Traditional Chongqing Hotpot Craft

The traditional craft of Chongqing hotpot grew from the wharf markets along the Yangtze and Jialing, beginning as the rough way boatmen and porters washed beef offal and blanched it in a numbing-spicy broth; in the Republican era it moved from pole-and-basket stalls into storefronts, maturing into today's beef-tallow mala hotpot craft, and is listed, through projects such as Lupai Badaotang, in Chongqing's municipal intangible-heritage register.

Its heart is the making of the broth: built on beef tallow, with chili, Sichuan pepper, fermented broad-bean paste, ginger, garlic, and many spices stir-fried again and again, the heat and the order of adding ingredients carefully judged to yield a bright red, deeply numbing-spicy broth that stays clear through long boiling; the skill with ingredients shows in the precise blanching of tripe and duck intestine.

The craft concentrates the street food culture of the region and carries the Chongqing way of gathering around a pot to eat together. It should be noted that the craft is currently listed as a Chongqing municipal intangible heritage and is not yet a national-level item.

The craft is alive in the hotpot houses found throughout Chongqing's lanes and in hotpot-related intangible-heritage displays, the most direct way to experience the food culture of the mountain city.