Hot-Pot

It was my last night traveling with the Spaniards.  Gabriel and I had been looking for genuine set-your-head-on-fire Sichuan cuisine ever since we arrived in this fine province and although we had enjoyed several fine meals, we had yet to experience anything particularly incendiary.  We felt it was time to look in the guidebook, rather than just wandering into random locations and pointing, so we took an LP reference and wandered out into the darkening streets of Chengdu.  Naturally we couldn’t find the place, but on the way we were intrigued by a crowded establishment furnished with boiling bowls of chilies and oil set into tables, each table surrounded by cases of beers and men with no shirts.  The chilies made our eyes water and throats itch just walking past the door.  We decided without much debate that this was the place, checked with the host, and waited for a table while the other diners bought us tea and ice-cream and asked to have their pictures taken with us. 

We got a little carried away.  Ordinarily Gabriel and I spend between 1 and 2 dollars on dinner, but when they brought us the menu with all manner of strange pictures of food, each intended to be thrown into the chili oil…well…we just kept on pointing at things, running up our tab to a shocking 7 USD each.  We had more food than we could possibly eat sitting before us when the courteous staff brought the huge, two-chamber hot-pot to a rolling boil and helped us to dump our feast into the appropriate concoctions.   

The food did what we asked of it.  Special, round “mouth numbing” chilies set the stage for the roaring taste-bud-fire that was to follow.  We boiled the beef and meatballs and mushrooms and greens and we ate and ate, sweating and coughing and throwing new food into the caldrons until we could take no more.   We paid our ransom and headed back to our hotel, buzzing off chilies and beer and the weirdness of China.   

The Spaniards have gone south now, as is their wont, and I am catching a train north to Xi’an.  We traded email addresses and hugs and music from our iPods and promises that each of us, respectively, has a place to crash in London, Barcelona, and wherever I end up.   Tonight I’ll be catching the train alone, but it doesn’t feel bad.  Short friendships are part of “this thing of ours” and freedom to part ways is the best part of traveling alone.  There seems to be a unique solidarity among travelers in China and I’m looking forward more than ever to the next batch of friends in the next crazy metropolis.