Together they promote urination and expel dampness. In TCM, when a person with heavy dampness drinks this, the body starts expelling — that's seen as a normal detox response.

Uncle Mo was asked about it in an interview. He said: "Diarrhea is your problem, not mine. If you feel lighter after going, that means you had dampness, and I helped you expel it."

This is why Cantonese people accept this logic so naturally — it's rooted in climate. Guangdong has year-round high humidity. Cantonese people grow up hearing about dispelling dampness. In the north, the climate is dry, so northerners don't have this concept in their food culture.