If you’re a meat eater who doesn’t like to dwell on the thought that the thing on your plate used to be alive, you need to avoid “The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World,” an odd little mini-series that begins Monday on the Sundance Channel. Fish, ducks, snakes and more are done in graphically while the camera looks on. Sometimes they’re still wriggling when they hit the plate.

The restaurant of the title is in Changsha, in Hunan Province. It’s called West Lake, and the swaggering claim it makes (there’s a citation from the Guinness records people on the wall) seems beyond dispute: It seats 5,000 guests, employs more than 300 chefs, goes through 700 chickens and 200 snakes in a week, and supplements its food with diversions like stage shows.

The series is essentially a documentary film carved into four half-hour segments, perhaps because someone at Sundance realized that footage of steaming pots and such can hold the attention for only so long.

Image A chefs meeting at West Lake, the subject of The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World. Credit... Sundance Channel

The food is certainly colorful to look at, but the most interesting element here is Qin Linzi, the owner of the sprawling complex and an absolute dynamo. If the program is maddeningly sparse on the nuts and bolts of West Lake  How was it financed? How profitable is it?  it is not hard to see how this woman inspired people to believe in her project.