 Good evening everybody. Good afternoon. Good morning wherever you are in the world. So my name is Jacob Klein. I'm the chair currently of the so as a food study center. And this is our first paper our first seminar in the food forum series for the 2021 2022 academic year. It's a so welcome everyone. It's a huge privilege and pleasure to introduce Professor Brian dot. See, so Professor dot is chair of history, and of Asian and Middle Eastern studies in Whitman College in Washington state in the United States. He is a cultural historian of China. He has he is the author of identity reflections pilgrimages to mount tie in late Imperial China from 2004. And most recently, he has published this wonderful book called the chili pepper in China, a cultural biography published with Columbia University Press in 2020. I read it over the summer and immediately invited Professor dot to this seminar series because I thought it was such a fabulous book. So it's a really great pleasure to have him here. What we'll do is for those of you who haven't been to the seminar before. So we'll have a press dot will give us his paper first. And after the paper there'll be time for q amp a. If I could ask you all to in the first instance, use the raise hand function, which you'll find at the bottom of your screens. And I'll then call upon you to ask your question. But if you don't feel if you feel a bit uncomfortable you for whatever reason you have a bad. You know problems with your Wi Fi and you don't want to speak your, you know, you don't want to ask your question out loud, you can also type it into the chat so I will be looking at the chat from time to time as well. But I prefer it if people could in the first instance, actually raise their hand and ask their question out loud. That's all right. So without further ado then I'll hand over to head over to Brian, Professor dot and mute myself as well. All right, so can hopefully you can see the full screen of the PowerPoint. Okay, excellent. Looks great. Oh, there's my view. Okay. I wanted to make sure I could actually see people. In this format, I've done webinars where I can't actually see any members of the audience. This is nice. So, I'm excited to talk with you about the history of the chili pepper in China, and the various ways that the Chinese adopted and adapted the chili pepper to fit their culture, our cultures. Let me just get. Here we go. So, my sort of overall question that I had asked myself at the beginning of this project was, you know, how did chilies come to be used daily in China. It struck me as an epiphany at one point when I was eating at a Sichuan restaurant in Beijing and just wondering how did the Chinese start eating something that's so different. And basically it cuisine can can be a fairly conservative aspect of culture so how did this really intense flavor become so popular that today, many Chinese just assume it's an indigenous crop. So I mean the very basic answer to that is that the Chinese wreck recognized and exploited the versatility of the chili pepper. Whoops. And that's sort of my, what I'm going to do today is give a broad overview and show you the many different areas that the Chinese used the chili pepper. So just briefly, I'll be begin with some background, how the chili pepper got to China. And then go through these different categories of ways it was used as a decorative plant as a flavoring as a vegetable, which I see is distinct from use as a flavoring. Although it's obviously also doing that function medicine. It also gets used in literary imagery. And then, if I've still got time when I get there I'll talk a little bit about the regionalization and how that's a really important with different regions in China have different cultures and environments and that those can influence the way that chili pepper gets used in specific areas. So the chili pepper originated in Central America and Northern South America. So it's not anywhere outside of the Americas until Columbus. So I like to say this is the one, perhaps the one good thing that Columbus did was to help spread the chili pepper. So it's also important. One of the reasons I can't give you a super precise trajectory for how the chili peppers exactly got to China is that chilies were not a world trade commodity until the 20th century. So I can't go back to ship manifests like one can do for nutmeg or black pepper or something like that. Probably the chilies first got to Europe into Spain. After Columbus is second voyage so probably arrived there in 1494. And then we know they got to India and this would have been the Portuguese bringing it to India around 1530. Malacca or modern day Indonesia around 1540, and then somehow got to China. So, actually let me go back. We know they got to Southeast Asia via the Portuguese through the Indian Ocean. Eventually we're also going to get the Spanish bringing the chilies across from Acapulco to Manila and the so called Manila galleons. And one thing I want to point out is we've got no record that any of these introductions were because they were being crates and crates full of chili peppers. I'm, I'm pretty sure, but again, you know, there's just no direct evidence but I'm pretty sure that what happened was the crew members, some of the crew members on these ships brought chili peppers for their own food. And that that's the way the chilies got spread when they got to various ports of call. So we get chilies in Southeast Asia, coming there from both the Indian Ocean basin and then also across the Pacific from modern day Mexico. And then we've got three entry points into China at different slightly different periods. The main evidence that I use and also some Chinese scholars have used for identifying these entry points is that in those places, they used a different name for the chili pepper so the argument I'm making and the Chinese historians are making is that it was a new crop and they had to invent a name for it. And that's why you have different. One of the reasons why you have different names in these three regions is that those were entry points for the chili. So we end up with a lot, a lot of different names in Chinese for the chili pepper, which I think is a reflection of regionalization regional differences in how the chilies were used. So, the earliest known record for the chili peppers is from 1591 in the province on the coast, and that name is foreign pepper so they recognized that it was coming from abroad. And we also get then, and it's arriving there probably prior to that my best guess is 1570s. But it, you know, it could be 1580s. And then up in the north. This map doesn't have it the Korean Peninsula is right right here. So in the north in Shenzhen, the earliest references 1682. But we have earlier ref I found earlier references for for Korea. And so it seems likely that that introduction is sort of farmer to farmer working its way up the Korean Peninsula and then across into China in the 1650s. And then Taiwan is a separate introduction point in later in the 1640s, and that's almost certainly introduced by the Dutch during their short period when they were colonizing in Taiwan. And they're the locals called it foreign ginger. And that applies the particularly the foreign pepper chin pepper I'm going to get there in a minute are using a character that already existed in Chinese for another pungent flavoring. So I think part of what's going on is a signal to how they were using the chili in similar ways to that indigenous Sichuan pepper, or in the case of Taiwan similar to their use of