The era of having peppers and Sichuan peppercorns began during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, which was about 400 years ago.

Sichuan's very mature spicy cuisine was formed during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.

Zanthoxylum bungeanum has been produced in the Shu region since ancient times.

Before the use of pepper and chili pepper, the three most commonly used spicy seasonings by the Chinese were Sichuan peppercorns, dogwood and ginger, which were called the "three spices".

The Bashu people used these three spices to form their original taste system.

Sichuan cuisine in the Tang Dynasty belongs to the Ma Tian style.

After statistics on recipes from past dynasties, people found that before chili peppers entered China, 22% of the country's food added Sichuan peppercorns, and the proportion of foods with Sichuan peppercorns in the Tang Dynasty reached 37%, so Sichuan peppercorns were most widely used in the Tang Dynasty.

By the Song Dynasty, spicy food became a favorite flavor of food, but the spiciness of people in the Song Dynasty did not come from chili peppers, but from ginger, pepper and mustard.

Among them, pepper is native to Southeast Asia. Around the Han Dynasty, pepper from India was brought to our country by Arab traders.

Later, in the Song Dynasty, pepper began to be grown on a small scale in Guangzhou and other places.

In the Song Dynasty, three major cuisines were formed in my country, namely Southern food, Northern food and Sichuan food.

In addition to the traditional dispute between the North and the South, there was also the spicy Sichuan rice, which shows the influence of Sichuan rice at that time.

In the Ming Dynasty, chili peppers were introduced to mainland China from distant Americas.

The earliest record of chili peppers in China was Gao Lian's "Zunsheng Bazhan? Yan Xianqing Appreciation Notes? Volume 2? Grass Flower Pu" written by Gao Lian during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty.

The arrival of chili peppers has profoundly affected the Chinese food culture, completely shaking the status of the mainstream seasoning of Sichuan peppercorns, creating an extremely moving realm, and creating a spicy feast in the land of Bashu.

The chili peppers that traveled across the ocean from the Americas first landed in Zhejiang.

Chili pepper spread from Zhejiang to the interior of China, all the way north along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and reached Beijing.

The other route went westward along the Yangtze River and spread to Hunan, and then spread from Hunan to all directions, southward to Guangdong and Guangxi, and westward into Sichuan and Yunnan.

There are records about peppers in Sichuan in the 14th year of Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1749). In this year, peppers appeared for the first time in the county annals of Dayi County, Chengdu: "Meat dishes: Qin pepper, also known as sea pepper." But

I believe that the history of Sichuan people using chili peppers did not begin during the Qianlong reign, because this time recorded in the Dayi County Chronicle, chili peppers can already be used as a seasoning for Sichuan cuisine.

The Sichuan people's name for chili peppers is "sea pepper", which shows that chili peppers were regarded by Sichuan people at that time as a foreign seasoning that traveled across the ocean.

This kind of sea pepper, once rooted in the land of Bashu, will have a vitality that has never been seen in any other region in the world.

By the Daoguang period of Jiaqing, peppers were commonly grown in Sichuan. The "Illustrated Research on Plant Names and Facts" written in the last year of Daoguang said: "Pepper can be found everywhere." Also during the Qianlong period, Sichuan cuisine developed into a very mature cuisine. Sichuan scholar Li Tiaoyuan

Thirty-eight cooking methods of Sichuan cuisine are described in detail in "Hanhai Xingyuan Lu", which gives the opportunity for chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns to work together to create a spicy flavor.

Due to the wars in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the original population of Sichuan was completely lost, so the Qing government took the initiative to "fill Sichuan from Huguang". It started on a large scale from the 10th year of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (1671) to the 41st year of Emperor Qianlong's reign.

It was the largest immigration movement in history until 1776. It lasted for 105 years and numbered more than 1 million immigrants.

Therefore, modern Sichuan culture is formed by integrating the folk culture of Hu, Guang, Shaanxi, Gan and other places, and Sichuan cuisine is no exception.