Guide language: either red or old dopted mother all over the world, the Chinese dining table has been more and more inseparable from the spicy taste, China has become a veritable chili power: pepper planted area first in the world, in China, the chilli planting area is second only to "national vegetable" Chinese cabbage, hot pepper production first in the world, pepper consumption first in the world, the number of people eat chili is also in the world
But just 400 years ago, Chinese didn't know what pepper was.
Three hundred years ago, pepper was not found in the regular menu of sichuan cuisine.
Even when pepper was first introduced to China, the Chinese didn't treat it as food.
What, in just two or three hundred years, has conquered the taste buds of Chinese people?
On November 14, 2013, the Carolina reaper set a guinness world record for the world's hottest chilli.
The farmer Ed Carrie took ten years, finally created her dream "weapon quality pepper" - the average degree of Carolina death than police spray spiciness.
Chilies are one of the raw materials used by the Maya to make chocolate and go global from Mexico
The mayas, which originated in the Mexican region, first discovered the edible value of chili peppers.
They used cocoa as a raw material, together with chilli, to make the original chocolate, which the mayans called "the food of the gods".
The remains of the wild pepper found in the cave of tewakan canyon, Mexico, suggest that humans first picked peppers about 8,000 years ago, and peppers began 6,000 years ago.
The mayans made chocolate with chilies
Cut off because of the American continent and other continents, until the 15th century, chili can only seek hegemony on the continent, still other people from the mainland are not tasted, even listen to are not heard.
Columbus boarded the continent in 1492, when Columbus found pepper, he thought it is continent for pepper, he wrote in his diary: "there is a red pepper, production is very big, every year can be filled with 50 merchant vessels, from the people here no matter what to eat to put it, otherwise they didn't know, it is said that it is also beneficial to health."
When Columbus brought the seeds back to Europe, the inhabitants of the Mediterranean were the first to plant the peppers, and soon enjoyed the taste of chili.
Soon, chili became the main force in the global spice trade, and it was easy to dry, store and transport.
This characteristic makes chili peppers all over the world, and the Portuguese took it with them when they built their first colony in southern India.
Pepper was introduced to China in the Ming dynasty and was originally used as an ornamental flower
"Sour and sweet and bitter and salty," is one of the most common Chinese words. However, "spicy" appears in Chinese life much later than other flavors.
A hundred years after Columbus brought the peppers back to Europe, in the 16th century, the "peony pavilion" by tang xianzu, a famous Chinese opera singer, listed 38 flowers, among them "the pepper flower".
Neither tang xianzu nor the other writers of his generation mentioned how pepper was eaten.
In China at the time, pepper was used only as a flower, not eaten.
How did chilies go across the sea to China?
There's a lot of talk: some people think that chilies come in from Japan;
Some people think that pepper comes from Vietnam;
Some people think it is from Malaysia to guangzhou, in the mainland;
It is also believed that the central Asian businessmen have been introduced to the mainland by the first line of xinjiang, gansu and shaanxi...
These claims, and central Asia incoming from Japan is not available, because the Chinese pepper cultivation, earlier than the Japanese central Asian pepper cultivation history is only three hundred years or so, and China.
The most likely way is to pass by sea to jiangsu and zhejiang, the two broad generation, and then to the southwest.
To this day, many places in sichuan province called "pepper".
At the end of the Ming and early qing dynasty chillies eventually became food, the first people who ate chili were guizhou people
At the end of the Ming dynasty, a natural disaster and war had swept through most of China, and in the case of food and food shortages, the peppers had scored the Chinese stomach.
According to records, the first to eat chili is all surrounded by guizhou, because salt and vegetables and their shortages, kangxi years (1662-1722) "soil seedlings to salt", chili have played an important role in salt.
During the reign of emperor qianlong (1736 to 1795), the region of guizhou had begun to eat a lot of chili.
In the years of jiqing (1796-1820), it was recorded that the plants of guizhou, hunan, sichuan and jiangxi had been "planted as vegetables".
During the reign of daoguang (1821 to 1850), the northern guizhou province was the "one of the most important food of the day".
In the last years of the qing dynasty, baogu was popular in guizhou province, and the vegetables were douhua, and then water was used as a dip.
Similar to today's sichuan people eat the bean flower dip water.
Several other provinces eat chilies later in guizhou.
Hunan's eating of chilli is not common during jiqing period, but after the daoguang, hunan people eat more pepper.
According to the qing dynasty money notes in the late qing dynasty, hunan and hubei people have become more and more spicy, and even the soup has to put chilli.
The earliest record of sichuan people eating chili peppers was also in jiqing dynasty.
During the reign of daoguang and tongzhi, sichuan people began to eat chili peppers.
In the last year of guangxu, in addition to popular consumption, the classic recipe also began to have pepper.
Qing dynasty Fu Chong moment in history, "chengdu go through at that time, chengdu was more than 1328 kinds of various dishes, hot pepper has become one of the main ingredients in sichuan, especially sichuan food in sichuan style stew pork officially in a written document.
There is a difference in how to eat chili peppers. Sichuan people are used to pepper and pepper, which is spicy.
People in guizhou often soak the pickled chilli with acid, which is called hot and sour.
Hunan people eat the original taste of chili, the original spicy.
In many poor areas, chilies are the best food.
Why did the southwest eat hot pepper first?
Hunger is the driving force of pepper expansion
Chinese people often think that the reason why the southwest region likes to eat chili is: the southwest area is rainy, humid and heavy, eat hot pepper, can remove the cold wet.
This is not entirely true, and the people of gansu live in areas where the climate is dry, but they also treat it as a human delicacy.
But shaanxi people are eating spicy food, compared with the southwest region, often not inferior.
Poverty may be the source of choice.
