Best fried rice in China? 400 people queue at nighttime food stall (but it was so popular police shut it down)

A nighttime fried rice stall that proved a huge hit in eastern China, with hundreds queuing for food after it started promoting itself on social media, has been closed down by the police, according to a newspaper report.

The stall near a Confucian Temple in Nanjing became hugely popular after it opened an account on WeChat last month, the Modern Express reported.

The couple who run it have been doing business in the same place between 12 am and 5am each night for a decade, but publicity on social media has attracted a huge amount of custom, according to the report.

The stall does not have a licence and at midnight on Sunday police came to ask staff to close it. About 400 hundred people were queuing for food at the time.

The couple reappeared at 1.40am, sparking another round buying, but several policemen came and again asked them to leave.

The couple said they would probably need to close the business in the coming days, but would issue a notice on WeChat once they had decided to reopen somewhere else.