September 5, 2022
ASIA / PACIFIC
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Some like it hot: Eating spicy in China’s WWII shelters
CHONGQING, China (AP) — The city of
Chongqing, dubbed one of China’s four
“furnace” cities, is known for both soaring
temperatures and spicy cuisine — notably
its hotpot, a peppery bubbling tabletop
broth into which diners dunk bite-size
pieces of food to cook and eat.
The inland metropolis on the Yangtze
River has the perfect escape to enjoy
hotpot, even in what has been a summer of
unusually stifling heat: World War II-era
air raid shelters, converted into
restaurants, where the temperature is
naturally cooler.
Locals call it “cave hotpot.”
Chongqing was the temporary capital of
China during World War II, as a Japanese
invasion drove the government out of the
then-capital, Nanjing, and occupied
eastern China. Leader Chiang Kai-shek,
the military, foreign diplomats, and others
set up in what was then a remote city in the
southwest.
At the sound of air raid sirens, residents
crowded into the often dark shelters dug
into the hilly cityscape to protect people
and military weapons. Thousands died in
the Japanese aerial bombing attacks.
Today, the stone arch doorways of the
former shelters still dot the city. Some
have become cafés and mahjong parlors
and others, restaurants.
Red Chinese characters hang over one
entrance, its stonework half-hidden by a
refrigerated drinks display case and
stacked up plastic chairs. The characters
read: “Cave Pavilion Hotpot. Founded
1989.”
Inside, tables and chairs line two long
and narrow tunnels connected by a
corridor. A starry night sky has been
painted on the semicircular roof to
reinforce a feeling of coolness. A painting
of a World War II fighter plane hangs on
the wall.
Diners drop beef tripe, meat, fish, and
vegetables into a bubbling broth filled with
floating red chili peppers and lip-numbing
Sichuan peppercorns. A non-spicy broth is
also available — in a smaller container.
“We stay away from the summer heat in
these air raid shelters,” said Tang
Ronggang, as wisps of steam rose in front
of his face from the hotpot on his table. “It’s
HISTORICAL HOTPOT. Customers eat hotpot
in a hotpot restaurant located in a converted World
War II-era air raid shelter in southwestern China’s
Chongqing Municipality on August 20, 2022. The city
of Chongqing, dubbed one of China’s four “furnace”
cities, is known for both soaring temperatures and
spicy cuisine — notably its hotpot, a peppery bub-
bling tabletop broth into which diners dunk bite-size
pieces of food to cook and eat. (AP Photos/Mark
Schiefelbein)
cool in here, a good place to stay in
summer.”
Particularly this summer, which has
seen what meteorologists are calling
China’s strongest heat wave since the
government began recording rainfall and
temperature 61 years ago. High
temperatures have persisted for more
than two months, topping 40º Celsius (104º
Fahrenheit) in many places.
Shopping malls have closed in
Chongqing for most of the daytime to
conserve power. Wide swaths of the
Yangtze and Jialing rivers, which meet in
the city, have dried up, drawing people to
the exposed riverbed. The extended heat
and drought has been blamed on a
high-pressure system parked over western
Russia that is also causing this summer’s
heatwaves in Europe.
Chongqing, immediately east of
Sichuan, was part of the province until the
city and the surrounding area was broken
off administratively in 1997.
Some date the city’s hotpot tradition to
the 16th century, when porters ate meat
and vegetables boiled with fiery spices
after a hard day’s work on the docks on the
Jialing River. The dish moved into
abandoned air raid shelters in the 1970s,
giving birth to a new tradition, the cave
hotpot.
Associated Press video producer
Olivia Zhang contributed.
South Korean garlic video ad
roasted over purported obscenity
By Hyung-Jin Kim
The Associated Press
S
EOUL, South Korea — A rural
South Korean town is getting
roasted over its video ad on garlic
that some farmers say stinks of obscenity
and has even sexually objectified the
agricultural product.
The controversy surrounds a 30-second
video that had been posted on a YouTube
channel for Hongseong County, a small
central-west South Korean town of about
100,000 people known for its local
“Hongsan” garlic, for about two years.
The video shows a woman touching the
thigh of a man named “Hongsan” with a
full garlic head mask and saying words
like “very thick” and “hard” to apparently
describe the quality of the local garlic. It’s
also a parody of a famous scene from a 2004
hit Korean movie titled Once Upon a Time
in High School.
The spicy ad, which reportedly
generated about 190,000 views, had been
largely kept underground, but began to
take root in the larger public when it was
aired on electronic billboards at a Seoul
express bus terminal and a downtown
street in the central city of Daejeon in July
ahead of the garlic’s release.
One farmer who saw the video notified
some farmers’ groups, while South Korean
media also began reporting about it,
leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths.
“We can’t repress our astonishment,”
said a joint statement issued by the local
branches
of
two
major
farmers’
organizations — the Korean Peasants
League and the Korean Women Peasants
Association. “The video offended the
people who watched it and dealt a big blow
to the image of the agricultural product
that farmers have laboriously grown.”
Calling the video “suggestive” and
“inappropriate,” the statement said it
“sexually objectified” garlic.
The farmers’ groups asked Hongseong to
apologize, punish those responsible for the
video production, and formulate steps on
how to prevent similar incidents. Shin Ji
Youn, an official at the Korean Women
Peasants Association, said the farmers’
groups asked Hongseong to respond to
their requests.
Hongseong officials said they withdrew
the video from their YouTube channel and
had stopped airing it on the billboards in
late July. The county had not issued any
official statement on the issue, and
officials said they were discussing how to
respond to the farmers’ requests.
County officials said they formally
changed the name of their local garlic to
“Hongseong” after their county name in
January.
Many South Koreans believe garlic, one
of the essential ingredients in Korean
cuisine, boosts stamina. Some think it can
improve men’s sexual functions as well.
During the 2018 Winter Olympics in
PyeongChang, South Korea, the country’s
women’s curling team earned the
nickname of “Garlic Girls” — four of the
team’s five members came from another
rural town known for its own famed garlic
— as they had a fairytale run to win the
silver medal.
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