I was sweating, my heart was banging away inside of my chest, and my head was spinning. The food poisoning had probably not even kicked in yet!

Through bloodshot eyes I could see my own hand, giving another 2Yuan (.30 cents) to a smiling woman for a bowl of cold noodles. I managed to get my tongue, which had given up about 30 minutes ago and was probably looking for a way to get out of my mouth, to utter some very dangerous words in Sichuan…

“Wo xiang hen la, cheng”….or “I want very spicy, please.” She gave me a look as if to say “your wish is my command” and dumped another spoon of mystery spice into my bowl. It was going to be a good night.

Tired of all the usual oily Chinese and expensive, piss-poor attempts at Western food, I made a pact with myself to eat only local Sichuan Province food for the rest of my time here. This part of China is famous for dishes and spices that can match up to Thailand’s food/pain threshold. I absolutely love it and I would be lying through my teeth if I said that the food wasn’t a big part of the reason I came 1000KM north to Cheng-du from Lijiang.

I am staying at “Sim’s guesthouse” in the WengShu temple district…a friendly place, but more importantly, it sits right beside of a maze of narrow streets and alleys that transform into food central at night. The last time I made my dinner exclusively in the street stalls, I was eating bugs, a snake, and even dog courtesy of Beijing. Since I was hungry and more interested in actually enjoying dinner tonight, rather than photographing it, I kept things a little less exotic.

I wandered from smoking stall to stall, pushing my way in through the queues and the crowd, and trying different things including bowls of fiery noodles, breads stuffed with spiced beef, various mystery meats on a stick, and a giant corn on the cob. I even tried some of the local candy, made from tamarinds and boiled in sugar water. When the smoke cleared, I had spent a grand total of 11Y on tonight’s dinner, about $1.50, not bad, especially with the adventure factor added in.

Every cook that I passed with call for me to come over or to at least take a look. Some would raise skewers of tentacles, chicken’s heads, and misc other items out of boiling oil to show me with a grin. To avoid offending anyone’s feelings, I would just smile and answer “chi bao le”…which means “I am full”. They knew I was full of something, but it wasn’t food.

But pushing your way through the crowded street markets isn’t always fun and games.

Somewhere along the way I picked up 3 brown-toothed Chinese women in their late 50′s. The first time they saw me, they openly pointed at me and said “laowei!” (which means “foreigner”). OK, no big deal. I’ve had plenty of that on this trip already. Unlike the others however, they followed me around the market, and every time I would hesitate at a stall or try look at something, they would ramble on in Chinese, laugh hysterically, then finish the sentence with “laowei!”.

I was trying to concentrate on dinner and not end up with another case of projectile vomiting like I was graciously given in street markets of Vientiane, Laos last year, so I was starting to get a little irked.

Yes, we have established that I am not Chinese, thank you for taking note and letting me know, now piss off! If I knew how to say it in Chinese, I would have. Luckily for them, I did not get that far in my class. That must have been next week’s curriculum.

Things reached a boiling point when they started getting the food vendors in on the laugh. I looked down at the pointy skewer stick in my hand and thought for a moment about sticking it in the group leader’s throat, but there was still one good piece of meat left on it and that definitely would have ruined my chances of getting served any more tonight.

Finally, one of the brighter vendors realized that these old women were costing her my business and that my grin looked more like Jack in the movie “The Shining” rather than one of humor, and she sent them away quite aggressively.

Everyone that has traveled China, or anywhere in Asia for that matter, knows what it is like to be in the spotlight with celebrity status everywhere that you go. It actually is fun (usually) but then again, when you are just trying to burn your tongue out of your mouth properly with Sichuan food, it can get a little exhausting as well.