Spicy Hunan: Taste and Temperament

Sizhen Wang

Where are you from?

My normal answer is: Oh, I'm from Changsha, Hunan, period.

From my experience, people who asked me that question usually have two types of reactions. One type is reacting to food：

“Oh! I know! Very Spicy!"

This is what people from other part of China usually comments.

"Stinky ToFu!"

This is what foreigners who are very interested in Chinese food and culture might say.

On the other hand, the other kind of reaction would be: "Ah, where is it in China? Is it close to Shanghai? or Beijing?"

Personally, if I have to elaborate more, I would probably say Hunan is a very welcoming, lively, and exceptionally tasty place, but maybe in order to serve a more technically understandable purpose, I would say I'm from Changsha, the capital city of a southern Chinese province known for its long history, big entertainment industry, and unique cuisine.

（On the right：Photo that I took in an alley in Changsha full of street food stands）

The truth is, I don't really know how to explain where I am from in more detail without talking for a few hours. I guess that's the dilemma of needing to explain the existence of one's home. Ever since I flew to the other hemisphere of the Earth for college, I, for the first time, realized that I really need to explain where I am from because most people don't know, just like how I have never been to or know enough about 99% of the places on this planet. Moreover, I discovered that my stomach has a very strong dependence on my hometown cuisine: Hunan Cuisine, and specifically spiciness.

Introduction to contemporary Hunan impression：How is Hunan Spicy different？

After two and half years living in New York, it seems to me that there is quite a big confusion between Szechuan cuisine and Hunan cuisine. Mysteriously, you would often find a so-called Szechuan or Hunan restaurant serving a mix of Szechuan and Hunan dishes and often confuse the cooking techniques of these two cuisines together, and unfortunately often in the way of compromising hunan cuisine. I highly suspect that this is because both cuisines feature spiciness nowadays so a lot of non-Hunan residents don’t really understand their distinct approaches to this taste.

To be precise, the spiciness of Szechuan is numbness and sweet-spicy. The addictive and fundamental taste in Szechuan dishes that makes your tongue feel numb comes from Szechuan peppercorn. In Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, British food critic Fuchsia Dunlop described this taste as a sense of chill that comes with slight pain on the tongue (Dunlop 10.) These peppercorns, different from chili, are native to China. They take the shape of tiny flower bulbs, and that’s why their chinese name literally stands for flower pepper. As for the spiciness Szechuan people derived from chili, they are often made into the form of red chili oil and doubanjiang (chili bean paste) that are sweet and spicy. A lot of sugar is mixed into them. In addition, Szechuan cuisine features dried spices (for instance, peppercorn) more often than fresh spices, especially when it comes to its different use of chili compared to Hunan cuisine. Szechuan chili is often dried, or made into chili powder and mixed with other dry ingredients like sesame. At Szechuan, meats in a lot dishes would also usually get a coat of flour before they are put into the pot, or a few spoons of starch water would be added at the end of cooking to thicken the sauce, which is something that wouldn’t be found in Hunan dishes.

Now, hopefully with the discussion of the cuisine that often gets mixed up with Hunan cuisine, we can better understand their differences and also the unique properties of Hunan spiciness. 

The spiciness of Hunan is strong and straightforward, like the temperament of its locals, but it is not to say that Hunan people are hard to get along with; in fact, they are usually very friendly and outgoing. In terms of the use of chili, Hunan cuisine primarily features fresh and or pickled chili. Green or red, they need to look very juicy and bright. The chili in Hunan is different from bell peppers that are commonly found in supermarkets in America though. There are many kinds of variety, but they are usually relatively thin and exceptionally hot. The question is, why do Hunan people adore straightforward hot chili? Why don’t they balance the unbearable spiciness out with sugar like Szechuan people do? Why do they consume so much chili? I think we’ll have to investigate how chili got accepted and changed hunan cuisine from the first place, but more importantly, I think it is because chili’s characteristics reflect the spirit of Hunan people perfectly, so there is a deep connection between food and temperament. 

01 / 06

First taste of spiciness

Chili was not introduced into China until the late 1600s during the Ming Dynasty. At the beginning, in a lot of places, people planted chili for its flowers as a kind of botany practice. In the Zunsheng Bajian, a series of books on life and wellbeing written by a Ming Dynasty literary scholar, there is a short documentation of chili in one of the articles that discussed flowers in four seasons. I hereby provide my translation:

“Foreign pepper grows in bushes;White bulb;Fruit shapes like the head of an ink brush; Tastes Spicy and looks red; Quite a view!” (Gao, 1591)

This first documentation of chili is written from the point of view of a Hangzhou writer scholar, Gao Lian (or Lian Gao in western spelling tradition.) We can see how his word choices and analogy between the shape of the fruit and ink brush suggests that he regards chili as a quite pleasant-looking plant. This makes a lot of sense since, except the rich and powerful legacy owners, probably only poets, writers, and other literary scholars have the time and tendency to discover what’s a good leisure in nature. It also seems like he has a high curiosity regarding novelty that he tried tasting the flower. Or perhaps, he and the people he represents did regard chili as a kind of food or berry first, so they ate it, but found the spiciness unappealing, and then chili got adapted and adopted into an ornamental plant. Either way, this record from Hangzhou indicates that the primary use of chili was not for eating. Reflecting on that region’s cuisine which features a lot of sugar, fish, crabs, and shrimp, and then connects Hangzhou to Shanghai region people’s rather sweet, mild, and sophisticated temperament, it makes a lot of sense. 