ginger. The elite were initially using the chili as a decorative plant, which is a really interesting parallel because in Spain when the chili peppers are first introduced. Nobody's eating them there. They're actually records of them as a decorative plant in monastery gardens. So the elite in China are similarly using it as a decorative plant. It works really well within Chinese culture. Red is a celebratory color, shiny red is really great. And then shiny red juxtaposed to those dark green leaves is just a really nice contrast. And the earliest text, I believe, demonstrates that this author Gaolien was indeed treating them as a decorative plant. We'll first look at this is his whole text about chili peppers. And this is actually a pretty long text for for the time period. You know, prior to the 20th century. This was a long text for me for for for finding out about chili peppers in China. So foreign pepper. That's the name that he comes up with the plant has dense growth, the flowers are white, the fruits are just like the worn out tip of a writing brush. Their flavor is spicy law, their color is red, they are very pleasing to look at propagation results from planting the seeds. It's a fairly scientific description of the plant. He does mention that the flavor is spicy, but based on where he placed this description. This is a super long work. He's got a couple of different sections about food. He has a big long discussion of medicine, and the chili peppers are not in any of those sections instead they're in a section on decorative plants. And then we have subsequent sources, including one from not much later 30 years later, people plant them in pots as decorations, and then, you know, later, a later one from the 19th century. They are shiny and radiant many are raised in pots for decoration and they're certainly some continued use today of chili peppers as a decorative plant. Also, they get used decoratively this is a very recent, probably 21st century use of the chilies as a decoration. They tend to be artificial chilies but you could certainly hang strings of chilies and in the past there has been lots of people hanging strings of chilies next to doors, but this sort of wish or prayer for the New Year's is a fairly and using these decorative artificial chilies is quite recent. So the phrase in Chinese Hong Hong Ho Ho literally means red red fire fire. The color and the intensity of the flavoring, but it becomes really a wish or a prayer for an exuberant and prosperous life, and they're most commonly hung. In this case, it's a little hostile. Either side of the doorway and typically people will also put them on either side of the door to their apartment or to their house at Chinese New Year as a way of making wishes for for the coming year for for prosperity for the family or for the business. Moving on to looking at chilies as flavoring the initial records. So, looking to the 17th century into the 18th century, it's being used they're being used often as a initially as a substitute for other flavors. And this is how it sort of gets its entry into culinary use as a substitute, and then over time it becomes used on its own. So start with the naming regimen. There's a really interesting parallel between the Chinese and English in this context. We use the word pepper for all sorts of different plants that are completely unrelated to each other. And the Chinese are using doing a similar sort of thing. So the point that we're starting from is different English we're starting with black pepper, and then carrying that name to other plants as they get introduced for for the Chinese, the original name is for Indigenous plant, often known as such one pepper or flower The character jiao originally that that's what that means it's the it's that plant and it's particularly the seed pod from that plant that gets used as a flavoring. It's in the prickly ash family. It's a small perennial tree. It has a really strong pungent flavor but also has a really interesting numbing aspect to it quality to it. The black pepper is the next pepper to be introduced into China. It's coming from South Asia. That's a perennial vine so completely different kind of plant in a completely different family. And the who in front of the job so who Joe is the who means foreign it means India means much of Asia outside of China. It's sort of a demarker of this is a jiao, not from China. And then the chili pepper the initial name that golly and uses is another character fun for foreign. And then it also eventually becomes most commonly known as la jiao which is spicy pepper. So using that core character from the indigenous pungent flavored plant and then modifying it to identify a new plant that's being introduced to China. So in the substitutions, there's three main sort of rivals or three things that the chili pepper is is being substituted for, which really gets it. It's adaptation and adoption and China taking off. Indigenous Sichuan pepper is widely available throughout China, but generally purchased at a market. Since it's a small tree, it takes up really too much space to be planted in someone's kitchen or vegetable garden. So we have this quote from 1671, the chili pepper can be substituted for Sichuan pepper. Similar sorts of things for black pepper. In terms of economics there's even bigger gap. One of the things that makes the chili pepper spread so well across the world is it's a temperate, you know, it will grow in a temperate climate. So it will grow a lot of different places, which is a real contrast to the spice trade spices, like nutmeg or cinnamon or black pepper which really need a tropical or semi tropical climate. So since black pepper is actually imported from South Asia, it makes it a lot more expensive. And so something that you're growing basically at the cost of your labor is going to be way cheaper economically than the black pepper and you know a little bit cheaper than the Sichuan pepper. So ground very fine chili peppers are used in the winter months as a substitute for black pepper so implication being that black pepper is harder to obtain in the winter months. So interestingly so black pepper let me go back second Sichuan pepper black pepper are in the same flavor group for the Chinese, but salt is a completely separate flavor group, and would not be it's not sort of a natural substitution because you're not substituting one pungent flavor for another pungent flavor and this takes your substituting pungent flavor for for salt. But part of the issue that's going on there is definitely economics so salt. When the chili peppers introduced is a government monopoly or semi monopoly, which makes salt somewhat artificially inflated in terms of price. And then I think particularly important for the take off of the chili pepper is in the 1620s, their major disruptions in in the salt trade. And this leads to really dramatic increases in the cost of salt. So we get local gazetteers or local histories that talk about, for example, local minorities use it as a substitute for salt. One of the things going on there is in Guajou local minorities are typically living outside of the political center, and are more outside of the monetized economy, and makes it harder for them to to be buying salt. One thing is important to point out here is, of course, the chili peppers cannot substitute for the biological needs of salt. You know, we biologically need particularly sodium for various cell functions, and obviously chili pepper is not going to be a substitute for that. But as we probably all know, we eat