Do you know? A long, long time ago, many of the things you see today were foods eaten by people who had no money. Yes, they were foods eaten by the poor. But the foods eaten by poor people in different places were different.
Today I want to talk about one thing: hotpot. There are many, many different kinds of hotpot—Beijing hotpot, Chongqing hotpot, Thai hotpot, and many other kinds as well.
But today I’m talking about Chongqing hotpot. Hmm. Chongqing hotpot, a long time ago, was eaten by people who had no money. Hmm, why?
Chongqing hotpot, you see, looks, uh, very numb-inducing, very spicy. Uh, very spicy, yes, and very oily.
Why was this hotpot eaten by the poor in the past? If you go to Chongqing, you will see that Chongqing people really like to eat beef tripe hotpot. What is tripe? Well, tripe is the cow’s stomach. The stomach, hmm. Right. A lot of tripe. Hmm, tripe looks strange—dark, gray; uh, what is this? Why do Chinese people eat this?
In the past in Chongqing, there were many, many workers. They had to do very hard work, and they were very tired. But they did not have money. What did they eat? They ate tripe—the cow’s stomach. Hmm-hmm. They ate beef-tripe hotpot. Why? Because they didn’t have money; they could not eat beef, which is very expensive. But cow stomach isn’t expensive, so they could eat tripe, beef-tripe hotpot.
You know, cow stomach doesn’t have a lot of flavor. When you bite into it, it’s chewy, yes, not very flavorful. So Chongqing people put cow stomach into the hotpot, and then they wait. One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, tick-tock, tick-tock-tock, they wait for about 15 seconds, then they can eat.
Now the beef stomach has flavor—flavorful, numb, spicy, and oily; yes, it has many flavors. Because the workers’ work was very tiring, they wanted something tasty, hmm, then they could work.
Hey, why is Chongqing hotpot in a grid, one square after another? Why? Is it that each square holds something different? Hmm. I’ve heard that in the past the pot was divided into squares not because each square had different ingredients, but because many people ate hotpot together. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, hmm, so I eat in this square and you eat in that square. We are separate, hmm, separated. We aren’t eating together. Right, this square is mine, this square is yours. Hmm, so then, I put in what I like and you put in what you like, right?
So Chongqing hotpot today isn’t cheap anymore. In the past, beef stomach was cheap; nowadays it isn’t cheap. Now Chinese people put many, many things in: beef, mutton, pork, seafood—maybe shrimp—lots of things, plus vegetables. Now we put in many, many things, and they aren’t cheap. So Chongqing hotpot isn’t cheap today.
Okay, that’s today’s video. What do you think Chongqing hotpot looks like? Delicious or not? Weird or not? Looks spicy, numb? If you go to Chongqing, would you like to try Chongqing hotpot? Okay, leave me a comment. See you next time, bye!