Oliver, our Chengdu-based guide, explained before the first meal that Sichuan cooking was based on two kinds of seasoning: the spicy-hot of the red peppers (though nothing I ate in Sichuan was as outrageously spicy as some dishes I’ve had in Hunan) and “the numbing seed.” I had already been wondering about the seasoning in my new favorite fast food, what I call the “Chinese burritos” from a stand around the corner from my apartment in Xiangtan. They consist of thin slices of beef (pork and egg also available) rolled with spears of cucumber and scallion in a white pancake, thinly spread with a sauce that doesn’t so much numb my tongue as make it tingle all over, as if the tongue itself is effervescing. “What is the numbing seed?” I asked Oliver. “I don’t know how you call it in English,” he answered sheepishly. I pressed him: “Is it small and round, and maybe pinkish-brown?” “It grows on a tree,” he countered, not quite answering the question I had asked. But by now I was pretty sure of my suspicions. When a small brown sphere dropped onto my plate from a piece of meat or vegetable, I bit, and there it was, that distinctive  tingling/numbing sensation. Unless I’m very much mistaken, the “numbing seed” is what we call in English – what else? – the Sichuan peppercorn. Used rarely in Western cooking and sparingly in Chinese food in America, it is often said to produce a sensation rather than a flavor.   

        The sad thing about being in China here is that I can’t call out for Chinese food on demand, practically a constitutional right in New York. Even if restaurants here delivered, how on earth would I call in the order? You can’t point over the phone.