sichuan hot pot

since arriving in china nearly a month ago, i have heard and read the saying "china is the place for food, but sichuan is the place for flavor" a few times now. after spending about four days in chengdu, the capital of the sichuan province, i have definitely gained a new appreciation for this antidotal phrase. while i have read that chile peppers found their way into chinese cuisine less than 300 years ago and did not gain popularity in sichuan cuisine until 100 years ago, i would be hard pressed to find much evidence of this today in modern chengdu. it seems that down every block, around every corner and popping up in the middle of countless unnamed alleys, hot pot restaurants abound. in chinese the term for hot pot is ma la - translation, numb and spicy. as i have been stumbling around with words, trying to decide how to describe the food we have had the last few days, i finally opted to stick with the chinese definition. hot pot is, in short, numb and spicy. here is the protocol - after walking into your hot pot restaurant of choice, servers immediately light the propane jets built into your table and drop in a large stainless steel cauldron divided down the middle. in one half of said cauldron there is a milder, less 'nuclear' liquid for cooking your dinner. it is basically a fish stock with leeks, tomatoes and only a few handfuls of small red chiles (reminiscent of the hawaiian variety i have come to know over the last three years). the real damage is in the second half of the pot, a deep red, almost brown oil completely loaded with a variety of red sichuan chiles, sichuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, cardamom and ginger root. after the oil starts heating up, the servers give you a clipboard and in our case, a few pieces of paper with english translations, and wait for your order. the list is an encyclopedia of the bizarre - duck tongues, cow lungs, chicken throats and bullfrog meat are a few of the staples. fortunately, the list is also full of 'safer' choices like fatty beef, mutton, squid, ribbonfish… and the list goes on. on preceding pages are every vegetable, mushroom, seaweed and tofu you ever needed to simmer in hot oil and eat. on the table, we combine sesame oil, salt, white pepper, raw garlic and cilantro to use as a dipping sauce and wait for our selections to arrive. once the order is placed, beers and milk teas are served, and we begin to cook. at first, things go pretty smoothly - the oil is hot but bearable and the broth is not too intense. slowly as the meal progresses, the chiles and peppercorns infuse with the bubbling oil to form the most wickedly hot and bizarrely addictive flavors you can imagine. at this point it is a race to finish the meal before you give up hope or simple faint from the heat. by meal's end, the sinuses are clear, the mouth and lips are numb and our heads are swimming. staggering away from the table, euphoric from the capsicum overload, alina and i slowly wander back to the hostel trying to suppress the smiles through our seared, numb lips. -david