Another one of the earliest documentations of chili, to our knowledge, can be found in the “Chen Zhou Fu Record.” The Chen Zhou Fu area during Qianlong Emperor reign is in the jurisdiction of nowadays Hunan Province, so the fact that it has chili documented in its regional chronicles may help reflect on what attitude Hunan people take on this new spice. 

“海椒, 一名地胡椒, 口实枝间, 状如新月, 荚色淡青, 老则深红, 一荚十余子, 圆而扁性极辣, 故辰人呼为辣子, 用以代胡椒, 取之者多青红皆并其壳, 切以和食品, 或以酱醋香油菹之”

Due to the fact that this record was also written in ancient grammar and still doesn’t have a contemporary nor English translation, I will hereby provide my humble translation: oversea pepper, also known as ground-grown foreign pepper, bear fruits in the space between leaves and branches, with the shape of new moon, skin color of light cyan, dark red if old, contains a dozen of seeds per piece, conical, flat, and extremely spicy, so it is addressed as spicy seeds by the locals, used as replacement of black pepper; Usually harvested/foraged when it has a green and red mixed complexion on the surface; Chop it to cook with food, or marinate and pickle it with soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil.

This document also put a particular emphasis on the look of chili, which constituted half of the description. It is understandable, if we think of what’s the traditional standard for good cooking in China: Looks good; Smells good; Tastes good. This simple chain of value begins with looks, though all three requirements are important, there could still be a hierarchy suggested in it. Additionally, the fact that Chili was described to have a moon shape in Chen Zhou Fu Record is suggesting people at the time saw artistic value in chili’s appearance. This might hint that chili was not only accepted and grown simply because people liked its flavor, but also for the view, the pleasure of eyes. However, compared to the Zunsheng Baijian, Chen Zhou Fuzhi addressed chili’s use of serving as a seasoning which demonstrated a different attitude Hunan people had with chili. Although the record described the cooking method of chili quite frankly, I am surprised to see that it is basically the same as how we eat chili today. In the record, it was not specified what food was cooked with chili, so it might mean people cook it with every random ingredient, suggesting it can become a as widely used spice as ginger, scallion, and garlic. Today, in Hunan, we can indeed find fresh chili and pickled chili chopped into circular shapes and cooked with everything. Though it sounds brutal, the taste of chili actually isn’t boring or the same in every dish, because different cooking methods can carry out different flavors. Moreover, both fresh chili and pickled chili have a relatively clean and straightforward spiciness as well as juiciness (pickled chili might also carry an appetizing sourness). This is exactly how the taste of spiciness in Hunan cuisine is differentiated from other regional cuisines like that of Szechuan dishes discussed earlier in the article where numbness and sweetness play an important role. 

Why chili won Hunan’s heart

Now, knowing that Hunan people prefer to eat and grow chili for fun, the question is, how did it become a widely accepted and dominant taste in Hunan. In order to explain this, we have to approach the question from a geographical point of view. 

To begin with, let’s talk about what conditions chili needs to grow well. 

Generally, chili needs to be grown in an exceptionally warm and sunny spot with abundant irrigation and fertile soil (“Chilli peppers”). Hunan happens to have one of the best locations to fulfill these requirements. 

Hunan, in Chinese, literally means South of the lake, and the lake the name is referring to is DongTing Lake, one of the five major freshwater lakes in China. In addition to it, several of the most active tributes of the longest river in Asia, the Yangzi River, also known as Chang jiang, provide stable and sufficient irrigation to the province. Together with Hunan’s humid subtropical climate and quite big range of hills, it is the perfect terrain to collect water, form streams and ponds, and support a variety of plants that will keep the soil fertile (“气候情况”). All in all, chili and Hunan found each other somewhere in the 18th Century during Qianlong Emperor’s time (Cao 18).

However, having an ideal environment for growing certain plants isn’t sufficient enough to conclude why Hunan people chose to embrace chili during that time, especially when the environment supports a large range of crops. How did chili stand out? In 1721’s Sizhou Fu’s Record, it was recorded that “oversea pepper, nicknamed spicy bean, local Miao people use it as a replacement for salt” (Sizhou Fu Record). Miao people are a native ethnic minority group in Central South China, which includes Hunan province territory. This comment on chili being used as a replacement for salt is a very important point. 

