A Chili Pilgrimage to Zunyi, Guizhou
Chili chicken, goat noodles and fermentation tradtions in China's chili capital
Crossing the border from Luzhou, we continued our family road trip along the Chishui River into Guizhou. Our destination was Zunyi in the province’s north, but we first stopped in Maotai, a town home to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of baijiu distilleries.
The most famous, of course, is Maotai (also spelled Moutai) itself. This prestige liquor brand (with an average cost of around 300 euros) has built one of the world’s largest museums dedicated to drinking culture, along with the largest statue of a baijiu bottle, according to Guinness World Records. People joke that Maotai is "Barbie Land for middle-aged Chinese men." It turns out that’s not far off. My dad, who has never shown much interest in museums, read every label word-for-word, paying more attention than he ever did at the Louvre.
In town, everyone wants to sell you their liquor. Even at the restaurant where we ate suantang yu (酸汤鱼)—a fish hot pot made with a fermented chili and wild tomato broth—the owner tried to pitch us their private-label liquor. My mind, meanwhile, kept drifting to chilies.
An easy way to put Guizhou on the culinary map is to mention that Lao Gan Ma was born here. The province was among the earliest regions in China to adopt chili peppers as a food substitute for salt (read more here)1. Today, it produces more chilies than anywhere else in China, fueling a multi-billion-dollar industry.2
Guizhou shares many culinary traditions with neighboring Sichuan: a love for douhua, fermented soybeans, and the sticky, pounded chili pastes found in Sichuanese kitchens. Even the dialect is similar enough that I could speak Sichuanese without friction in some places. At the same time, the province is home to many ethnic minority groups with their own distinct food traditions.
It’s a place that feels familiar, yet remains constantly inspiring.
While Zunyi is best known for its spirit industry and its pivotal role in the Long March, it isn’t usually celebrated as a food destination in the way the provincial capital, Guiyang, is. However, Zunyi produces the lion’s share of the province’s chili peppers and houses the country’s largest chili trading hub: China Chili City (中国辣椒城).
Zoumaba Market: A Guizhou Pantry
We came to the Zoumaba market in central Zunyi. In winter, stalls overflow with seasonal delicacies: pea shoots, fish mint, and cai tai (a stem from the Brassica rapa family). You'll find baskets of fresh rice noodles in various shapes and slabs of tofu.
What caught my eye most were the dried chilies: long erjingtiao (二荆条), wrinkled zoujiao (皱椒), chubby lantern chilies (灯笼椒), and fiery facing-heaven chilies (朝天椒). Guizhou locals are creative in using chilies through three primary preparations:
Ciba Lajiao (糍粑辣椒): Sticky chili paste. Dried chilies are soaked and pounded with ginger and garlic into a thick, “sticky rice” paste. When fried in oil, it becomes the soul of Guizhou’s local chili oil, you lajiao (油辣椒). It’s used widely in everyday cooking.
Zao Lajiao (糟辣椒 ): Pickled fresh chilies. Fresh red chilies are chopped and fermented with salt, baijiu, young ginger, and garlic. This provides the bright, sharp base for the beloved red sour soup, hong suantang (红酸汤).
Hu Lajiao (糊辣椒): Scorched chili flakes. Whole dried chilies are toasted over (or directly in) charcoal until blackened, then hand-rubbed or pounded into flakes. My Guizhou friend explained they are roasted to different “levels,” much like coffee beans: lighter roasts for dipping sauces and darker, smokier roasts for rice noodles.
There are also charred green peppers (烧青椒), which are used in cold dishes and dips, along with various chili oils and spiced chili flakes.
Besides the fresh ingredients, I noticed a variety of fermented and pickled vegetables here: radish, radish greens, and mustard stems. One stall owner let me try his suan cai (酸菜). Unlike the saltier and older Sichuan versions used in fish stew, this one was only lightly sour and fresh.
Historically, Guizhou had limited access to salt. The region didn’t produce it, and the mountains made transport difficult. That scarcity inspired local palates to lean towards spicy and sour tastes and shaped their fermentation traditions. Instead of salt brines, vegetables are often fermented in a thin slurry made from corn or rice flour, rice soup, whey from tofu-making, or broth from cooked vegetables. Sometimes the mustard is blanched before fermentation. The ready-fermented liquid is then reused as a starter for future batches.
