Chengdu: Death By Hotpot

I was tempted to make the title "Beavis and Butthead do Chengdu". So, you can already guess the tenor of this post.

My friend - let's call him "P" - and I landed in Chengdu late on a chilly Friday evening. After letting ourselves get jostled by blithely indifferent Chinese men and women at the baggage carousel and the taxi stand, we finally boarded a taxi and turned up at our very nice hotel, the Buddhazen. Any hopes of this being a zen evening were quickly shattered as the gregarious P convinced a couple of the hotel staff finishing their shift to join us for a hotpot.

After a quick check-in and wash-up, we went downstairs to find the girls, smart as they were, had decamped. We managed to get ourselves a taxi to "Jinli", which was about the only thing we knew, both of us having flown in after work not having researched our destination much.

Jinli street turned out to be a tourist-trap (we'd confirm this during the day subsequently), greeting us with a Starbucks right at the entrance - and why not, they have one at the Forbidden City - and karaoke bars and what not. Famished, we finally found a place that said it had food - only to realize after starting on our drinks that it had run out of grub. Bait and switch!

I was impressed by the waitresses' faltering but eager English. This was so different from the China I used to practically live in a decade ago, godforsaken Guangzhou. 

Anyway, after shelling out for an overpriced drink, we decided to find a place to eat. I had noticed a rather crowded (for past midnight) restaurant on the way and we flagged a random trishaw dude, who seemed content with what few bucks we thought he deserved for the ride. We navigated to the restaurant through the sophisticated, universal human language of... pointing fingers.

Once again impressively, the restaurant offered us an English menu. By now P was extremely jaunty and adventurous and I let him suggest the "chilly oil" hotpot or something of that sort. We picked an assortment of ingredients and waited.

The ritual began, with a rectangular steel basin, and a smaller, inner one - the outer one looked like a prop from a crime scene TV show, all red, while the inner one was seemingly bland water.

After things reached a boil, a kindhearted waitress came and explained the order of things. We swiftly started dumping stuff and munching on them. So far, so good.

I was extremely proud of myself for coolly fishing stuff out of the pot and even having some of the gravy. The inner pot of blandness was clearly for losers. Bring on the "spicy Sichuan", was how I was feeling. 

Amidst all this, P and I were both shocked that the tofu tasted good. To this day I suspect it had something - placenta, hasma, maybe even melamine - added to it, for tofu is the evil-lest food that exists, beyond redemption. Satan wouldn't feed it to the denizens of hell.

A few courses later, we dunked the mushrooms and waited for them to cook, which they presently did. One bite and I spontaneously detoxed - all my pores opened up immediately, my tongue went numb and tingly at the same time and I was sure I was dying. I gamely tried again with the same result. P bravely carried on but soon gave up. Neither rice nor water nor beer seemed to stanch the fire on my tongue and the sweat on my skin. I was fishing drab tofu out of the inner-pot-of-blandness - I was desperate. Frankly, I was considering eating the wet napkin. 

Meanwhile, the group of Chinese at the next table with their own drama were not helping. Apparently the flame was not coming on, so for whatever reason, they decided to move the fuel cylinder kindly all the way over to just next to me. Some guy got down on all fours and started sniffing the tube connecting the cylinder with the hotpot. This was really not helping. First incinerated from the inside by the fiery Sichuan pepper and now the threat of getting blasted into outer space by a hotpot fuel canister.

And I had only been in Sichuan for a couple of hours.

Thankfully everything settled down. We just stopped eating, leaving the cauldron of hell to boil away as we sheepishly sipped on cold water. The next table settled down without blowing up anyone. We got the check - RMB 91 - and decamped quickly. 

The chilly air was not so chilly now. 

We flagged down a cab and headed back to the hotel.