way more salt than we could possibly need biologically and so chili pepper is filling in in that niche of salt as a flavoring rather than salt as a biological necessity. So, over time the chili peppers take on the flavoring of their own, not just a substitute. And we can see this fairly early 1621, the ground fruit is put into food is extremely pungent and spicy, but not referring to a direct substitute. You know, as we move into the 18th century it becomes less and less common to see substitution and we can see this 1765 local history. The pod is sliced and used to flavor food and sauces vinegar savory oils and preserved vegetables. These are really key aspects of Chinese cuisine. Using sauces and vinegars and savory oils, preserved vegetables those are all really common important components of Chinese cuisine and the chili pepper is getting integrated into those different flavoring systems. And by the 18th century, we're sort of well beyond substitution, and even real emphasis on the importance and widespread use of the chili pepper. So, as indispensable in daily cuisine as onion and garlic. It is the most important vegetable in the garden. It is used as a daily flavoring not unlike salt. So it's really taken off. And by the early 19th century, they're almost no sources that are referring to the chilies anymore as as a substitute they really come into their own as as a flavoring. Related to to use of the flavoring. I argue that that introduction and adoption by the Chinese chili pepper has changed their the language. So, the way the term law or spicy is used has shifted. So in the 17th century and earlier. The law was defined as very pungent, which is somewhat circular definition. And then pungent is defined as the flavor of hard metals. And then some examples would from that time period would be scallions, garlic, not we mustered would all be described as law. I think that I'm going to show you I mean the next definition I have is from a 1990s dictionary, but that in the sort of spoken language the shift is definitely happening prior to that. So the definition. We have the sharp and stimulating flavor of ginger garlic or chili pepper so chili peppers worked its way into the definition. And then even more recently, the sharp and stimulating flavor of the chili pepper garlic or ginger so it becomes sort of up at the front. So if you look at sort of modern language use when somebody is using the term law to talk about flavoring. They almost always mean chili pepper. Just for example, I want to eat spicy food. Or I like to eat spicy food. I don't eat spicy food or more commonly will follow. I'm afraid of spiciness, which means I can't eat spicy food. The law in all of those is going to be understood as chili pepper, not going to be garlic. I don't know if any Chinese who don't eat garlic but I do know Chinese who don't eat chili peppers. And so that adaptation adoption of this initial, you know, foreign plant has impacted that aspect of language use. So just very briefly, important to mention that, you know, the chilies are not only used in cuisine for flavoring. They are also used as a vegetable. Sometimes this would be the really mild peppers like a bell pepper. And, but other times it would be some that have some some spice to them as well. So I looked through a whole lot of local histories or gazetteers. And most of those tend to categorize things. And in the ones that include the chili pepper chili peppers put in the vegetable category in over 80% of them. So there's a clear association with the with the chilies as a vegetable. And botanical texts. Similarly, if they're categorized over 50% of them were categorized into the vegetable category. And then medical texts are using often often using a different system and the ones I looked at only a few of them were using that similar sort of category but a couple of them two out of those three use identifying them as a vegetable. And just a couple examples. In his 1848 work on plants, we'll see June observe that chilies are grown in John she who now in Guizhou and such one so four different provinces as a vegetable. And this is a modern sort of tourism poster, trying to explain the culture of, in this case, Sean she which is where she on is is located that the life size terracotta warriors. And this is a, they like to talk about a particular region a particular province having sort of eight to 10 specialties or oddities that help distinguish them, their culture from from neighboring regions cultures. And for this one, the third oddity for Sean she is that the chili pepper is a complete dish. So you can have an entire dish just made out of chili peppers as we can see this woman is has that nice red dish of chili peppers. I think for time sake I'm going to sort of skip this the Chinese. I'll go through quickly. When I've talked to Chinese. They're like, are you sure there aren't some chilies that are native to China. And it's important to point out that no, there aren't any that are native to China, but the Chinese have absolutely bred many unique varieties of chili pepper. So this is a really popular one chow chow, the heaven facing chilies that grow upwards rather than downwards. This is one that looks like that interesting Buddha hand citrus fruit. It just grows they just grow in a clump and they're called Buddhist hand chilies. And this is just a whole variety of chilies in in in a market in Southwest China. But I want to make sure I've got time to talk about medicine. So in lots of cultures, including Chinese culture, it, you can't really draw a line between things that are taken into the body as food versus things that are taken into the body as medicine. And sort of identification of the medicinal uses of chili pepper is, I think, equally important to its adoption in China as its initial use as a substitute flavor. So within Chinese medicine, we have a system called the five phases, which is very important. So this is a correlate, correlative or corresponding system. There are five phases, and then each phase gets associated with all sorts of different things and this can be used in medicine but it also gets used in fortune telling and in all sorts of other aspects of Chinese culture. So basically, there's a direction associated with each phase a color of flavor, climates, and then different parts of the body, including different types of organs, and different tissues are all associated with a particular phase. And then if you're weak in your heart, then you might need to take, for example, eat things that are in the fire phase. And similarly, so the pungent is associated with metal, hence that definition of pungent meaning the taste of hard metals. And then it gets associated with having drying characteristics or abilities as a medicine, targeting the lungs, targeting the large intestines, the nose, the skin. So, you know, one in this system and explanation for why your nose is running as you're eating lots of chili peppers is going to be partly because of that connection of that phase, that metal phase. So, 1758, Wang Fu's medical text, he describes the chili pepper. The pungent flavor drains off the lungs, so we can see it's pungent flavor, it has that drying capability, and in particular can help to dry out excess moisture in the lungs. So, once the chili pepper gets placed into that system, people understand how it could be used, and that in turn is going to impact its use as a flavoring or as a vegetable as well. So, people might be eating it as a dish, but they're also understanding that it can be impacting