This is the moment the excitement of Chinese New Year gets too much for an exhausted three-year-old and he falls asleep in his soup bowl.

The youngster from Zhaotong, Yunnan Province, China, dropped off at the table after a long day of celebrating.

But – reports local media – he stubbornly refused to go to bed or even let his mum take away his chopsticks.

His aunt – named only as Yi – said he was exhausted after playing outside all day without rest during the Chinese New Year celebrations.

In video footage – shot by Ms Yi and later post on Douyin,the Chinese version of TiKTok – the boy can be seen trying to eat noodles but he is just too tired to keep his eyes open.

Then in a second clip the boy is seen fast asleep while his family laughs at his antics.

Watchers later joked over the boy’s determination not to go to bed.

User ‘Scorpion Lailai’ said: “When this child grows up, gets married and has children in the future, the elders in the village will still say: Your dad ate and slept in the bowl when he was a child.”

And user ‘Dragon East’ said: “Fortunately when I was a child, there were no phones recording me at home.”