Biography female male peppers
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A common saying in China is: “The Sichuanese are not afraid of hot chiles; no degree of heat will frighten off the people of Guizhou; but those Hunanese are terrified of food that isn’t hot!” From this old saw, one might be forgiven for thinking chiles native to China. In The Chile Pepper in China, historian Brian Dott seeks to show how “foreign” chiles were introduced and explores how vital they became to these regions’ identity, with spiciness linked to the energy of “revolutionary men and passionate women”.
Chiles, as distinguished from Sichuan pepper that is native to China, are from the Americas, as are potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco. Dott reviews local merchant records and suggests that they were first introduced, probably by multi-ethnic ships crews who were using them for their own cooking: first from America to Spain, then Portugal to Asia around the s. Unlike other spices that were traded at the time (black pepper, nutmeg, etc.), chiles had little value initially du
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Chinese cuisine without chile peppers seems unimaginable. Entranced bygd the fiery taste, diners worldwide have fallen for Chinese cooking. In China, chiles are everywhere, from dried peppers hanging from eaves to Mao’s boast that revolution would be impossible without chiles, from the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber to contemporary music videos. Indeed, they are so common that many kinesisk assume they are native. Yet there were no chiles anywhere in China prior to the s, when they were introduced from the Americas.
Brian R. Dott explores how the nonnative chile went from obscurity to ubiquity in China, influencing not just cuisine but also medicin, language, and cultural identity. He details how its versatility became essential to a variety of regional cuisines and swayed both elite and popular medical and healing practices. Dott tracks the cultural meaning of the chile across a bred swath of literary texts and artworks, revealing how the spread of chiles funda
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Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography
Chinese cuisine without chile peppers seems unimaginable. Entranced by the fiery taste, diners worldwide have fallen for Chinese cooking. In China, chiles are everywhere, from dried peppers hanging from eaves to Mao's boast that revolution would be impossible without chiles, from the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber to contemporary music videos. Indeed, they are so common that many Chinese assume they are native. Yet there were no chiles anywhere in China prior to the s, when they were introduced from the Americas.
Brian R. Dott explores how the nonnative chile went from obscurity to ubiquity in China, influencing not just cuisine but also medicine, language, and cultural identity. He details how its versatility became essential to a variety of regional cuisines and swayed both elite and popular medical and healing practices. Dott tracks the cultural meaning of the chile across a wide swath of literary texts and ar