The Chile Pepper in China, by Brian R. Dott (introduction)

The Chile Pepper in China A CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY

Brian R. Dott

I NTR O D U C TI O N Red chile, Pointed chile, Spicy chile, So tasty!

— CHINESE FOLK RHYME

Chinese cuisine without chile peppers? Unimaginable! Yet, there were no chiles anywhere in China prior to the 1570s. All varieties of chile pepper, from sweet to extremely spicy, from long and pointed to round, belong to species native to Central America and northern South America and therefore had to be introduced to China. This book was sparked by an epiphany when I was enjoying a spicy meal at a Sichuanese restaurant in Beijing and asked myself, “How did the Chinese begin to eat something new with such an intense flavor as chile peppers?” I started seeing chiles everywhere—real dried ones hanging from the eaves of traditional homes, decorative glass ones hanging from rear-view mirrors keeping images of Chairman Mao company, in contemporary music videos, and in an eighteenth-century novel. Today chiles are so common in China that many Chinese assume they are native. Indeed, in the midtwentieth century Mao Zedong even asserted that revolution would be impossible without chiles!1 In the twenty-first century I presented on some preliminary findings to an audience of Chinese historians in Beijing, and many

of them were astounded that chiles are not indigenous. “Surely,” several asked, “some of the varieties we enjoy are native!?” While the Chinese have certainly bred varieties to suit their tastes and needs over the past few hundred years, initial introduction came from abroad. In this book I trace the intricacies and complexities of answers to two deceptively simple questions: How did chile peppers in China evolve from an obscure foreign plant to a ubiquitous and even “authentic” spice, vegetable, medicine, and symbol? And how did Chinese uses of chiles change Chinese culture?

Drawing on a wide range of sources from many genres, I place evolving uses of and views about chiles into changing cultural contexts. Many of the ways chiles were integrated into Chinese culture transcend just one field, such as food or medicine. The introduction of chiles into China contrasts with other American crops where calories or profit were prime motivations for their spread under the public patronage of local elites and officials. In fact, elite writers tended to ignore chiles more than they wrote about them. However, chiles appear in a wide variety of genres, demonstrating that they affected Chinese culture well beyond the realm of cuisine. An important theme throughout the book is the versatility that Chinese recognized in the chile as they adapted it to fit particular national, regional, and personal conditions and needs. As a plant found in many kitchen gardens it came to be naturalized as, literally, home grown. Eventually the chile even surpassed an indigenous flavor, the Sichuan pepper, in popularity. The influence of chiles as flavorings even changed Chinese language, shifting the meaning of the term “spicy” (la 彋), so that chiles and “spicy” became enmeshed and inseparable.

Integration of the chile into medical classificatory systems was essential to its spread and adoption—not just medicinally, but also for use in cooking. The chile pepper offers an excellent avenue for viewing the interconnections between elite medical literature 2

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theory and popular healing techniques developed through practice. In addition to being used in pharmaceutical cures against a wide range of maladies, chiles also became an important daily, dietary supplement for the overall maintenance of good health. In the earliest Chinese source to include chiles, from 1591, the author emphasized their aesthetic appeal. A number of later texts also underscored how people liked to grow chile plants in pots as decorations for their homes. In modern times this beauty of chiles has been carried over into souvenirs from a sacred site and decorations for the New Year. In literature and even in revolutionary songs, chiles have been used as metaphors for personality traits or revolutionary spirit.

While many aspects of the history of chiles in China apply to most of the country, there are some regions, particularly Sichuan and Hunan, where chiles have become an essential component of regional identity—embraced by insiders and assigned by outsiders. Regional identity, like national identity, is constructed, and food is one of the things around which such identities are centered.

Chile consumption has become a key identity marker in these two regions, and the chile has indelibly affected their cultures.

While chile use was often multifaceted, for organizational purposes each chapter focuses on a particular type of adoption or influence, with interconnections across the chapters brought together in the conclusion.

Studying the history of food gives insight into far more than cuisine. Cultural anthropologist Igor Kopytoff, in an important study for the academic analysis of items, argues that culturally specific biographies of things treat objects “as a culturally constructed entity, endowed with culturally specific meanings, and classified and reclassified into culturally constituted categories.�2 Cultural construction refers to the concept that many things are not essentially, concretely defined by their mere presence but are fashioned INTRODUCTION

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into sets of meanings by the surrounding context, roles, expectations, and stories of which they are a part. My analysis of chiles in Chinese culture engages with Kopytoff’s proposal for a cultural biography of a thing. In this vein, I examine how the Chinese incorporated and adopted the chile into already existing cultural constructs until it became both an “authentic” and a “revolutionary” component of Chinese culture, emblematic of specific regions as well as Mao’s communist revolution.

