Food
The one everybody thinks they know, and almost everybody misdescribes. The defining sensation is 麻辣 — ma la — and the ma half is not heat at all: the Sichuan peppercorn produces a genuine buzzing numbness on the lips and tongue, a tingling that a first-time eater usually finds alarming and then cannot stop chasing. Chilli arrived from the Americas only about four hundred years ago and the cuisine reorganised itself around it. There is also a whole quiet register that never leaves China — tea-smoked duck, twice-cooked pork, the cold dishes — which is nothing like the fire the export version suggests.
Eat — Mapo tofu, dan dan noodles, twice-cooked pork, and a hotpot with the divided pot so you have an escape route.
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