Official Weibo Account of King's Joy Hacked, Posts Inflammatory Comment

Zeus Zou, Associate Editor | Jun 10, 2021 11:30 am | Add a comment | 415 reads

京兆尹 King’s Joy, the world's first – and currently only – vegetarian three-star Michelin restaurant located across from Lama Temple on Wudaoying has long been a sanctuary for Beijing foodies. However, earlier this week the company found itself in the spotlight for a very different reason.

On Monday, Jun 7, followers of King's Joy's official Weibo account were shocked to see a comment that read, “不吃素的人品味素质修养都很差应该都没有家里人吧“ which roughly translates to, "all meat-eaters are not cultured, have bad taste, and probably have no one left in their family." Naturally, the comment resulted in a fiery online debate and plenty of outrage. And yet, around midnight that evening, King’s Joy released an official statement explaining that the reposted comment was the work of a malicious netizen who took advantage of a glitch of Weibo's sharing function to make their repost appear as though it had come from King's Joy itself. What's more, a few hours after that, the culprit posted their own apology and admitted to forging their identity and posting the vitriolic message.

Unfortunately for whoever's in charge of King's Joy's PR, the revelation of foul play didn't convince all netizens, some of whom apparently have a bone to pick with the vegetarian community. Some rode the wave of controversy to falsely criticize the restaurant for claiming to be environmentally friendly while using dry ice – it's a common misconception that dry ice produces CO2, while in fact it is simply extracted from the environment and rereleased shortly thereafter. Other netizens took the opportunity to complain about high prices – which is really more of a criticism of Michelin Star dining in general.

This isn't the first time that King's Joy has found itself at the center of controversy. Another instance – which was admittedly tone-deaf – involved King's Joy customers holding up signage that read "Animals are our friends," adorned with images of dogs, and dogs alone, which many felt reinforced the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs.

In 2019, they also got themselves in hot water when customers claimed they had used their likeness to promote the restaurant without permission.

King's joy was criticized in 2019 as well for using pictures of diners without consent to promote their restaurant