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Alice Yan

It is not an exaggeration to say that chilli peppers and spicy food are available on pretty much every street in China.
The pungent, heat-infused foodstuff is so ubiquitous people joke that if a person does not indulge, they will starve, or at best lose friends, because eating spicy things fosters social bonding.
However, the popular ingredient has only been around in China for a relatively short time.
It first entered the country 400 years ago and people have been eating it for about three centuries.

This is revealed in a book titled The History of Chinese People Eating Chili Peppers, written by Cao Yu, a researcher from Sun Yat-sen University in southern Guangdong province.
When it was first introduced to China by European merchants in the 16th century, it was regarded as an ornamental plant.
Later chilli peppers were a metaphor for sex because people thought that they could boost women’s sexual desire.
In the classic opera work The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu of the Ming dynasty (1368-1614), Tang wrote that various flowers have different meanings, with the flower of a chilli pepper symbolising a woman getting married and beginning to have a sexual life.

While residents in Guangdong were the to first plant chilli peppers, it is the southwestern province of Guizhou where people first ate them, Cao’s book said.
The reason behind this is that people in Guizhou adopted it to replace the indispensable ingredient in cuisine, salt. Salt was expensive for a long time in ancient China and was particularly scarce in Guizhou.
Ordinary people, especially in central and southwestern China, began to add chilli peppers when cooking. But the cuisine eaten by officials or nobles remained relatively bland.
As a result, the stereotype that spicy dishes were for low-end people emerged. This was helped by the fact that chilli was relatively cheap and was eaten by lowly workers.

Among the Eight Major Cuisines of China, as recognised by society during the Qing dynasty (1616-1912), only two, Sichuan and Hunan cuisine, featured with spicy dishes.
An anecdote said Zeng Guofan, a statesman and military general of the late Qing dynasty, who was a native of Hunan, had to secretly eat chilli peppers, without openly acknowledging it.
Spicy dishes began to win Chinese people’s stomachs three decades ago, thanks to migrant workers from the populous Sichuan and Hunan provinces as well as the southwestern regions of Guizhou and Yunnan who moved across the country to seek job opportunities.

Restaurants famed for spicy dishes have mushroomed in China, even in provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and in Shanghai, where people traditionally do not like spicy food.
It is widely accepted that residents in Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou and Jiangxi provinces have the highest tolerance for spicy food.
Specifically, besides its spicy flavour, Sichuan cuisine is also numbing while Guizhou dishes are famous for also being sour.
Cao said his research found that many people came to accept spicy food not only because it is delicious, but also because eating it causes a sense of pain.
“Eating spicy dishes together means I would like to endure pain together with you,” Cai told the media outlet Yi Tiao. “There is an empathy here. So it could make people feel closer.”
“Chinese people have actually reinvented the tradition of eating chilli peppers. Eating them symbolised the rising power of plebeians,” he added.
The China Spicy Culture Report jointly made by the Southern Metropolis News and several online platforms in 2023 showed that 38 per cent of people canvassed said they ate spicy dishes every day.
More than 60 per cent of people under the age of 45 like spicy food, the report said.
A spicy snack called la tiao, consisting of tofu strips, has gained popularity among the young generation in recent years.

The number one la tiao producer, Weilong Food Control Company, which was established in 2001, had revenue of 7.2 billion yuan (US$1 billion) last year, a year-on-year increase of 15 per cent.
A cafe in Jiangxi raised eyebrows in 2024 by putting fried chilli and hot pepper powder in their lattes.
One group of people who shun spicy food are senior citizens. Old people generally avoid it due to health concerns.
Many of them believe that the peppers would raise their body heat, according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory.


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A woman holds a chilli pepper with chopsticks. Once the ingredient was thought to boost female sexual desire. Photo: QQ.com

A woman farmer harvests the foodstuff in southern China. Photo: Getty Images

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A farmer suns a huge harvest of chilli peppers in central China. Photo: Reuters

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People & Culture

Zesty ingredient with a punch was initially thought to boost the sexual desire of women; today indulging is seen as a form of social bonding


Zesty ingredient with a punch was initially thought to boost the sexual desire of women; today indulging is seen as a form of social bonding.


Chinese cuisine

Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU)

History of chilli peppers in China: first used as ornamental plants, later as ‘poor man’s spice’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Zesty ingredient with a punch was initially thought to boost the sexual desire of women; today indulging is seen as a form of social bonding

Zesty ingredient with a punch was initially thought to boost the sexual desire of women; today indulging is seen as a form of social bonding