Fermented soybeans also appear in several forms. Unlike Cantonese douchi, Guizhou’s version traditionally ferments yellow soybeans covered in leaves from the iris plant without salt. After fermenting, they may be sold wet as shi douchi (湿豆豉), with a sticky texture similar to natto. They can be further sun-dried and seasoned as gan douchi (干豆豉), or soaked in water with chili flakes to make shui douchi (水豆豉), a condiment often used in dipping sauces (Lao Gan Ma even sells a version). At the market, vendors layered douchi with herbs like fish mint and cilantro, forming something like a savory “cake” that could be scooped straight into dipping sauce. Meat is fermented too; some stalls at the market sell a fermented meat dish called suan zu rou (酸酢肉), sliced pork marinated with salt, then coated in flour to ferment in jars for weeks.
Sister’s Laziji
Most visitors—including me—come to the market for one dish: Guizhou-style laziji (辣子鸡), chili chicken at a small stall down a side street.
Unlike the Chongqing or Sichuan versions, which feature deep-fried chicken tossed with dried chilies, Zunyi’s version braises chicken pieces in a red-oil sauce built on ciba lajiao. Along with doubanjiang, it creates a deep, layered flavor. The first bite isn’t overwhelmingly hot, but the heat builds as you keep eating.
As I wrote in my recipe for laziji on the Mala Market blog: “Sister’s laziji was in full swing: Two aunties were breaking down chickens with astonishing speed and ferrying piles of chopped meat to a cart, while a small team of cooks tended a dozen big woks, stirring with meticulous focus. Each order was cooked from scratch, which meant a 40-minute wait. The finished dish arrived in a stainless-steel bowl, the chicken bathed in a deep red chili sauce. Fried then braised, the pieces emerged with crisp, caramelized edges and moist, tender centers. We also ordered potatoes and moyu (魔芋, konjac tofu), added to the chicken. The sauce was spicy but not overwhelming, with lots of depth and aroma thanks to a base of ciba chili, a pounded chili paste. For my family, raised on Sichuan’s version of lazi ji, the dish was familiar yet just different enough to be really intriguing and keep us coming back for more, bite after bite, filling our bowls with more and more white rice. ”
Douhua Mian: Tofu Noodles to Dip
Not far from the market, I went searching for douhua mian (豆花面), wheat noodles topped with fresh tofu and served with a complex dipping sauce. At Liu Cheng Ku Douhua Mian, the finger-wide noodles arrive in a light broth with silky slabs of tofu.
The bowl looks deceptively mild, but the dipping sauce (zhan shui) is spicy, rich, and aromatic. The base is chili oil, made from—you guessed it, ciba lajiao—then combined with fried pork cubes, Chinese chives, spearmint, and peanuts. While it traces its lineage back to Buddhist kitchens of the late Qing dynasty, the modern version you’d find in Guizhou is added with fried pork and lard. Besides the dipping version (蘸水豆花面), the shop also serves a dry-tossed version (干馏豆花面), accompanied by a light soy drink.
Home-style Dishes
We couldn’t leave without a meal of everyday dishes in which Guizhou’s chili condiments appear in more nuanced ways. Since there isn’t much traditional sightseeing in Zunyi, we walked 3.5 kilometers across town to Wanghai’s Home Dishes, a local institution that has been around for three decades. The second-generation owner, roughly my age, with a young son already running around the dining room, generously invited us into the back kitchen. He showed me their mise en place of chili condiments: dried chili, ciba lajiao, zao lajiao, doubanjiang, and their secret chili paste.
One cook was whipping up a quick stir-fry of pork with garlic stems (糟辣背筋). He added a spoonful of zao lajiao, giving the pork a bright tartness and gentle heat. While Sichuan cooking also uses pickled chilies in dishes like fish-fragrant pork slivers, this Guizhou version tasted noticeably fresher and lighter.
