Original subtitles

You know what I like? I like Sichuan.

Man, I love the food here.

You know what else I like?

Torturing my friend Éric Ripert.

I don't know why. Maybe it's

because he's so damn nice.

- You high, man? - You look high.

I am.

- But I like it. - Yeah?

You could pretty much tear his toenails out

and he'd still find something nice to say about you.

He's so polite, yet if you look closely,

and I do, his discomfort can be exquisite.

He's the devil.

Look at him.

♪ I took a walk through this ♪

♪ Beautiful world ♪

♪ Felt the cool rain ♪

♪ On my shoulder ♪

♪ Found something good ♪

♪ In this beautiful world ♪

♪ I felt the rain getting colder ♪

♪ Sha la, la, la, la ♪

♪ Sha la, la, la, la, la ♪

♪ Sha la, la, la, la ♪

♪ Sha la, la, la, la, la ♪

It's the spicy, sensualist heartland

of all the things I love about China.

The collision between very, very old and very new,

an exploding middle class, a lot of history,

and food that could burn you down to a charred,

smoking little stump.

Sichuan province, located in the southwest of China,

over a thousand miles from Beijing.

A region so fertile and lush,

that it's been referred to as "China's breadbasket."

And it's capital, Chengdu.

Despite its ever-growing skyline,

it hasn't lost its deep culinary roots and traditions.

- And I figured, if I'm going back to Sichuan

I should bring a friend.

Someone unused to the... How shall I say...

Level of heat commonly found in the food here.

Someone who's never been to China before

and is unused to its ways.

I'm talking, of course, about chef Éric Ripert

three star Michelin restaurants

as New York's Le Bernardin.

-So welcome to China, Éric.

-Thank you.

- First time in the mainland? - Yeah, yes.

And I'm very surprised already about, uh, what I see

in the city here.

I was expecting like, uh, kind of a gigantic Chinatown

that we have in New York.

That's some racist shit right there, I'm tellin' ya.

No, it's very surprising.

The streets, they're very clean.

Just... it almost looks like a European city.

Except for the air.

The air quality, I mean, - maybe you've noticed

that haze... - Yeah, - it's like the fog.

- That's not... that's not good.

But I'm definitely out of my comfort zone.

- Really? - For sure, yeah.

- Well, good. - Well, I'm hungry, you hungry?

-Yeah.

- Noodles, that's where you should start around here.

Chengdu is famous for little spots like this.

Don Don Chen Shui Mian, named after a much beloved

Chengdu noodle snack.

Oh, yeah, now we're talkin'.

I've never been good with chopsticks.

- Really?

- Never.

This is not bad.

I can grab it.

Kind of.

Oh, yeah.

That is awesome.

So it's all spicy.

The peppers get on you I'm... I'm like... whew.

Yeah, well, this is just day one, man.

I'm surprised you don't drink beer with that.

Dude, it's only 11:20 in the morning.

What kind of an animal do you think I am?

- Well, 'cause there's nothing - to soothe your taste buds.

This is a good sort of, uh, intro.

- So we're gonna have fun. - Oh, man.

We're gonna eat well.

You're gonna drink -a little more than you like.

- Okay.

And I have to stress this to you now, Éric,

you cannot refuse.

Don't look at me with eyes like that.

I'm saying it's... drinking

culture is very important here.

And if we go to, like, a formal meal,

your ability to drink leads to a number of assumptions

about you, you know?

Your general manliness, penis size.

Your worth as a human being.

I'm comfortable with my size.

Think of yourself as an ambassador

not only for America, but for... for France, Éric.

But I am an ambassador of Le Bernardin as well.

Of the people who work with me and so on.

- Right. - You don't want people, uh,

On the other side of the world

thinking that Le Bernardin sends pussies out there

to represent.

You know what? You're scaring the shit out of me now.

Seriously.

Yeah, you can't let the team down.

To me... to me it's more insulting

-to be shit-faced at the table.

- No, no, not here.

It's perfectly okay to be shitfaced at the table.

That's completely acceptable.

It's gonna be a wild week.

Yes, I have the sense of that.

♪

Here's something they talk about a lot in Sichuan

when discussing food.

Two elements of flavor personified by two ingredients

that are integral to so much

of the cooking around here.

The Sichuan peppercorn, known for its flowery,

aromatic flavor and its tingly, mind-deranging,

mouth-numbing effects... a phenomenon called "ma."

And the spicy chili peppers like anjing chow,

or the even hotter facing heaven chili

provide the "la,"

pure heat.