According to records, in guizhou in the early years are only possible when the feast to eat rice and bacon, ordinary only chilli for meal, over half the somebody else even salt can't afford to buy, can only use chili instead of salt, with chili stimulation to change the medicinal diet.
Hunan has the same experience.
According to the history of immigration, in the late Ming and early qing dynasty, the population of hunan province after the war and disease was greatly reduced, and a large number of people were moved from the coastal areas to the southwest.
For immigrants, they first arrived in hunan, mainly engaged in sloping land reclamation, and lived a difficult life of "hushed people", and pepper was an excellent "food for food".
Sichuan painter Chen Zhidong's father is a famous sichuan opera in chengdu three righteousness palace, owner of the garden Chen Zhidong can cook at an early age, he told the sanlian life weekly "in an interview:" hot actually comes from the bottom of the popular.
Like chongqing hot pot, because when the war of resistance of zigong salt sales volume is very big, want to rely on cattle shipped out the salt, cattle dead tired easily, cowhide stay in sichuan, visceral followed salt to chongqing port, then cattle miscellaneous have relish, need a lot of spice and Chinese prickly ash to cover up the taste, so there is beef offal hotpot.
Hunan's first director of the institute of vegetables, the famous Chinese chili expert Zhang Jiren had made a survey in the 1970 s, found "poorer places more like to eat spicy, including the mouth of the cave, liuyang, bimodal, AnRen, etc."
In southern fujian mountains, there are the old man told reporter to interview said: "at that time the food bowl of finished eating, is to get rice to eat, a outwards into, you add the head, he has to mix the two, is because of hot pepper".
Chongqing hot pot in the republic of China
It has been twenty years since pepper conquered China
Although the southwestern region has generally eaten chili peppers at the end of the qing dynasty, the acceptance of chili peppers is not high across China.
Qing dynasty Beijing food is authentic with huaiyang cuisine, shandong cuisine, to the city of officials, businessmen and raise children from jiangnan prosperous area, pay attention to the dining carriage, will eat spicy as the performance of the uncivilized, rude, they are the fashion icon, there is quite a contempt GuLao from Beijing to eat spicy.
Even in chengdu, chilies are difficult to put on important occasions.
Born in 1913, wu yusheng, a famous chef of sichuan cuisine, began to cook for the KMT's party and government officials at the age of 20, and many dignitaries from chengdu took pride in his cooking.
During the Anti-Japanese War, WuYuCheng served as ho ying-chin, soong family kitchen, Chiang kai-shek couple is also very like his cooking, they fall in love WuYuCheng burning cow, pig head bean dregs, boiled cabbage, etc, these are not spicy food in sichuan.
"Glorious paradise" is the republic of China in chengdu old,, is known as "authentic sichuan," the boss blue light guide is a generation of chefs, pay attention to reform in the early 1930 s, the hotel can open seats at the same time a few tables, implement the principle of is scattered originally overelaborate meal program, directly on the first four dish dishes, follow the eight main dishes, dishes such as abalone, bird's nest again choose the seats, with spicy proportion less than 30%.
In the last 20 years, poached fish has become the most popular dish in China, and it has become a national flavor.
In fact, there is no cooking fish in sichuan cuisine.
After the 1980s, the Chinese people ate hot food.
Fish-flavored shredded pork and kung pao chicken have become popular in many non-spicy areas.
In Beijing, luzhou grand restaurant, chongqing hotel, yibin building...
Many sichuan restaurants have become popular restaurants.
Later, there was a rare dish in sichuan, such as poached fish and spicy spicy saucepan.
The kung pao chicken is spicy, while the poached fish is the meat.
Spicy, it gradually becomes a national flavor.
In 2010, the Chinese research center of the all-round well-off society, united media research laboratory of tsinghua university, conducted a survey of the Chinese diet situation: sichuan cuisine to 51.2% of the vote on the list, the list of popular in other order composed, hunan cuisine, shandong cuisine and cantonese cuisine.
Of all tastes, the most people who like "hot" are 40.5%.
The second is "sweet", 28.4%;
Then it's "salty," 17.3%.
47.28 percent eat at least one hot meal a day, 23 percent eat it once a day and 18.78 percent eat it once a week.
The Chinese have become increasingly inseparable from the queues at a spicy Beijing restaurant.
Why do Chinese people like to eat spicy food more and more?
Capsaicin, which has been occupied nationwide, is clearly not related to climate, nor to economic factors.
What's the reason that Chinese people can't live without chili?
One theory is that the hot zone is just the net outflow of workers.
After the reform and development, a large number of migrant workers brought their tastes to the east and infected the original urban residents.
There is some truth to this statement, but it cannot be explained. Why does the taste of henan and anhui have not affected the whole country?
It is also impossible to explain why guizhou cuisine is much less influential than sichuan cuisine.
Others believe that spicy food is associated with a marked acceleration in the pace of life.
If the food is fresh, there is a high demand for the ingredients, and the spicy food is not picky, and the cost of spicy food is lower.
The demand for cooking is different, too. Although many spicy cuisines also require high cooking techniques, there are plenty of fast food, spicy and hot.
For diners, eating fresh may be a matter of careful taste, while eating spicy food can be a lot of time and cost effective.
Apart from the external environment, it is more important that the chili itself attracts people.
Chillies are high in vitamin A and vitamin C.
Capsaicin activates the digestive system, boosting saliva secretion and bowel movements, making dry foods taste better.
More importantly, chilli also ACTS as a flavoring agent, especially in the diet of light food.
American psychologist Paul rozin believes that the pain caused by chilies promotes the secretion of endogenous opioid peptides, which can release more of the chemical analgesic.
And this release, to a large extent, brings pleasure to humans.