Another signature dish was qingcai niurou (青菜牛肉), beef slivers stir-fried with bok choy in doubanjiang and ciba chili paste. There was also Guizhou-style mashed potatoes (脆哨土豆泥), mixed with lightly scorched dried chilies, crispy fried pork cubes (a Guiyang snack and condiment called cui shao 脆哨), and pickled long beans. The result was chunky, savory, and with fun textures to chew on.
To finish, we had a soup of fermented mustard greens with small red rice beans (酸菜豆米汤), tasting mild and soothing.
China Chili City
About a 30-minute drive away from Zunyi city lies a town called Xiazi (虾子镇), home to China Chili City, the world’s largest chili trading center.
Guizhou’s mountainous terrain and mild, humid climate create ideal conditions for growing chilies, especially fragrant, moderately spicy varieties like erjingtiao and wrinkled chilies. Some come from Zunyi itself, such as the fiery facing-heaven chili, while others grow nearby, wrinkled chilies from Dafang and bullet-head chilies from Suiyang, among others from places like Huaxi across the province.
I had imagined CCC as a vibrant bazaar with rows of stalls selling bags of peppers to take home. Instead, it’s a B2B wholesale complex. During the off-season, it was quiet. A group of aunties sorted piles of dried chilies while workers packed them for shipment (Saint Cavish’s video captured the beautiful bts of the production).
As I wandered through the warehouse aisles, one wholesaler called out:
“Boss, how many hundreds of kilos do you want?” (老板, 你要几百斤？)
I was thinking more along the lines of a few hundred grams.
Still, the mountains of chilies were impressive. Nearby, we found a company willing to sell micro quantities. We bought several kinds, including the three I use most at home, erjingtiao, lantern chilies, and wrinkled chilies, all mild in heat but intensely fragrant to make chili oil.
Goat Meat Rice Noodles
For Zunyi locals, Xiazi is better known for its goat-meat rice noodles (羊肉粉). At Min’s Goat Noodles, it was already past 10 a.m. on a weekday morning, yet the shop was still bustling with eaters. The menu was simple: goat noodles, with two types of rice noodles to choose from, thick round cu mifen (粗米粉) or flat mipi (米皮), steamed and cut rice noodle rolls that resemble thick pho. You could add extras like more meat, offal, fried egg, or braised tofu.
I ordered mifen with extra offal. The fresh rice noodles and thin slices of goat were quickly blanched in a large pot of boiling broth, then topped with chili oil, scorched chili flakes, and chopped green garlic. The noodles were bouncy and slippery, paired with soft-stewed offal and hulajiao that added a beautiful smoky aroma more than heat.
The whole bowl carried a rich scent of goat. But not what you’d expect when you hear goat.
In Chinese cooking, lamb and goat are often considered gamey and unpleasant, known as shan (膻). Here, though, the flavor was clean and concentrated, thanks to a long-simmered goat bone broth and chili oil made with goat fat. My mom ordered the Mipi version, which had a slightly softer, chewier bite than the round noodles.
When I come across a dish I love, I usually make a mental note: I’ll try to recreate this in my Berlin kitchen. That was the case with laziji and several of the stir-fries we ate along the way.
With this truly GOAT bowl (sorry, I couldn’t resist), though, I’m not so sure. It belongs to this place.
But maybe.
This concludes our road trip in December last year, which started from Neijiang, through Luzhou, and ended in Chongqing. The travel series will continue with Yunnan in a couple of weeks, but we will have some fun new recipes and a pantry deep dive in between.
In The History of Eating Chili in China (中国食辣史), which I cited in my newsletter in 2023, Cao Yu states that Guizhou was the first region to adopt the chili pepper in the 18th century, though Brian R. Dott argues in The Chili Pepper in China that its adoption occurred even earlier.
When I was in Guiyang last year I had an extremely smoky chilli oil with free form todu that had cooked vegetables inside of the curds. I've been dreaming of that oil since and regret not putting more effort into finding some of those chillies to bring home. I don't have a lot of experience traveling in China but I think Guizhou has got to be one of the world's best hidden food gem destinations.
Very interesting! Thank you.