their health in a particular way. This is Wuchi Jo and again, talking about another aspect of the chili pepper, so without variety and the diet illnesses can occur, lesser ones can be treated with ginger and cassia cinnamon so those are two other flavors that are in the same pungent category. More severe illnesses of the spleen or stomach must be treated with something stronger, the foreign pepper, so here we're contrasting, so if it's a mild disease you probably don't want to be prescribing chili pepper, but if those other pungents aren't having an impact then you can step up the treatment and add in chili peppers. Another system that's really important in terms of Chinese medicine and also in terms of flavoring is the yin and yang system, so in this system there's basically two categories of food or can be either cooling or warming. This is sort of a no-brainer, obviously the chili pepper gets put into the warming category and I'm just going to skip the next one. But it's important that these things get established and recognized and put into the categories and then they can be used by medical practitioners. In terms of that heating property in this text, the chili has the property of cold expelling heat, so we can use heat to warm the body. It has great pungent and warming properties and thus can cure those with yang, wind, hemorrhoid sores, it guides fire to move downward. And then similarly, even though the chili has a hot characteristic it can expel heat, sort of the idea of fighting fire with fire. Wu Juyu, which is an indigenous plant, has the same effect. And so one of the things that's important here is the author is pointing to a plant that his readers would be much more familiar with and showing them, okay, so you use Wu Juyu in this particular way, now you can also use this new plant, the chili pepper, in that particular way. In addition to categorizing the chili and putting it into these systems where it would have the effects that you would expect from another pungent plant but maybe in a more intense way. There's also a whole lot of observed effects that work their way into the understanding of the impact of the chili pepper on health. So two of the most important are AIDS digestion, stimulates appetite. If we look at sort of modern biomedicine, there's actually studies that show exactly the same thing. The capsaicin, the spicy element or compound in the chili peppers stimulates salvation, also stimulates gastric production of gastric juices. Both of those things are going to aid in digestion and appetite. So we get texts like this fairly early one, recognizing this aspect of the chili pepper. They also have chilies that again the capsaicin so the really spicy chilies have an antiseptic antimicrobial aspect to them. And we can get texts like this one where it talks about treat use of it alongside seafood. So it can detoxify poison from aquatic animals. People who eat too much fish or crab and get diarrhea or dropsy can boil the fruit to make a dose of medicinal broth. This one I don't know that I would recommend trying this but it's really interesting. So it's sort of as an analgesic to 11 or 12 interesting 11 or 12 exactly spicy eggplant fruits. So it's interestingly they recognize that the chili pepper is in the same family as eggplant. Juice swelling and stop pain. The small blisters at the wound site will expel a yellow liquid and then heal when eating this, when eating this the flavor will be sweet and not spicy. There's a whole understanding in Chinese medicine that if your body really needs something, it will crave it and you won't really notice the intensity of the flavor. Once your body no longer needs it then the flavor that really intense spicy flavor would come back. Or masticate in place on the wound to reduce swelling and stop pain. The chilies also work their way into imagery and literature. The earliest literary references to chilies comes quite early in 1598. This is a super famous opera by Tong Chen Zhu, the P&E Pavilion. There's an element here where the chili is beginning to be associated with female passion. And this is a trope that's going to continue all the way up to the present. The P&E Pavilion focuses on romance, passion, sexual frustration, death and rebirth. The female protagonist, Du Linyang or bridal Du is an enduring character who has often been held up as a paragon of female passion among readers and in subsequent literary works. In scene 23, Du is in the underworld having her soul judged. Her claims about her death result in an underworld judge summoning the flower spirit from a garden where she had had a dream. There's a lot more to this. I'm just going quickly over the story. So after this, the author has the flower spirit named 38 flowers. With the underworld judge replying in an alternating duet. Her replies reflect on some nature of each flower or make a literary reference associated with the flower or pun on the flower's name, and then also brings out some erotic suggestion. So, given the importance of flower images throughout the work all the plant names mentioned in this scene by the flower spirit are described as flowers. For a number of them it's pretty clear that it's just it's actually some other part of the plant that that's important. This is actually the case for the chili pepper even though he calls it la jiao hua. And this is actually the very first use of that name spicy pepper for the chili in Chinese. He is clearly referring to the spicy pot. In his line. The judges echoing line for in response to the flower spirit mentioning the spicy pepper flower or chili flower. He replies her welcome is warm. And so we get this first association of the chili pepper with with female passion. And this is it's going to, there's this association with with gender with the female gender in this context. And it's going to shift over time. So, this is sort of our first example of this trope of spicy girls or spicy young women. Probably one of one of the more famous ones is going to be an 18th century novel dream of the red chamber by talk to a chin. Where we get a strong female character long she fun associated with chilies. Her nickname is fun lots of or chili pepper fun. And this is case where her nickname is is associated with her character. She is very forthright direct and powerful woman in this very elite family. She is chosen by the matriarch to be in charge of the family's finances, because of her feisty nature. She is going to hold tight to those purse strings and and keep the family spending in in check. And so that association with that sort of feisty character with the chili pepper is continuing that trope of the law major the spicy spicy girl. And then this is become even more developed in in the late 20th century into the 21st century was the super popular song la maize spicy girls, made very very popular by the pop star song doing. She has sung this several times at this huge national television extravaganza at the at the Chinese New Year. And here these some of the traits that come out in this song from youth unafraid of spice with a handful of chilies speak their minds passion is spicy. When they speak it's fiery and spicy that what they do things it's bold and spicy when they interact is hot and spicy and this is just a very. I don't it's definitely not seen as aggressive it's a scene is assertive and independent and going out in the world. They take, you know they've been eating chili since they were young, and when they go out in the world they're taking that spiciness they've gotten from the chili