Chongqing hot pot. Photo: VCG

The owner of a hot pot restaurant in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality has launched a promotion offering customers a discount if they can make him laugh, with different levels of discounts depending on how funny they are.

The owner, surnamed Chen, put an advertisement outside his restaurant, stipulating different standards, such as a 10 percent discount for jokes that can make him smile, with the highest discount at 50 percent.

Several residents came for this activity. "I looked for jokes on the internet the whole morning to get a 50 percent discount," one customer who was waiting outside the restaurant says confidently in a video posted by The Beijing News on Thursday.

A female customer receives a 30 percent discount for a joke that Chen particularly likes, the video shows.

Chen said that he launched the activity so that customers could have a good time with him, and his aim in opening the restaurant was to be happy instead of making money.

The Beijing News