Because Sichuan's fertile soil and mild climate permit year-round growing and lots of variety, Chengdu locals can afford to be picky, and here people say that if there are one hundred dishes, there will be one hundred tastes. Despite its scorching reputation, not all Sichuanese cooking is red-hot, and chilies and Sichuan peppercorns (hua jiao, the tongue-numbing berries of the prickly ash) are used in only one-quarter of its dishes. The taste buds encounter such flavors as salty, sweet-and-sour, fish-flavor, bitter, and something called 'strange-taste.'

"Strange-taste is salty, sweet, hot, numbing and sour. All together," offers Li Zeng, a cook at Shu Feng Garden. One of the most popular strange-taste dishes is 'strange-taste shredded chicken' (guaiwei jisi) a recipe which requires "a young chicken," scallions, sugar, vinegar, salt, chilies, soy, sesame oil, and prickly ash powder. The chicken is boiled and shredded with scallions and the spices are mixed together and sprinkled over it all. The competing tastes explode on the tongue in ways undreamt of by western fare, and careful diners can pick out all five flavors--as advertised, strange.

Sweet-and-sour dishes, for example sweet-and-sour spareribs, offer an improbable touch of the tropics in central China; bitter dishes (best exemplified by bitter melon) can turn quickly on an untrained palate but are thought to be particularly healthy; and there are thousands of other entrees, each of them distinct.

"I can cook 200 dishes from memory, but the greatest chefs can cook thousands," Li says. Those master chefs earn huge salaries and star-status, but eventually even they have to refer to cookbooks when orders come in for such oddities as steamed pigeon with gastrodia tuber or two-colored rabbit cakes.

Sichuan's variety has as much to do with its past as with its weather, and Sichuanese culinary history dates back to the Ba and Shu kingdoms in the 21st to 5th centuries BC. By the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) the cuisine was extensive enough to publish a cookbook in 50 volumes, and Fu Chongju's 1909 General Guide to Chengdu records 1328 dishes. Today, according to Li, "there are too many entrees to count," (although one cookbook tries, and lists more than 5,000).

Sichuan's history is much more than culinary. Shu Feng Garden was established in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and diners eat amid rich brocades, elegant woodwork, and the almost human voice of the erhu (the two-stringed Chinese violin). The staff wear traditional silk shirts, and, as ever, the kitchen is full of steamers and cutting boards, diced poultry and tangled pots, baskets of chilies and all manner of things that slither, crawl, peck, and hop.

 Some claim that by the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) the Sichuanese had begun using prickly ash and chilies, but Shu Guozhong, a master chef who teaches Sichuanese cooking, is probably correct when he claims that his Han Dynasty relatives couldn't eat food nearly as hot as today's fare: Capsicum, the chili pepper, is a New World plant which was not introduced to Europe and Asia until well into the 16th century. Regardless, the Sichuanese have long favored spicy food and, in keeping with their racy tongues and tempers, always say their food is hotter than anyone else's (excepting the Hunanese, who must have extraordinary stomachs).

And there is no Sichuanese fare hotter than hotpot, a relatively new arrival to Sichuan's 2500-year gastronomic history. Hotpot might have come from Mongolia, where they still eat a milder slaughterhouse stew, or from trackers who pulled boats up the Yangtze River from Shanghai, but it was probably born of need. The first Sichuanese hotpots were famine food - eaten for nutrition and warmth and not for taste.

"Before Liberation most Sichuanese were poor. The rich didn't eat things like brain, intestine, fish heads, and chicken feet, so the poor ate what the rich threw away. They cooked everything with chilies, hua jiao and other spices to make it edible," Wu Dan, the manager of The Happy Old Family, one of Chengdu's most popular hotpot restaurants, says.

Today hotpot and organ meat are both well regarded for their outlandish taste and texture, and they are as much a part of Sichuanese culture as teahouses are. And there is no better place than a hotpot restaurant to get a sense of the Sichuanese.

"Hotpot is more about feeling than food," says Liu Lang, a woman eating at The Happy Old Family, as she picks lotus root from the boiling red froth. "Most people don't eat hotpot because they like the food. They eat it because they like to play."

The Sichuanese play. They gamble at mahjong, slurp tea, and eat hotpot meals that might last three hours. Work can wait. Maybe living on top of each other makes them more fun, or maybe it's the chicken feet.

The Chinese word for hotpot, huoguo, literally means fire pot, and the meal begins when a boiling vat of water, oil, and spices is set on the table. A fire is lit under the pot and, self-service, diners cook vegetables, meats, and oddities. Organ meat is favored (goose intestine and pig brain are two favorites) because, as Liu says, "muscle is boring."

There are two kinds of hotpot: lawei, spicy, and baiwei, scorned. Children and foreigners cook in baiwei pots, a mild broth of tomatoes and onions. Sichuanese cook in lawei pots heaped with chilies and prickly ash. Food cooked a short time in lawei pots is mellow, but as the night wears on and long forgotten entrails are dredged up, mouths numb and patrons sweat.

Sweating is just one more reason to eat hotpot, for in Sichuan's year-round dampness, locals believe that getting the water out keeps them healthy. "If you don't eat chilies," Liu says, "your joints ache."

That the final bites might leave a mouth gasping for air like a grounded fish is the point. Those bites hurt, but they keep one running well the rest of the time.

And maybe the Sichuanese have no choice but to torture their palates, for a man and his food are like brothers, and Sichuanese tempers are as piquant as their tongues. Italians have the reputation, but the Sichuanese could out-yell the bloodiest Capulet.

"The Sichuanese are fiery," Wu Dan says in a thick accent, "they fight fast and love fast and they like their food to be like them - hot."