A tenant in a residential block in southern China called the police, reporting a smell resembling corpses in their building. It turned out that the odour was actually coming from a neighbour cooking with Guangdong’s traditional stinky vinegar.

On July 14, a woman in Guangdong province, surnamed Chen, posted about someone calling the police to check on her home.

She stated: “My neighbour thought I was cooking a dead body,” while tagging “the power of stinky vinegar.”

The neighbour reportedly suspected that someone had died in a nearby unit, but it was, in fact, Chen preparing a soup that included the stinky vinegar.

Literally translated as “stinky fart vinegar” and also known as longevity vinegar, it is believed to be a traditional Guangdong ingredient with a history spanning 2,000 years.

A police officer responded to a residence in Guangdong following a report of a foul odour resembling that of a decaying body. Photo: QQ.com

According to legend, it was invented when a filial, poor man begged for food and preserved fried rice in a jar to save for future meals for his sick mother.