For a brief moment in the winter of 2023, Chen Xiufeng was perhaps the most beloved figure on the campuses of Peking and Tsinghua Universities. Known affectionately as the ‘Goose Leg Auntie,’ Chen became a viral sensation for her nightly delivery of roasted poultry legs, providing a rare culinary comfort to China’s academic elite. Her popularity was so immense that she was even invited to speak at Peking University’s prestigious Centennial Hall, an honor usually reserved for global thinkers and industry titans.
However, the charm of this grassroots success story has soured into a legal and ethical scandal. In a recent group chat announcement to her customers, Chen admitted that her famous 16-yuan snacks are not actually goose, but duck. She defended the move by claiming that ‘Goose Leg Auntie’ had simply become a brand name she used since 2011, and that her longtime customers were well aware of the ingredient shift caused by sourcing difficulties years ago.
The controversy reached a breaking point when Chen attempted to expand her operations into Beijing’s Guomao Central Business District. This move into the city's white-collar heartland attracted the attention of the ‘Chaoyang Masses’—a colloquial term for the neighborhood's notorious network of informants—who reported her for deceptive marketing. Following the tip-off, local market regulators launched an investigation into her business practices, and Peking University quietly scrubbed its past celebratory profiles of her from its official social media accounts.
Legal experts in Beijing are now weighing in, suggesting that Chen’s defense of 'branding' holds little weight under Chinese consumer protection laws. By selling duck while labeling it as goose, she has arguably infringed upon the consumer’s right to know and committed ‘false propaganda.’ While she may avoid criminal charges due to the relatively low price point of the items, she likely faces significant administrative penalties for misleading the public over such a prolonged period.
The economics of her operation have also come under scrutiny as rumors of ‘million-yuan annual earnings’ circulated online. Chen’s son countered these claims, stating the family nets around 50,000 RMB per month after costs, a figure he described as ‘ordinary’ for a hard-working family in Beijing. Despite the financial defense, the breach of trust has fundamentally altered her public image, moving her from a symbol of maternal warmth to a cautionary tale of the risks inherent in the ‘netizen-celebrity’ economy.