The chile is the focal point and connecting thread through this book, an introduced crop that grants a unique lens through which to analyze changing components of Chinese culture, such as gender and revolutionary symbolism. Examination of food allows scholars to engage in deep analytical readings of a variety of cultural practices: the role of food in everyday life, the intricate interconnections between cuisine and medicine, changing gender expectations, political manipulations of popular symbols, the importance of differences between regional identities, and connections with religious rituals.

Just as gender roles and national myths are culturally constructed, so too are components of a culture that are seen as contributing to “authentic” identity, be it national, regional, or ethnic. Food and culture scholar and critic Fabio Parasecoli argues that “certain ingredients, dishes, or traditions enjoy a special position in the definition of individual and communal identities. . . . Continuous negotiations define and redefine these ‘identity foods’ both within and outside the communities that produce them.”3 For chiles to be so thoroughly integrated into Chinese society that most Chinese today consider them indigenous means that after introduction chiles were adopted, adapted, and redefined to the extent that they came to be considered as an “authentic” or essential component of the culture. This history of the constructed authenticity for chiles in China, however, extends beyond the realm of cuisine; the chile 4

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in China is not just an “identity food,” for it was also used in medicine and literature as well. Thus the chile in this cultural biography is an “identity object.”

The time is ripe for a detailed, book-length study of the cultural impact of the chile in China. There are no other studies in English.

In Chinese, there are two strong history articles and a short book using an anthropological lens.4 While the articles include important insights into the history of chiles in China, the shorter format precludes in-depth analysis of cultural impacts of chile introduction. In his recent book, The History of Spice in Chinese Food: Four Hundred Years of Chiles in China, Cao Yu includes interesting ethnographic information about contemporary chile use based on fieldwork that is largely outside the scope of this book. In the history sections of his book, Cao’s interpretations differ significantly from mine in two key areas. Cao asserts that the main agents for transmitting chiles within China were merchants. I, instead, argue that

Figure 0.1 A number of varieties of chiles at a market in Kunming, Yunnan, 2017.

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farmers played a major role. Second, Cao gives a much later date for the first use of chiles as a flavoring and emphasizes Guizhou as the most important location for that use. By contrast, in this book, I explore sources that demonstrate Chinese used chiles as flavoring well before when Cao asserts it began. Furthermore, early Chinese use of chiles as a flavoring was more broadly dispersed. In works about Chinese food and the introduction of foreign crops, the chile pepper usually receives only a few passing lines or, at most, a few pages.5 The chile pepper’s importance in Chinese culture, however, is much more significant than is reflected in scholarly discourse.

Although no chiles were grown in China until about the 1570s, their popularity took off rapidly. By 1621 there were already references to them being grown widely.6 By the eighteenth century the editors of a local history even declared that chiles had become “as indispensable in daily cuisine as onion and garlic.”7 As a trip to any market in China reveals (see figure 0.1), the chile is now a vibrant and ubiquitous component of Chinese culture. The impact of chile pepper use extends well beyond culinary practices. Mao associated the revolutionary vigor of Hunanese, including himself, with chile pepper consumption. The renowned contemporary pop singer Song Zuying, in the song “Spicy Girls,” declares that “with a handful of chiles, [women] speak their minds.”8 The fiery gender anarchy of a key female character from the eighteenth-century novel The Dream of the Red Chamber is linked with the chile pepper. Chiles are on the table in flavorful dishes, their heat helps people’s bodies adjust to high levels of humidity, their images decorate posters and doorways, and, metaphorically, they symbolize revolutionary men and passionate women. The chile is now a lively and even authentic component of Chinese culture.

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PRAISE FOR

The Chile Pepper in China

“Extensive source materials in both Chinese and English form the bedrock for this impressive study into how a relatively unassuming American import so radically changed one country’s cuisines and traditional pharmacopoeia. The history of the humble chile in China is a fascinating one, especially as viewed through Brian R. Dott’s affectionate yet scholarly lens.”

—CAROLYN PHI LLI P S, A U THO R O F A L L UN D E R H E A V E N: R E C I P E S F R OM TH E 3 5 CUI S I N ES OF CH I NA

“A learned as well as lively book with many surprises. How chile peppers came to China from the New World just starts a story involving taste, regionalism, adaptation, and folklore. Chiles were key to Chinese cuisine’s subtlety and variety, and not just in Sichuan and Hunan either.”

—PAUL FREEDMAN , A U THO R O F F OOD : TH E H I S T O R Y O F T A S T E A N D T EN RES TA UR A N TS TH A T CH A N GED A M E R I C A

“This is an absolutely wonderful book. It combines scholarship and good food writing—the enormous amount of effort in compiling the databases is duly and modestly cloaked in good prose.”

—EUGENE A N D E R SO N , A U THO R O F TH E F O O D O F C H I NA

ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY

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