Chapter 44 Section 44 Origin of Pepper

One spicy to Hubei. In the past, I always thought that the chili peppers eaten by people in southern Gansu were the hottest. When I arrived in Hubei, I found that people in Hubei were not good at eating chili peppers. When I found out that there are even worse hot peppers in the world, I became more and more confident. It was not until I ate Qixing peppers from Guizhou and sea peppers from Sichuan that they almost bit off my tongue like a snake. The hot peppers are not too old, it is really hot and strong, and there are peppers outside the peppers. When I arrived in Beijing, my friends saw that I was from the south, so they asked me if I could eat spicy food?Let me put it this way, if there is a pot of abalone soup here, but there is no pepper, and there is pepper ten miles away, but there is no abalone soup, then I will take a car ten miles away to eat.As soon as this remark came out, all my friends and colleagues were really frightened. They said, how did you practice it?I said, feeding chili water with feeding bottles since childhood. Southerners use two feeding bottles to feed children. One feeding bottle contains milk. Cry, hurry up and feed the chili water, and stop crying once you feed the chili water.When I say this, it scares people even more.So, I heard them say in private, let's buy some chili too?See what it smells like?I thought, I am the kindling for spreading chili peppers. If people in Beijing eat chili peppers, those brothers who grow chili peppers in the south should thank me. Isn’t this a promotional market?

In a few days, my friend bought thick-skinned bell peppers as big as a fist and fried shredded pork. After eating them, he rushed to share his feelings with me: Hey, no wonder, you southerners like peppers so much. It turns out that the taste of peppers It's so good... Oh, it's so spicy, it's so spicy.That feeling was really refreshing, and he was indeed a friend of chili peppers. When I found out that he ate thick-skinned bell peppers, I almost laughed my jaw off. After laughing, the question came out. The friend asked, do foreigners eat chili?Ah, pepper is our native plant in China, right?This... of course it is from China, maybe it was born in Sichuan, the land of abundance that day?I didn’t encounter such a problem before, but now I do, I thought about it quickly, thinking about several foreign famous books "John Christophe", there is no description about peppers, it seems that foreigners like to eat onions head?So, I am sure that chili peppers are grown in Sichuan, otherwise how can Sichuan people eat chili peppers so much?This matter has passed for many years, and I have written a lot of words about food in these years. One day on the Internet, a netizen asked me, is chili pepper native to China?I also randomly answered on the BBS.I said, yes, the pepper must be a native plant in China, probably from Guangyuan, Sichuan.At this time, a netizen posted a post, introducing that peppers are produced in South America, and I was stunned!It's not entirely because of the fact that the articles I write have a column in various newspapers, there is a problem of face, and it's not because there are many people around me, and many eyes are staring at me. It doesn't matter on the Internet, I still use the screen name.The deepest emotion in my heart is to eat chili, like chili, love chili, as if I can’t live without chili... But I don’t know the origin of chili, I don’t know the origin of chili, I’m really ashamed Absolutely, ashamed as hell.So, I decided to find out what happened to the pepper.

Capsicum is a plant of the genus Capsicum in the family Solanaceae. The fruit is what we eat called pepper. Academically it is called a berry. It is an annual or perennial herb. It also has a long list of aliases: pepper, sea pepper, Qin pepper, spicy tomato, sweet Peppers, Peppers, Peppers, etc.Note that what is called fan means something that came in from a foreign country.Chromosomes of pepper: 2n=2x=24.The ingredients of pepper: every 100 grams of fresh pepper contains 70-93 grams of water, 4.2 grams of starch, 1.2-2.0 grams of protein, and 73-342 mg of vitamin C; dried pepper mainly contains vitamin A.The spicy taste of chili is capsaicin, which is mainly distributed in the septum and epidermal cells around the placenta.

Peppers originally grew in the tropical regions of Central and South America. Regarding the native place of chili peppers, it is indeed a confusing book among pepper people. I used to be the same way. It came from the tropical regions of Central and South America. After the truth came out, I was somewhat disappointed. Of course, this is also a superfluous idea. It is not necessary because If you like chili, you must produce it in your own country, so it is very easy for people to wear a narrow nationalist hat. After European colonialism arrived in the Americas, chili was first introduced to Europe in 1493, and then to Japan from about 1583 to 1598. There is no specific record of the time when it was introduced to China, but the earliest record of chili in China is relatively recognized by Gao Lian in Ming Dynasty. "Zunsheng Eight Notes" (1591), there is a description: "Spicy peppers grow in clusters, white flowers, the fruit looks like a bald pen head, spicy and red in color, very impressive".According to this record, it is generally believed that pepper was introduced into China in the late Ming Dynasty.

There are two paths for peppers to be introduced into China. One is the famous Silk Road, which enters Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi and other places from West Asia, and is the first to be cultivated in the northwest; It was cultivated in Hunan and other places, and then gradually expanded to the whole country. Up to now, there is almost no blank area without pepper. According to historical records, the earliest peppers were grown in the jungles of Chile in the Americas. They were collected by humans, domesticated and cultivated in Mexico, and transformed from wild peppers into domestic peppers, and then introduced to countries around the world.Now, the country of Chile still has a traditional chili-eating competition.However, in the 1970s, botanists discovered wild-type millet pepper from the virgin forest investigation in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, which aroused the attention of the Solanaceae plant community.Is this the original type of wild pepper?Or did the introduced pepper seeds accidentally fall into the virgin forest, or did the planting area become the virgin forest?It is not easy to draw a definite conclusion. If we discuss the continental plate drift, the east and west coasts of the Pacific Ocean were originally a whole, but Yunnan is similar to Central America.I really want to come to a conclusion that peppers are also found in native China, because Yunnan is really a botanical garden, and it is at a comparable latitude to Central America.

However, no woody pepper has been found in China so far. There are woody pepper trees in Central and South America. I think if there is such a pepper tree in China, I believe that Sichuan people will plant it as a provincial tree in the land of abundance, especially in that On both sides of the road, pepper trees are replanted, and the landscape is very beautiful. The main reason is that there are strings of red peppers hanging on the trees. After a long time, the driver will think that the red light at the intersection is a big red pepper. The more it is on, the more people have to drive past, so Sichuan had to modify the traffic rules, stop at the blue light and stop at the white light, and the traffic policeman wore a red chili cap on his head, which is red-horned Chaotian pepper.