Last Monday, on our way out of a dreadful two-hour business meeting, Yan and I were dying for lunch.

“What shall we eat?”

“Hotpot pleaseee!”

“What hotpot?”

Without thinking, I opened Dianping and typed "hotpot" in the search bar. Browsing through the long list of options, we spotted Chaoshan beef hotpot, a novel hotpot style that emphasizes on bringing the original flavor of freshly slaughtered beef. “Let’s have this!” I could feel my saliva gland activating just thinking about the hot mellow broth and rich meat.

Classic Chaoshan beef hotpot: clear broth, thinly-cut, fresh beef.

“Have you ever counted how many times we’ve had hotpot this winter?” On our way to the restaurant, Yan asked.

We did a quiet recap of our recent dining journey and were shocked by the conclusion: for the past month or so, we’ve been having at least two hotpot meals per week!

“Damn it, that’s A LOT OF hotpot we've had!”

Down the Memory Lane

Our love for hotpot is nothing new. As two girls grew up in Beijing, both Yan and I could recall many childhood memories going to Beijing’s Mongolian hotpot restaurants, sitting around a giant copper hotpot for the classic lamb + sesame sauce combo. After we entered middle-school, Szechuan cuisines and in particular Chongqing hotpot became a major hit around the country; the burning-red, cow-fat infused spicy broth fired up the many joyful meals we enjoyed with friends and families.

The traditional "copper pot+lamb" hotpot that Beijingers have enjoyed.

And then there were our Chinatown hotpot days. For the three years when Yan and I both studied in universities in London, going to Chinatown for hotpot became a sacred monthly ritual between our group of Chinese friends. For the few restaurants that actually served hotpot back then in London’s Chinatown, the food was crude to say the most; the vegetables and tofu often look stale, and the lambs were often hard as bricks with large chunks of ice covering on top. Want to complain? All you would get is a death stare from the Cantonese restaurant owner, “not happy? Then don’t eat!”

But even that was ok. For oversea students like us, being able to have hotpot together was the best thing we’d ask for in a city so far away from home. Once the broth started simmering and everyone began to throw things into the pot with their chopsticks, the table instantly turns to a la la land beamed with laughter and happiness. Who cares if the frozen lamb tastes so dry? With the magic of that flavorful dipping sauce, everything in the hotpot is transformed into an ingredient for happy memories.

In China, Hotpot is the food that the most associated with friendships and unions. (photo from: popular drama series Ode to Joy)

Yan and I are not food historians or experts, yet reminiscing over our own food journey, we could clearly see why hotpot is so loved by the entire Chinese population (honestly, I’ve never met anyone in China that doesn’t like hotpot): it is delicious, the interactive, customization element is fun (and healthy-ish, if you choose the right soup base, right sauce and right ingredients), and most importantly, the way hotpot is consumed reflects the essence of Chinese culture: a combination of order and diversity balancing each other out at the same time  to achieve maximum harmony on the dinning table. To complete a successful, collective hotpot dining experience one ought to follow many rules, from what ingredients goes into the soup first, how long certain ingredients cook (for instance, goose intestines must be cooked by the “7-up-8-down” rule, meaning 7 times out of the soup and 8 times in) to what sauce to dip the food with. At the same time, everyone has the freedom to eat whatever they want and share anytime (think specifically the beauty of yuān yang pot 鸳鸯锅, aka those yin-and-yang style hotpot that allows one to do spicy at one side and clear broth at the other) – seriously, how more inclusive, considerate and comforting could a meal be?

Whoever invented yuān yang pot 鸳鸯锅 is a GENIUS.