The Spicy Revolution of Sichuan
The shrewd peasant organizer had a mean, even “spiteful” streak. “For example, for a long time I could not accustom myself to the strongly spiced food, such as hot fried peppers, which is traditional to southern China, especially in Hunan, Mao’s birthplace.” The Soviet agent’s tender taste buds invited Mao’s mockery. “The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper,” declared Mao. “And he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight.’ ”
More about Sichuan can show about the spicy food of Sichuan:
Hongjie Wang, an associate professor of history at Armstrong State University in Georgia, specializes in Sichuan culture. In his essay, “Hot Peppers, Sichuan Cuisine and the Revolutions in Modern China,” he marshals some interesting data points supporting what one contemporary Chinese cultural observer called Sichuan’s inherent “potential for rebellion, so beautiful and marvelous.” In 1911, according to Wang, a protest against “imperialist” control of newly constructed railroads in Sichuan triggered national unrest that ultimately led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty, which means one can make the case that Sichuanese hot tempers set in motion the entire process of China’s modern political development.
In his essay, Wang emphasizes the insurgent fire of the Sichuan people. During the Sino-Japanese War between 1937-1945, he tells us, Sichuan provided nearly 3.5 million soldiers for the Chinese army, accounting for nearly a quarter of the total drafted forces during the wartime period. The Sichuan city of Chongqing served as Chiang Kai-shek’s war-time capital. Perhaps most compelling, he writes, of the 1,052 generals and marshals who served in the early ranks of the People’s Liberation Army, a whopping 82 percent hailed from China’s four spiciest provinces.
In Sichuan, Wang writes, “eating spicy food has come to be regarded as an indication of such personal characteristics as courage, valor, and endurance, all essential for a potential revolutionary.”
The puzzle starts to take shape. Personality: risk-taking immigrants on the move. Economics: a cheap and easy-to-grow option for adding flavor to a constrained diet. Weather and culture: a hot and humid climate, and yin and yang medical philosophy. Taken together, we see the formation of a culture, the beginning of an identity.
The final stroke cementing this modern act of identity-formation may not have arrived until the Sino-Japanese War, when the elite classes of China, fleeing to Sichuan from both the Communists and Japanese, found themselves in precisely the same kind of dire economic straits as those refugees who had immigrated to Sichuan centuries earlier. Then they too began to turn to the cheap, spicy, peasant fare that the lower classes had inadvertently nurtured into one of China’s great cuisines.
“The new wave of migration to Sichuan before and during the Anti-Japanese War in the 1930s finally witnessed the flourishing of Sichuan cuisine in today’s version,” says Wang.
However, a grandson of Deng Xiaoping's personal chef, named Zhang Xiao Zhong, has taken Sichuan cooking to the freer London. The guy certainly made some customizations for the London palate while introducing the cooking of his elders. The dishes have evolved from a more Communist setting to a more democratic setting.
