Do you like spicy crayfish from the night market or bashu hot pot with friends? In this era when even Sichuan girls are called "hot girls", it is difficult to imagine how monotonous our three meals a day would be without chili peppers. But as a "foreign goods" of the Eight Classics, the intimate relationship between chili peppers and China is really not achieved overnight.
1. Hot new friends from the Americas
Chili pepper: Magnolia, Solanaceae, Capsicum is an annual or perennial plant whose berries are edible. As a native of the Americas, chili peppers traveled to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century with Columbus discovering the New World. Nearly a hundred years later, the Ming Dynasty literati Gao Lian and Wang Xiangjin recorded the basic information of chili peppers in the "Eight Notes of Zunsheng" and "Qunfang Spectrum" respectively. From Columbus to Gao Lian and Wang Xiangjin, we can roughly know that chili peppers were associated with China in the sixteenth century.
The association of chili peppers with China is a long process. At first, it was only regarded as a novel ornamental plant, and later as a vegetable. And because it was introduced to different regions by different routes many times, the early understanding of peppers in various places also produced some deviations. This makes the chili pepper in the eyes of the ancients not only "chili pepper".
Earliest, chili peppers were named "pepper" or "Qin pepper" in China. "Pepper" carries a "fan" word, showing the identity of pepper as a "foreign product". The "Qin pepper" existed before the introduction of pepper, which originally referred to the peppercorns in the Shaanxi region, as opposed to the peppercorns produced in the Bashu area. Because chili peppers have the same spicy taste as peppercorns, people initially called it "Qin pepper".
In addition to "pepper" and "Qin pepper", in the subsequent spread process, with its own "ancestral origin", sexual taste, form, etc., pepper has gained more than forty new names. Even today, some people in Beijing and Shaanxi are still accustomed to calling chili peppers "Qin peppers"; Hunan, Yunnan and other places call them "sea peppers"; Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions call them "spicy tomatoes"; Taiwan, Fujian and other places call them "fan ginger"; and some parts of Xinjiang call them "Tarimamur Luchu"...
In terms of the degree of spread, peppers have been in China for more than 400 years and have gone through four stages: the slow introduction from the late Ming Dynasty to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty; the rapid spread between Qing Jiaqing and Xianfeng; the stable development of the Qing Tongzhi to xuantong years; and the Republic of China has swept the country. It was also in the Republic of China that the name "chili pepper" finally gained universal recognition and became its official Chinese name.
2. Pepper dyeing the Xiangjiang River
If you want to talk about chili peppers as vegetables, Hunan and Sichuan cuisine, which are famous for their fiery heat, cannot be bypassed. Hunan was the first region in China to use chili peppers as a major vegetable. In the middle of the Kangxi Dynasty, the local records of Hunan such as the Baoqing FuZhi and the Shaoyang County Chronicle recorded the name "Hai Pepper". This not only shows that Hunan peppers are very likely to be imported through Zhejiang, but also shows that peppers have been widely cultivated in Hunan during this period.
For Hunan people, falling in love with peppers is not because it was introduced early, but because Hunan is sunny and rainy, the temperature difference is large, the humidity is high, and people need spicy things to drive away cold and dehumidify. In the Qing Dynasty, Hunan's economy was relatively backward, and ordinary people could not afford to buy too many peppers and peppercorns from other places, and the peppers commonly produced locally quickly became people's favorites.
The combination of peppers that can arouse people's appetite and Hunan cuisine that has paid attention to color and flavor since ancient times collides with dazzling sparks. During the light years of the Qing Dynasty, Hunan people have "no pepper mustard and no mustard, but soup has many". After that, the spicy Xiang army came out of Xiang and made the name of Hunan cuisine in the Yangtze River Basin. Coupled with the promotion of Zuo Zongtang, Tan Yanmin and others and the continuous improvement of Hunan chefs, Hunan cuisine finally occupied a place in the eight major cuisines, and Hunan was also famous for its spicy taste.
3. Chili pepper spicy bashu
In Sichuan, not far from Hunan, chili peppers have also "conquered" people's hearts. Although Sichuan cuisine is "a hundred dishes and a hundred flavors", but now when it comes to Sichuan cuisine, the first thing that comes to many people's minds is the red oil of Sichuan cuisine.
Shudi has produced peppercorns and ginger since ancient times. Coupled with the fact that some people have eaten zhu zhu earlier, the tone of the good spicy flavor of Shudi is basically determined. However, because Sichuan was more geographically closed than Hunan, it was not until the Qianlong period that peppers began to appear on the Plates of the Shu people. However, because of the good spicy tone, Sichuan has become a large province with Hunan almost at the same time.
During the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, the five common varieties of chili peppers, bell peppers, long peppers, cone peppers, clustered raw peppers and cherry peppers were widely cultivated in Sichuan. To this day, the "Erjing Tiao" in Chengdu and the "Seven Star Pepper" in Weiyuan are still essential products for Sichuanese to cook.
For Sichuan cuisine, spicy taste is very important, but this spicy is not purely from the spicy pepper. The spiciness of Sichuan cuisine is mostly spicy, which is the collision of foreign peppers and local peppercorns. Sichuan cuisine also has a variety of spicy, green spicy, oil spicy, sour spicy, aromatic spicy, sauce spicy and other spicy, the types of peppers used and other seasonings involved are not the same. However, from the perspective of the common 23 flavors of Sichuan cuisine is 13 spicy, Sichuan cuisine and spicy food have indeed reached the point of inseparability.
Although there are also many people who are difficult to accept the spicy taste, in the eyes of Sichuan, Hunan and many other spicy "foodies", chili peppers and China are undoubtedly a great blessing. Although chili peppers come from the Americas, who can forget Chuanxiang when it comes to spicy today?