The first air conditioners designed for hotpot restaurants rolled off the production line recently at Hai'er Air Conditioner Interconnected Factory in Chongqing's Gangcheng Industrial Park.

The air conditioner, designed for the hotpot dining environment, uses leading technologies to operate at extremely hot temperatures — as much as 62 C. It has a 20-meter air supply range and automatic sterilization and self-cleaning.

Thanks to the patented structure and radiator design, the air conditioner can dissipate heat very quickly.

With the largest number of hotpot restaurants in the country, Chongqing was named "China's hotpot city" by the China Cuisine Association in 2007. Local people eat hotpot all year long, even during the sizzling summer.

According to the Chongqing Hotpot Association, there are more than 50,000 such restaurants in the city, employing at least 3.5 million people. The value of the industry overall is estimated at hundreds of billions of yuan.