THE evergreen Sichuan Province is known as “Nature’s Storehouse” due to its abundance of food and natural resources, including delicacies from the mountains, freshwater aquatic products, livestock and poultry, vegetables, and bamboo shoots, as well as a wide variety of mushrooms and other fungi. As Sichuan is endowed with a range of spices, the people of Sichuan are fond of hot and spicy taste.