When a person from Sichuan or Hunan asks you if you like spicy food, you'd best consider your reply well, for natives of these two southwestern provinces do not joke when it comes to liberal usage of hot red chili pepper, wild pepper and garlic. It is likely that both regional cuisines were influenced by ancient travelers from Siam (Thailand) and India.

  Sichuan and Hunan are both hot and uncomfortably humid. So why is their cuisine so spicy? Eating dishes laden with red peppers induces perspiration; traditional medicine advises that sweat expels bodily toxins, purges the humors and helps equalize body temperature. Perspiration also evaporates and causes a confection effect, thereby cooling off the chili-consumer. Moreover, once your tongue gets used to the spicy fire, there is an extraordinary range of delicate flavors behind the chili barrage.

  Sichuan cuisine uses chilies that have been either marinated or fried in oil, as well as Sichuan wild pepper (huajiao). This crunchy little spice is described as 'ma ' in Mandarin - the root of anesthesia - because it effectively numbs your tongue and taste buds. Although the flavor of Sichuan wild pepper has been compared to that of soap dipped in tiger balm, the hot-cool-numb sensation produced by crunching on a pepper is addictive.

  The Hunanese, who claim their food is the hottest in China, prefer red peppers unmarinated and fresh producing a very spicy bite. Mao's home province produces a number of famous spicy dishes with suitably revolutionary names such as red-cooked pork (hongshao rou), and red-cooked Hunan fish (hongshao wuchangyu). Popular appetizers include fried pickled beans and minced meat, and silverfish fried with soy sauce and chili oil.

  One of the most famous Chinese dishes and a perennial foreigner favorite is Kung Pao Chicken (gongbao jiding). This dish first became popular in Sichuan and its legendary origin is a good example of the willingness of Chinese chefs to improvise. However, this tendency sometimes leads to unfortunate dishes like a concoction currently popular in Beijing known as 'deep fried ice-cream on toast'. Gongbaojiding is one of the good ones though.

  Ding Baozhen served under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) Emperor Xianfeng as the governor of Shandong province. One day he arrived home with a group of friends, but his cook hadn't prepared for guests, and had but a meager chicken breast and some vegetables in the kitchen. The cook diced the chicken into tiny bits, and fried it up with cucumber, peanuts, dried red peppers, sugar, onion, garlic, bits of ginger - sundry ingredients that had been lying around the bottom of the cupboard.

  Ding Baozhen and his guests really enjoyed the improvised meal, so much so that it became a regular item on the menu. Eventually, Ding Baozhen was promoted to Governor General of Sichuan province. His cook w ent with him to Sichuan where he began experimenting with the local produce, including hot broad bean sauce and Sichuan chili peppers. Soon the humble chicken dish was all the rage in the province. The people honored Ding Baozhen by naming the dish after his official name, Gongbao. (His surname 'Ding' has nothing to with the "ding" in gongbaojiding which simply means cube or piece.) The moral of this story is that if you work hard at your craft, like Ding Baozhen's chef, one day a dish will be named after your boss.