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A petroleum engineer’s joyless lunches went viral in China

Ellsworth Toohey
Apr 03, 2026
∙ Paid

Douyin

Keith Brown, a British petroleum engineer, ate the same cheerless sandwiches for lunch every day — dry bread, a slice of something, no condiments — and his wife Zhang Jian filmed them. She posted the videos to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, where audiences were, according to Wikipedia, “grimly fascinated.” Brown became famous.

Zhang Jian had me…

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