Sichuan's spicy smorgasbord entrances fans from afar

Delicious food has attracted both Chinese gourmets and foreign dignitaries including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former British prime minister David Cameron

Wan Yongqing, who works as a translator in Beijing, loves visiting Sichuan province for one main reason: The food.

Wan, 49, is an ideal candidate to pass judgment on the country's food, having at various points in his life lived all across China, in Hubei province in the center of the country, Yunnan province in the southwest, Hebei province in the north, and Shanghai in the east, as well as Beijing.

A gourmet, Wan likes sampling different food and the spicy Sichuan food tickles his taste buds more than any region's cuisine.

"Sichuan food belongs to one of the eight best-known schools of cuisine in China. With a long history, it has many famous dishes such as mapo tofu and twice-cooked pork," he said.

Sichuan's delicious food has attracted both Chinese gourmets like Wan and foreign dignitaries such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former British prime minister David Cameron.

During her whirlwind one-day visit to Chengdu in July 2014, Merkel learned how to make kung pao chicken, a famous Sichuan dish, in a local restaurant.

Restaurant owner Du Bing said Merkel stayed for more than 30 minutes and watched how chef Zhang Wei prepared spicy dish, featuring diced chicken and peanuts.

"Curious about the peanuts to be used in the dish, Merkel ate one peanut first. We thought she would just have a mouthful of the dish, but she finished about two-thirds of it. She asked us to bring more chopsticks so that other members of her entourage could also taste it," Du said.

During his visit to Chengdu in December 2013, Cameron ate Sichuan hotpot with 11 dishes and one snack - bean curd, beef, mutton, potatoes, meatballs, skin of bean curd, bamboo root slices, green lettuce, cabbage, mushrooms, cabbages and glutinous rice cake with brown sugar.

Cao Jing, a young sales manager who served Cameron during his half-hour visit to the hotpot restaurant said Cameron was very fond of the spicy flavor and loved the meatballs with coriander and even asked for a second helping.

Before his visit to China, some British schoolchildren who were learning Chinese recommended Sichuan hotpot to him, so he decided to sample hotpot in Chengdu, Cameron said.

When Peter Haymond left Chengdu in 2014 after the end of his three-year term as American consul general, he expressed his hope that it would not lose its special character and reputation as a laid back center of teahouse culture.

Despite the increasingly fast pace of life in the province as a result of modernization, Sichuan people are still renowned for their determination to take things more slowly, and this attitude has its roots in teahouse culture.

Indeed, teahouses can easily be found on every street in a province where people still enjoy a leisurely game of mahjong and a chat.

huangzhiling@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/23/2016 page37)