peppers, and it's helping them to succeed. So it becomes much more positive in this modern version, there's there's some negative aspects to it in particularly in the in the dream of the red chamber. So this very positive aspect it's typically associated with women from regions where the chili pepper is eaten a lot. So it's most often associated with women from Hoonan. But also, you can see it for women from from Sichuan as well. There's also male gender tropes it's a little less common trope than the than the law made the trope. But so we do also have examples of the chilies being linked to hyper masculinity, particularly in connection with the communist revolution. There's a well known phrase that's attributed to Mao. Here we can see Mao in this image it's the, it's the first page when you open this menu of a Hoonan restaurant in Beijing. So there's a direct correlation between Mao and Hoonan and Hoonan cuisine. So that phrase is without chili peppers, there would be no revolution. So very direct association of that connection. So this phrase apparently came from one of the many conversations between Mao and the American journalist Edgar Snow in the communist base area in 1936. I'll just give you a couple other examples for for Mao. The chilies in Hoonan lie at the intersection of food memory and identity. The most renowned Hoonanese from the recent past Mao Zedong is inexorably a meshed within the identity of Hoonanese as consumers of extremely spicy food. So one of our accounts, the food Mao ate hot chili peppers in particular is linked directly with his identity. According to one Hoonanese food writer Mao even put chili flakes on his watermelon. So the repeated story about Mao is that a doctor once recommended that he should cut back on his consumption of chilies to which Mao quipped, if you are even afraid of chilies in your bowl, how will you dare attack your enemies. So we get this image of that ability to eat intense spiciness of the chili pepper is a sign of your ability as a revolutionary as a fighter. So we get that sort of male trope associated with the chili pepper. Oh my. So, just briefly mentioned, I've mentioned it as we're going along that that sort of regional use of the chili varies and you certainly see that in the different regional cuisines. So, some regions eat very, very spicy food, some regions in China do not eat spicy at all. And part of that has to do with climate has to do with earlier cultural traditions. I don't I don't have time to go in and in great detail at this point, but I just want to emphasize a couple aspects where we can see this regional use. So, Trenjo on the on the southwest coast in Fujian. There's an emphasis on medicine. It cures fish poisoning. So it's a medicinal use associated particularly with eating seafood. That phrase is, I found it in every single source I looked at for Trenjo. Whereas it's it's not a common phrase that I found anywhere else so it's clearly been adapted for that particular region for for that sort of medicinal. It also gets used as a treatment for malaria. And it, not surprisingly, more mentions of it in the in the southern provinces where malaria is more common. But emphasis of it, not just as a treatment for malaria once it's contracted but actually as a prophylaxis to prevent the getting of malaria, which means there'd be an emphasis on more regular use of it. Emphasis on expelling moisture or damp. So this is really important all the way up to the present in these three, particularly these three but probably other other areas as well but particularly Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan, which have very moist climates in both the summer and the winter in in traditional Chinese medicine. It's very important for the body not to be retaining excess moisture. And so chili pepper is seen as an excellent way of helping the body to expel excess moisture. You know, one really obvious way that happens if you're eating something really really hot and just sweat a whole bunch. And so, the Sichuanese, Guizhou, people from Guizhou, Hunanese, all of them believe, most of them believe that eating chilies is really important for maintaining health throughout the year. And some of them might even emphasize it's it's even more important in the winter time when it's cooler because you're gaining both the heat of the chili, as well as its moisture expelling characteristics. All right, so I'll wrap wrapping up the couple of things that you know initially that the using the chili as a substitute for other flavors opens the door for for Chinese to start integrating the chili pepper into their culture. Understanding of how it can be used medicinally is sort of equally important in in its spread of use throughout China. And then really importantly is that the Chinese recognized the versatility of the chili, and therefore could adapt its use to fit regional cuisine regional climate regional environmental factors, and use the chili in different ways in different parts of China. Thank you. Stop hearing. Great, well thank you so much for a wonderful paper so so rich and informative and there's so many things to follow up on there and lots of lots of things to ask you about there I've got several questions myself I will ask one of them. We wait for the for others to kind of give them everybody else a chance to gather their thoughts and ask perhaps better questions and the one that I will ask. So, so I guess I think I'll ask this question. So I found it really interesting the new argument that chilies are being spread predominantly by farmers who are growing chilies for their own consumption. Perhaps for sharing with neighbors and perhaps for local markets. So I was wondering when and in what context, the chili begins to emerge begins to emerge as more of a commodity, and something which is traded perhaps across longer distances and what do we know about that. I'm sure. Yeah, so I think initially it spread is yeah this sort of farmer to farmer families to families within market towns within sort of villages that are linked together through marriage marriage patterns. I think that the really sort of commercialization of it is is the 20th is the 20th century. And that's when we really start to see pretend and sometimes even later 20th century. That's where we start to see particular regions growing it and then exporting it to other, you know, initially it's all internal distribution of the chili pepper within China. More recently, there's an ability to export some aspects, either the chili peppers themselves or more more commonly exporting of chili sauces. That's become a big, big industry for the Chinese. So I think it really, it comes with the sort of expansion of railroads and road networks, see the chilies can be moved in in bulk more easily. That happens. I mean yes, there's some of that happening in the 19th century, but a lot of its regional, rather than a national network, and that national network really doesn't take off until later into the 20th century. And now today you get chilies being grown. You can get fresh chilies year round because of greenhouses. And this is a huge, huge industry, all around most in the countryside but but sort of particularly around large cities. There's just lots and lots of greenhouses where they're growing fresh vegetables. Thank you so much. Oh, hello, Brian, very nice to meet you. I found your book incredibly valuable and answered lots of questions for me. And I just wondered whether you could shed light on something that's always totally mystified me, which is that