Quotes About Sichuan

Sichuan food would not be Sichuanese without the hot chilies that arrived before 1700 from South America.

The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province.

Are you afraid of chilli heat?' (Ni pa bu pa la?) is the customary warning for travellers on their way to Sichuan.

Sichuanese dialect is like Mandarin put through a mangle. So the Mandarin 'sh' becomes 's', vowels are stretched out like warm toffee, there are pirate-like rolling 'r' sounds at the end of sentences, and no one can tell the difference between 'n' and 'l' or 'f' and 'h' (the province of Hunan, for example, is known in Sichuan, helpfully, as 'Fulan').

Unique to Sichuan, ma is the spicy flavor of a wild tree peppercorn called huajiao—with a taste between peppercorn, caraway, and clove, but so strong that too much will numb the mouth. Two varieties grow in Sichuan, clay red peppercorns and the more perfumey brown ones. La means "hot spice" and is accomplished with small burning red peppers. The combined seasoning, ma-la, defines the taste of Sichuan food.

Sichuan [cuisine] is actually a wonderfully sadomasochistic interplay between pleasure and pain, between the scorching, searing bite of the dried red Sichuan pepper and the cooling, more floral relief, the tingling, numbing component of the tiny black Sichuan flower pepper.

Already 2008 has proved a tumultuous year in terms of global perceptions of China, and there are still 59 days to go until the Beijing Olympics. The tragedy of the Sichuan earthquake followed hard on the heels of the riots in Tibet and the demonstrations surrounding the Olympic torch relay.