Pain in a bottle: The hottest little chili sauce in Beijing
The best thing about the bar at the Capital Club: The spectacular view of Beijing from the fiftieth floor. The worst thing: The distance to ground level should a medical emergency arise in which a patron needs to be rushed to a waiting ambulance, say, if he or she were sitting in the bar innocently minding his or her own business and ended up cajoled into trying some of this…
I dipped the end of a toothpick in the jar on the left, licked the sauce off the last three millimeters of it – taking in a fraction of a raindrop’s worth – and felt, as advertised on the bottle, pain! I rank it somewhere between the half-dozen times I experienced tear gas in Seoul and sticking a lit cigarette on my tongue for three seconds. I struggled against an instant case of the hiccups, felt a trickle of sweat zigzag down my back, and, when an acquaintance said “wipe under your eyes,” found the area damp with perspiration.
Trier beware, one might say, but what confounds me are these words on the label: “one drop is enough”. Enough for what? To turn Houhai into a spicy hotpot? To, in mist form, dispel an angry mob of Beijing Guo’an supporters? To fry into a smoking heap of ashes the next lady bar tout or drug dealer who approaches me in Sanlitun?
In any case, here are some additional slogans that should be included on this particular bottle: “Not for internal use“, “Atomic hot pepper death sauce”, and, “Made from chili peppers crown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.”
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Where can I get a bottle? 越辣越好！
Where do I buy some to slip into my ex’s drink?