argument about the chili being useful for driving out unhealthy moisture and humidity. By the way, sorry about any background noise. But just that, you know, obviously, apart from Sichuan and Hunan, which are terribly humid, so is Guangdong. And so are many areas of the Jiangnan, for example, among the full furnace cities you have, you know, Chongqing where they do eat lots of chilies and you also have Nanjing where they don't. And I just wondered thinking again about one of the other things that you mentioned in your book that you haven't talked about I think today, but whether this is the kind of interaction with social snobbery and the fact that you have this sort of elitist Jiangnan region, you know, the idea that refined cuisine is very light and that peasant cooking is very hearty and spicy. And I know you touched on that because you I think you said that one of the reasons that the chili took so long to appear in written sources you felt was because elites didn't think it was worth mentioning. But I just wondered whether you had some idea about why the moisture the Chinese medicine explanation doesn't seem to apply in other humid areas. I mean it is really confusing. And, you know, Guangdong is a really good example super super humid I think partly there it's the ocean climate is just seen as somewhat different. For the Jiangnan region, I agree so that region around Nanjing Shanghai Su Zhou Hongzhou that region is exactly this core of elite culture. And that culture is definitely includes a milder cuisine. I think that's part of what's going on there that that aspect of the cuisine really skews any other sort of argument for for introducing more chili peppers. So the that cuisine, you know, pre exists, it already is there prior to the 18th century, but really gets underscored as an important Chinese culinary tradition by the Chen Long Emperor who reigned for a big chunk of the 18th century he's a huge huge fan of Jiangnan cuisine, and that just made that you know even more cash a for for that for that cuisine. And it, it's going to give it even more resistance to the chili pepper entering into it. The number of elite traditions or associated with Confucianism and that would have been that philosophy would have been really really strongly instilled in the elite, who would be the one in that region, who are the ones doing much of the talking about cuisine at that period. And, and that includes the idea of. They don't have the level of veggie eating vegetarian that you would have in Buddhism, or Taoism but they do have periods where you need to fast and fasting for the China in this context is not just avoiding me it's also avoiding strong flavors. And, and so that just reinforces that pre existing cultural, the culinary culture in that region that that I think causes them that to resist the integration of the chilies. Let me point out you know if we look at the, I'm sure you're very well aware if we look at the 21st century. It's becoming particularly younger generations are much more open to eating chili peppers, even if they grew up in Guangdong, or, or Nanjing. And, and I know a number of Chinese friends who say oh my parents can't eat spicy but I really like to eat spicy. It's a big proliferation of Hoonan Sichuan restaurants throughout all all over China. Thank you. When I did my field work for my doctoral research in Guangdong, about 20 odd years ago, a lot of my elderly interlocutors would make a climactic argument that they would argue that actually the soils of Guangdong and especially the waters of the pro river delta. The pro river delta, where themselves inherently heating, and therefore the Cantonese had to be especially wary of eating heating foods, such as chili so they've ordered them like the plague. But there was also moral dimension to their argument because they would associate then chili eating with particularly with migrant workers from Sichuan and Hoonan, who are seen often as being less civilized and the Cantonese themselves at the time. I was just remembering also actually because in fact even in Sichuan, of course, elite food is much milder and, you know, Jianghu Tai, the kind of course workers food is much spicier. And in all regions you get hotter food, don't you in for sort of. And that's actually true in Guangdong as well. Right. Absolutely. Ramon, you have a question. Yeah, I was actually about to talk about the spiciness since you said there you mentioned that the spread of the pepper and was more incorporated in the diets of farmers. So was there initially kind of a rejection of the pepper as food in upper social circles and if so, why when did that stop and why did that stop. Yes, so they're they're they're definitely a rejection of it. There's a number of elite authors in the 17th, even 18th century who talk about it as as essentially as inedible. And it's so spicy, you can't actually eat it. Or it's so spicy those who eat it are very few which becomes a very classist description because we know a whole lot of farmers were eating them. So, so yeah there's a level at which they're they're definitely rejecting it. For a whole host of reasons and a lot of them that there's like the classist understanding of elites have a more subtle palette and we should be eating that subtle cuisine and the lower classes are the ones that eat that really spicy food. So, the shift happens slowly so a good example of this is recipe books. So there's lots of recipe books and of course, you know until we get to the 20th century, it's, it's the elite who are writing these recipe books. The earliest recipe book to actually include chili peppers is the very end of the 18th century. So, once we get it into that into that first recipe book, we're starting to get elite adopting it. And then it's going to really take off in the later 19th century. And when we get the, a really important medical text incorporates a large addendum that includes the chili pepper, and then the chili pepper is going to again have a more cache for the elite. I think part of the shift that happens for the elite is it just becomes harder and harder to ignore the chili pepper, because it's just in all the, it's sort of everywhere. I do think you start to get local markets selling chili peppers in the late 18th, early 20th, sorry, late 18th into the 19th century, but it's going to be regional, very local trade, moving them from from the rural area into the market towns. You know, not not a trans regional trade at that point. And I think it's, I think also, as more and more medical texts are incorporating the chili pepper. It's recognized that they're also recognizing its importance as medicine that that those are sort of things. Just recognizing it's that it's there and recognizing that it can have some value is what I think sort of finally breaking that barrier and getting more elite recognition. But you know you can still find that bias as as as both fusion Jacob we're just saying that that bias can can still it still exists all the way up to the present. So just to let people know those who arrived a little bit late. If you have a question to ask, could you raise it raise your hand use the raise hand function at the bottom of your screen in the first instance. If you'd rather type your question into the chat. That's okay too. But it's, I prefer if you use the raise hand function and then asked your question out loud if that's all right if your Wi Fi allows you to do that. So we have a question from Nigel and then we have a comment in the chat as well which I'll read out. Thanks