Beijing Dumpling Shop Builds AI Agent Skill
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- Beijing's Jinguyuan dumpling shop created an "AI skill" — a file teaching AI agents specific workflows — letting customers check the menu, get recommendations, or join the queue by talking to their personal AI agents
- Li Bo, the 41-year-old owner, built the skill in April after witnessing the growing popularity of agentic AI tools, and quoted Deng Xiaoping: "science and technology are a primary productive force"
- Li vibe-coded a queue-tracking website for Jinguyuan's two branches mostly using Alibaba's coding tool Qoder, and in July partnered with an AI cloud provider to give every customer a 10 yuan ($1.50) token coupon toward AI model subscriptions
- A 2025 Ipsos survey of 30 countries found the Chinese population expressed the highest level of excitement about AI services
- Li studied telecom engineering at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, graduating with a master's in 2010 before pivoting from engineering to hostels, homemade desserts, and eventually a dumpling partnership
- Li acknowledges the AI skill generates more media attention than actual usage but argues someone has to pioneer adoption: "when steam engines just came out, people joked that they were not as good as horses. But in the end, cars won out."
Why it matters: Jinguyuan — a small shop whose owner admits the AI tool gets more press than orders — illustrates that China's AI enthusiasm now extends deep into the non-tech small-business sector, not just big-model labs. With Ipsos showing Chinese respondents most excited about AI globally, the grassroots signal matches a national-population lead, even if individual case studies like Li's remain more symbolic than commercially proven.
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