huoguo (hotpot, Sichuan's famous culinary experience!)

---

Perhaps I should have mentioned huoguo, meaning 'hotpot' ('huo' means 'fire') before as it's arguably Sichuan's (the province I'm in) most famous dish (if you can call it a dish).

Yesterday I taught my Senior 1s from 8:50 until 16:15 as per most Mondays. After my lessons we all went up to this ginormous hall which I had never seen before, to judge the yearly Senior 1 karaoke competition! Every class it seemed had a representative to sing an English language song....of course this consisted largely of Westlife/Boyzone/Avril Lavigne songs, but what can you do? It was part hilarious, part excruciating as we were right by the loudspeakers and what can I say, some of the kids' voices weren't the best! The hilarious moments came when halfway through a singer's performance, someone rushed on stage which a bouquet of flowers and the crowd went 'aaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!' in excitement/appreciation/mock hysteria. I suppose this was meant to echo 'superstars' as they call them getting bouquets and whatnot thrown at them on stage at performances. Anyway it was very funny. We as judges had to cast our votes on bits of paper although god knows what the scorers were doing as the best singer by far got only 3rd place! And they only got a certificate type thing to say 'well done'....no gift vouchers or anything!

The karaoke competition finished just before 7pm, and the other teachers invited us 'foreign teachers' out for dinner.......which I accepted, before knowing that we were going for hotpot, which I don't like. There are many things I don't like about it, but I don't want to put any readers off from trying it, so here's what it is, in brief.

Huoguo is to be found all over Sichuan, as well as Chongqing which apparently has the spiciest version, and you can find it at streetside canteens as well as special huoguo restaurants. You get plates of different kinds of meat, fish and veg, tofu, noodles etc (raw) on a kind of trolley by the side of your table (or you go and pick your food like at a buffet). In the centre of your table is a big bubbling pot of stock generously laced with chillies and cardamom pods. This pot is sometimes divided into 2 parts, one (red) which is spicy, the other (white, creamy colour) which is not spicy (wei la). You then tip your meat, fish, veg, and whatever else, all at once or one plate at a time into either or both pots, wait for a few minutes until it is cooked, spoon it out into your small bowl (with oil, garlic and salt to take away the intense spiciness should you need some relief) and eat! Huoguo is a social occasion, where everybody eats round the table, tipping various bits of raw food in, putting food they think their friends would like into their friends' bowls, and feeling your lips go numb!

(I don't particularly like hotpot for many reasons...too oily, sometimes too spicy to actually taste the food you are eating, the fact that I don't like many Chinese veg and fish that are available at the hotpot restaurants, it takes too long and is..too simple for me, I like to have a selection of Chinese dishes, all different with a multiple of different flavours in each one. But hey, I've tried hotpot several times now, and you gotta try it.)

Another Chinese custom at big dinners, or banquets and suchlike, is to go around the table and give toasts to each diner. Ideally everyone on the table should go around the other tables (if it is a big party), starting with the oldest person at the table, and toast to their health, happiness and whatever else, and go on to the next person. You can see why having huoguo for dinner can turn into many hours of toasting, drinking, eating, and more of the same! This is what we experienced last night, and I got the usual incredulous responses to my comment 'I don't drink alcohol'...but I toasted with my cha (tea) instead!

---

Photos

huoguo (hotpot)
you can see the two partitions in the pot, red liquid is the spiciest, the other less spicy..however sometimes they overflow into each other so makes the white side rather pointless!