Jacob. Yes, I was just going back to the background section you would attribute the transfer of chilies from the Americas to China to Columbus and I just remember really enjoying Gavin Menzies thesis 1421 that the Chinese discovered the Americas for themselves by sending out a fleet 70 years ahead of Columbus and I was going to ask, does his thesis have any any merit and is it might it be possible that the Chinese took the chili back directly from the Americas, you know, not via European hands and a sort of a colonial thesis if you like. No, there is not actually any evidence that the Chinese failed to the San Francisco Bay in 1421. Yeah, there's a really good tear downs of Menzies arguments and you know, one of his arguments is that he found a previously unknown chapter from the Ming history that even though he doesn't read Chinese. And that's part of his evidence for this. I, I feel like so he is actually a British submarine captain. And I feel like most of the roots that he shows are just roots that he happened to sale as a submarine captain. There's no evidence. You know, if the Chinese had brought the chili pepper back. Why, why is our first record from 1591 why isn't it from 1491. And there's just no physical evidence of Chinese presence in in the Americas on the West Coast of the US, you know he has these various. wooden structure that that's that's a Chinese vessel that's buried in the mud in the San Francisco I think of San Francisco Bay. And I'm waiting to hear back on the scientific testing of the wood, and you know, we're 20 years on from his publication with his book and we still don't have that that scientific analysis. It's an interesting cause I know it's the, I should, I will point out, I think his main argument is that the Chinese could have done it, therefore they did. You know he has a sub I don't know hopefully maybe you haven't read, I haven't read the second his second volume, which is the Chinese landed in Italy and started the Italian Renaissance. So, I don't know that I think that tells you a lot right in terms of the believability of his of his work. But thanks for the question. I'm going to take a read out a comment and then a question from the chat and then leave it to Brian to respond to those as he likes. So the first comment is from Sandy Tang saying growing up in Macau, we were told to eat spicy we were told to eat spicy food would propel the heat upwards or Shanghua or so for interesting that it's the opposite for other regions of China. And then Monica long says, thank you for your presentation. I have. I'd like to ask if you've ever explored further the associations of chili pepper with maintaining beauty standards, in addition to health. Growing up I would hear my mom praise other girls and women for staying slim, jokingly saying that it was due to the fact that they like eating spicy food. And nor did I at the time, although I love spicy food now. This of course has roots in the medicinal purposes and uses of the chili pepper throughout China, and such notions prevail, despite the rise of the prioritization of Western medicine and beauty standards throughout the country. Let me just make a quick comment to that second one. I mean no I have not actually encountered that one but it's definitely something I'll be interested in pursuing. Because yeah that would be an interesting additional sort of modern medical use of the chili pepper. So we have a question we have a question from Mark, and then from William, former student of ours. Hello, my name is Mark, I have a quick question about the invention of Mala flavor and the use of watch out and in and how who invented that combination I heard that it was just a way to cover up bad smells when you were like cooking organ meat or something so what are. Any like references and literature or something like that. But this has been a very interesting conversation thank you. I'm probably going to bounce this over the future. I think she might have a better answer. It's probably happening pretty early. And it's so the my law is a combination of the indigenous such one pepper, which has this ma or numbing characteristic with the law or the spiciness of chili pepper. And it's very common in such one cuisine but also used quite a bit in unan as well. So I think it's just a calm combining a local indigenous pungent flavoring that they already have with the chili pepper. Some people, I think not not such one is like the joke that you're used you're putting them together so that you have that numbing of your mouth which allows you to eat more heat from the chili pepper. I mean, that's not really why they're why they're combining them they're just an interest in combining the flavors. I will point out that the, that it's not. It's important to understand that European Chinese were not using a ton of flavoring that any point to cover up bad food. If the food's gone bad it's still going to impact your health. And so it's it's really not being used to cover up things. It's just there for for having a really strong flavor, as well as potentially having medicinal values but maybe fuchsia do you have any other insights for the combination of my law. I think she had to leave. I think she has had to leave already I'm afraid. Great. Thank you so William. Good to see you in a few years. Thank you very much. And thank you very much Brian so really fascinating talk and a really good book as well, which was well worth the purchase and reading. So I, I think what I've been finding really interesting about your talk it correlates a lot with what I'm finding out whilst researching the UK chili pepper culture scene. One of the questions I had was around sort of the naming of chili so you kind of skipped over that slide unfortunately, but in sort of especially in England. We tend to label chilies based on their heat level so for example like the real extreme varieties like things like the color Carolina Reaper. You have the breadford ship brainstorm and they're sort of denoting almost sort of the pain that it will cause you and where it's sort of more mundane chilies are referred to sort of you know for example like K and or lemon drops they're referring to sort of the characteristics that the chili possesses. I was wondering if you were you found sort of correlations with how chilies were named in China, whether it you know they, they, it's necessary, necessary for them to have this sort of danger label for lack of a better word. Yeah. A lot of them have to do with the shape. So you've got chicken heart chili goat horn chili. So, and then the way they're growing on the plant, they're pointing to heaven chili, or the recent one called the wrinkly chili. So, most of them don't have those intense names. I mean, you know, we do now, you know, you can get those exact same breeds now in China and those ones are just going to be more of a, either a transliteration or a translation of those names. I, there is a little bit of a development of that sort of chili head culture in China but I don't think it's as far developed as it is I'm a little more familiar with it in the US but I imagine there's a similar in the in the UK. And that I mean that's certainly not there. Prior to the late 20th early 21st century. There is definitely, it's important to for the Chinese who are using a lot of chilies. The emphasis is is really on the flavoring rather than the heat. And the, so that, you know, obviously, somebody who's not from Hunan or Sichuan and goes there and eats it probably isn't going to be able to eat that cuisine. But they would are