Chengdu, the City of a Thousand Burning Arseholes

We ended up spending a week in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, and I have to say I love the place. It is by far the best Chinese city we have visited.... So far at least. Its clean, nice to walk around, has good public transport, lots of parks, and has somehow managed to retain much of its character despite the swinging wreckers balls.
We spent much of our time there just wandering the streets, sampling the Sichuan Cuisine, famous for being the spiciest food in china (no dissagreements from the FlashPacker camp!). Many of the natives of Chengdu struggle to eat some of the hotter dishes!
Both Traci and I love hot food, the hotter the better in fact, and we love the taste of chilies (I am of the firm belief that fried eggs only exist in this universe as a tobasco delivery vehicle). Understandably we often struggle to find food that's spicy enough, but Chengdu was a different story, and not because of chilies (believe it or not).... Its the pepper!
Sichuan pepper not something we have ever really cooked with, and when it is served in Chinese restaurants in the west they only use a little, so neither of us was wary of the handfulls that are added to everything.... Not at first that is!
The burning sensation you get from Sichuan pepper is completely different to a chili burn, and it lasts a whole lot longer.
Its a bit like when you sit on your leg for too long and it goes to sleep, then you finally straighten it out and it starts tingling all over... Its a bit like that, except 10 times stronger and all over your face.... And it doesn't go away.... No matter how much beer you drink.

The Chinese name for Chengdu is "Perfect Metropolis", but I think the title of this post is a better name.

We both knew the reputation Sichuan cuisine had, what we didnt know was for was how varied it was. On almost every street corner was either a restaurant or street food vendor, and we rarely saw the same thing twice. Food was plentiful and cheap.... The beer was cold (I almost fainted, this NEVER happens in china - unless the ambient temperature is cold that is).... Flashpacker paradise. Multiple Foodgasms at every turn.

I cant give you an exhaustive list of all the things we ate, so here's a typical day:

Breakfast is the most difficult meal when traveling in Asia, as they usually eat the same kinds of things for breakfast as they eat for dinner (well, last nights dinner to me more accurate), and it gets a bit hard to stomach day after day. Chengdu was different though. They make little egg muffin thingies with spicy pork: a hungover persons best friend... They use a special flat hot plate with cylindrical shape depressions in it (a little like a muffin tray) in which they fry an egg, take it out, then pour pancake mixture into the bottom, replace the egg, add pork, spring onions and spices, then pour more mixture on top. The result is a perfectly round muffin with egg and pork in the middle. Magic!

For lunch you can have a Chinese style pizza, with a rice flour dough base and spicy pork sausage and herbs on top - another Sichuan speciality.

Dinner was always the best though; Sichuan Hot Pot. You sit at a table with a hole in the middle, into which is placed a "hot pot" (a metal bowl filled with a mixture of stock, peanut and sesame oil, chilies, Sicuhan pepper and other herbs and spices). A gas burner underneath keeps it bubbling away nicely.
You are then free to wander up to the food counters and pick what you want to put in it, and there is a lot to choose from; skewers of Pork, Beef, Seafood, Veggies, Fruit, and Tofu of so many varied styles shapes and flavours that your eyes will pop out of your head (if the variety doesn't make your eyes pop out, the pepper certainly will).
You cook your selection in the hot pot, and throw the finished skewers into a bucket by the side of the table, which the staff count up at the end and charge you accordingly.
Between Traci, Martin (our Aussie travel companion) and myself we managed to get though 176 skewers one night.... The total cost? 17 Yuan.... that's right, the skewers are 1/10th of a Yuan each. That's about AU$3 between us.
The only problem is the amount you have to spend on beer to stop your head from exploding (Traci swore her inner ears were burning at one point).

Actually, that's not the only problem.... Its a meal that you certainly remember the next morning.... Or even until the next evening.