© Imaginechina/CorbisThe Zhengzhou restaurant for 'goodlooking'
The Jeju Island restaurant, a Korean eatery in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, says the 50 most handsome people to arrive at its gates each day will be spared paying their bills.
Those hoping for a free lunch have their looks evaluated by a panel of local plastic surgeons whose tummy-tucking talents the restaurant is attempting to promote.
Before eating guests are taken to a "beauty identification area" where they are photographed and considered. Potential diners are judged on the quality of their faces, eyes, noses and mouths. Protruding foreheads are a particular advantage, according to reports.
As news of the promotion spread, Chinese internet users debated how they might fare at the restaurant.
"I reckon I can get a one per cent discount with my face," joked one user of Weibo, the social media site.
"Do the ugly have to pay twice?" wondered another.
The restaurant's owners appear to be more concerned with physical appearance than English language skills. "Free meal for Goodlooking," read a bright pink sign that was hung outside the eatery last Saturday to advertise the newly launched promotion.
© CorbisA customer uses a face-scanning machine at the restaurant
On Tuesday teams of security guards and demolition workers descended on the restaurant to remove the sign, China News Service reported.
Xue Hexin, the restaurant manager, vowed that the free meals for the beautiful would not be stopped.
"We will be more prudent with our advertising in future," she said. "But the promotion will continue despite the demolition of our sign."
To the person who writes the comments, sometimes you hit the mark and sometimes you seem to want to inflame the situation, and sometimes you are just wrong
The Chinese have always had an obsession with beauty,the binding of feet is just one example.
The criteria can be seen in their ancient artworks and in their writings, in their concepts of music and design.
Don't mistake their own beauty values as a western import, people are quite able to grow their own cultural vanities without the West's help.