you know the natives would argue that, you know, they're not doing it entirely just for the heat they're also seeking a particular flavor coming out of that. I think what you know when you start getting the, the one million on the on the Coville scale I don't think there's any room to taste anything. Not, I haven't even once that that insanely hot. So, I think that I mean there is a bit of culture developing in China where you know they will have these some chili eating contests. One that just sort of takes it up a notch where you soak in the hot spring filled with chilies and eat chilies. And that this seems really crazy to me. Okay, so we have a follow up, which I'm going to take first from Mark clarification to his earlier question. And then we have a question in the chat from Sharon. And I think Sarah had her hand up perhaps but she can verify that it in a bit if he likes. So, Mark was when he was talking about bad smells he was referring specifically to Xing Wei, which is a fishy smell, the smell from organ meat and so on rather than necessarily food that had gone off. So that was his follow up and then we have from Sharon Merotra. Incidentally another former MA anthropology of food student. So those of you who don't know here at the so as food study center in the anthropology department at so as we also we run a MA program in the anthropology of food. So a lot of this, a lot of the people here today are current students and there's also several former students in our in our seminar. And Sharon's question is, Brian, I want to ask if you came across any literature that suggests that chilies came to to the northeast of India via China. I haven't there's. It might be more likely the other way around that potentially the chilies went from from northeastern India into Yunnan. But there's no good evidence for that. The earliest records for for chili peppers in Yunnan makes sense for them to have have spread from the Chinese coast inland. There's, I think it's quite likely that chili pepper spread from, you know, so that the Portuguese are initially introducing it in Goa. And so one of the, I don't know any Indian languages but I know one of one of the names for chili in India is the go in chili from that entry point. And it certainly almost certainly spread from northeast India into the South Asian subcontinent on the on the land or you know could be also via via vessels there. But yeah there's no there doesn't there's no good evidence for for a passage. Either way between that sort of Southwest China and northeast India, although we you know there are certainly a lot of a lot of trade and goods and ideas that didn't move through that area. So, sorry, did you have your hand up or no longer. I no longer have my hand up because you sort of answered what I was going to ask about chili bro culture. Um, but actually seeing as I've got like I just will ask a bit a bit, just a bit more about about that and whether that is, you know, that sort of obsession with the sort of discover on sort of the chili festivals and I was just wondering is that what is there now. Is there a conversation happening between that sort of American culture chili culture and Chinese culture and wondering where sort of get to bring us right up to date what's going on with chili culture in China. I'm probably not the best one. I am a historian. I've certainly been looking at more contemporary things but I haven't. I have not yet been to any of these chili festivals in China it's definitely something that I'd like to do as long as I don't actually have to soak in the hot tub filled with chilies. But I do think that that I do think that type of chili culture is is coming from from the West. And, and then I think it's, you know, it's the idea that, you know, well, we obviously have been eating chilies for a really long time and we have this high tolerance. And it's not comparable to be sort of competing or eating at that at a similar level so I think there's a, you know, there's a level of sort of cultural competition that's there as well as the sort of individual competition that would be happening in those contests. Yeah. We have a comment adding to that from William, you would want to look at the World Chili Alliance that has emerged in the past few years interconnecting chili festivals. It was created in China. And Mark tells us there is some evidence that eating chilies can promote weight loss by reducing appetite and increasing fat burning. I have a question if it's alright if unless there's other hands at the moment. I guess we should probably begin to wrap up fairly soon. It kind of ties into Sharon's question about the spread of the chili to go back to that where you also started your paper. Now I was wondering whether or to what extent the chili pepper spreads in China in some ways in parallel with or actually in together with other crops from the Americas, and particularly I was thinking as a way of making them more palatable those crops which is maize potatoes, carbohydrate, carbohydrate, perhaps sweet potato to the extent that it is arriving at around the same time as well I guess there's some debate about that. But to what extent they're arriving together so the chili pepper is something which is helping farmers who are producing growing these new crops to feed themselves so they can grow the things from market. They're then using the chili to make them more palatable. Is there anything in that at all. I think it's a reasonable, I mean so definitely we can see them spreading together. So, I don't think I ever found chilies in a local history where I didn't find at least one of those other crops from the Americas. As in particular, seems seems like a, if I found maize the likelihood of my finding chili slater in the in the in that passage, what seemed more likely. And if I didn't find maize it seemed a little less likely to find chilies. It's, you know, I don't just I don't have enough data to be able to make a really strong correlation, but it definitely the earliest known. I've written sources for most of the other American crops are actually earlier than than the chili pepper tobacco would be one that's that's a little bit later. And this makes sense because these are ones that get a lot of attention from elite writers because of their high caloric content. It seems like every other literati has my essay on the sweet potato and none of them wrote my essay on that chili pepper, which was very frustrating. So, yeah, I think they're they're spreading in in parallel anyway. And I do think there's a good argument to be made that they that it adds a better, a strong, you know, more of a flavor to somebody's really. Carb rich or starchy rich foods like maize or, or, or the white potato. Don't, unfortunately, don't have an author saying, Oh, yes, and it's important to add chilies in order to be able to eat your, your potatoes. And part of that, of course, is again, a classist aspect of the of the authors being elite members. The maize and potato were definitely seen as a lower class food and they're definitely and particularly promoted, even though they're promoted by the elite they're not promoting them for themselves they're promoting them as a food that can help the poor make it through famines. Right. Thank you so much. Yes, I think it's it's it's quarter to eight, sorry, quarter to seven over here in in Britain. And we've had we've had a wonderful seven hour for an hour and a half and thank you so much, Brian for a fabulous paper and a wonderful conversation and thanks everybody for joining us.