In China, there is an old and common knowledge that's always known by people that basically means “Hunan and Guangdong harvest support the entire land.” This is an exaggeration of how Hunan and Guangdong (Canton) provide most of the rice and fish to other parts of the country. This indicates that in Hunan and Guangdong, there are a large population of farmers and fishers. Specifically, since Guangdong is a seaport province, while Hunan is an inland province, Guangdong has a relatively greater focus on fishing and commerce, whereas Hunan has a greater focus on growing rice. This geographical difference resulted in the huge contrast of taste between these two neighbors. Cantonese cuisine features fresh seafood and refreshing dim sum most of the time, while Hunan cuisine exhibits a favor for strong seasoning and spicy heavy taste (“Chinese Food By Region”). This is because Guangdong, as a seaport province, has better access to salt. While both places are hot and have a lot of agricultural workers who sweat a lot and extensively use physical strength, locals need to find distinct ways to fill up their stomachs and compensate for salt and calories lost according to the condition of their land. Since Hunan doesn’t have access to salt water, people need a cheap seasoning that can help with consuming rice, the main crop of the province. Chili is what people found to be a great rice killer. Then, possibly, people also discovered that it’s very easy to grow chili in Hunan, so it also became a very affordable spice for the farmers and the poors. 

Taste and Temperament

Apart from all of the technical reasons regarding Hunan people’s need for spiciness, I would like to argue that it is also an intentional choice of Hunan people to embrace chili. Chinese people believe you are where you live. A huge part of this belief is that one’s personality is reflected on one’s homeland cuisine.

As a Hunan local, I would say that Hunan people are straightforward, brave, approachable, and enthusiastic. This reflects the properties of chili quite well. Spiciness is technically a sense of pain rather than flavor, so consuming chili can symbolize a notion of bravery. Since it’s a kind of pain, eating spicy food with people can establish a sense of connection through compassion as Yu Cao noted in his book discussing the history of consuming spiciness in China as well as his speech on the same topic (“Cao Yu: The History of Chili in China”). This argument of eating food with people to build connections corresponds well with another characteristic of Hunan. As I said, Hunan people are very approachable and enthusiastic; in effect, that means they are generally outgoing and social. The capital city of Hunan, Changsha, where I grew up in, is, for instance, a city blooming with restaurants and street food stands. In fact, you can probably find somebody selling something tasty in every alley. With that being said, the streets in Hunan are an incubator for feeling connected and belonging to with the help of spicy food.

In Hunan TV station's documentary “The Pride of Hunan Cuisine,” it is also commented that spiciness is a temper, broad and inclusive. Lin Luo, a Changsha chef whose signature is called the complete spicy feast, was interviewed in the documentary. He argues that the spirit of Hunan cuisine is the personality of Hunan citizens. They are courageous enough to try every kind of food, every kind of flavor (“The Pride Of Hunan Cuisine”). That is the spirit of chili, and also what I see in Hunan people. This point is also illustrated in a folk song performed by Zuyin Song known as “Spicy Girl.” The lyrics basically praise how spicy girls, namely Hunan girls, are unafraid of everything (Song).

In addition to the opinions of Hunan and Chinese people on Chili and local spirit, Dunlop, as a foreign food critic, also wrote similar comments in her book. She noted in her accounts describing her field trip researching Hunan recipes that her first impression of Hunan is straightforward and careless but also smart, hard-working, and decisive. Moreover, she points out something we Hunan people probably never realized afterward: Hunan people think their province is the heart and life of the country because of all the giants that came out of this place in history, just like how they think of their cuisine (Dunlop 131). This is probably the mindset that also exists in my unconsciousness and fueled the writing of this entire story.

Works Cited

“曹雨：中國食辣史 [CaoYu: The History of Chili in China].” YouTube, uploaded by 一席YiXi, 4 November 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySs7Tkr_7ww.

“Chilli peppers.” Royal Horticultural Society, https://www.rhs.org.uk/vegetables/chilli-pepper/grow-your-own.

“Chinese Food by Region.” Food Network, https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/articles/chinese-food-by-region. 

“气候情况 [Climatic Conditions].” People’s Government of Hunan Province, http://www.hunan.gov.cn/jxxx/hngk/zrdl/201712/t20171201_4886850.html.

Song, Zuying. “Spicy Girl” YouTube, uploaded by The Baby Bamboo, 20 January 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQEFwuwg67E.

“The Pride of Hunan Cuisine.” MangoTV, https://w.mgtv.com/b/361616/11090816.html?fpa=se&lastp=so_result

“Szechuan Peppercorn and Substitutes.” TipBuzz, 2019,  https://tipbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/Szechuan-Peppercorn-1.jpg .

Dunlop, Fuchsia. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper. Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2018. 

Lian,Gao. Zunsheng Bajian. 1591.

Cao, Yu. The History of Chili in China. Beijing Lian He Tian Chang Wen Hua, 2019.