So if you imagine like, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS,

tormenting you with nipple clamps as the "la,"

the "ma" provided by the pleasantly deranging

peppercorns, would be like the naughty nurse

with the ice cubes.

What's your, uh, what's your feeling on MSG?

- I don't mind MSG. - Yeah, I think it's good stuff.

- I do not react to it.

- Right.

No, no, me too.

Nobody does. It's a... It's a lie, man.

But you find a lot of natural MSG in tomatoes.

-In breast milk and parmesan.

- Yeah, in a... in a lot of products.

Yeah, you know what causes

Chinese restaurant syndrome?

-Racism.

"Ooh, I have a headache. It must've been

the Chinese guy."

♪

Most of the traditional, very famous dishes

of Sichuan cuisine are not made from chef.

-Our comes out from the family.

-Uh-huh.

So family dishes is... is the... the key

of Sichuan cuisine.

In my quest to set Éric's perfect hair on fire,

I have arranged dinner with this man, Go Sa,

who runs the Sichuan Cuisine Museum here.

He takes us to a neighborhood favorite,

Tiantian Fang Tian, for some typical local dishes

like pickled chicken feet, cartilaginous little bits

of gnawable goodness.

How do you eat this one?

Just, uh, bite it and, uh, don't eat the bone,

though.

- No, no... - Oh, it's good.

- It's delicious. - It's spicy.

-Yeah, very spicy.

-Whew.

- Have some beer.

- Well, the food is really good,

but the spices are little bit

of a challenge, I have to say.

Oh, yeah, now we're talking.

You're gonna love this dish, my friend.

Yeah, let's, uh, find the chicken

in the pile of chili.

Pile of chili.

"Laziji" literally means spicy chicken but the dish,

in practical terms, is a game of finding

the bits of chicken in the mountain

of ass-burning goodness.

Come on, it's fun for the whole family.

"Is that a tiny nubbin of hacked chicken,

or a nuclear cluster of chili seeds?"

The Sichuan peppers are the... for me, like... the really

super-addictive.

- Oh, yeah, I feel them now. - It's all tingling.

- Yeah.

-Like that, right.

There's a scientific name for the process,

- for what happens, it's san chul... - Mm-hmm.

Is the biological agent that causes confusion

in your nervous system.

- Confusion? - Tingling. Confusion, yeah.

That's what I feel right now, yeah.

You're gonna love this dish.

I'm totally confused, I'll tell you that.

- Oh, mapo doufu. - Oh, my favorite.

That one, I have the feeling, is the killer.

Look at that, man.

That is some goodness right there.

For me, the apex of Sichuan food.

My absolute favorite, improbably enough,

is a tofu dish.

This tofu dish, the legendary mapo doufu,

or pock-marked granny tofu.

Ground pork or beef, cubes of bean curd

in a rich, deeply-nuanced,

fiery but intensely satisfying sauce of chili oil,

bean paste, garlic shoots, ground Sichuan peppercorns,

and MSG.

This dish done right has got it all.

Oh, that's so good.

It's a perfect balance of stuff going on in here.

I just love, love, love this dish.

Actually, the spiciness makes me already,

like, uh, feeling that I drunk -kind of, you know?

- Really?

Yeah.

- I'm like... - You high, man? - You look high.

- I am. But I like it.

-Yeah?

And if you ever, like, have a hangover, and you will,

my friend, you will, um, this will scare

the evil right out.

It's prepping me for a drinking night.

- The glory of France... - Shut up.

Is on your shoulders.

And tong jiao yu, green peppercorn fish,

served in a simmering vat of seasoned fish broth,

laced heavily with fresh and dried

green Sichuan peppercorns and finished off

with a heavy pour of boiling hot vegetable oil.

I think this is the most numb you are gonna feel.

It's going to be a challenge, this one, for me.

Any second now, that perfect hair

is gonna burst into flames.

- That's good. - Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Man, I love the food here.

How does that feel?

You know, it change... it change you physically.

Like, I... I feel like my face is changing.

Changing... Like, my eyes are in a

- different position. My... - I got news for you.

- Right?

Yeah, it... you better look

at yourself in a mirror, man.

All right, let's just slow down.

-Don't rush.

- Slow down.

Slow down a little bit.

Man, those peppercorns are awesome.

I need towels. Holy cow.

-Whoa.

They're all looking at me from the kitchen.

They're like, "Is this guy gonna survive or what?"

Thank you.

And do I have to wear one of those vests?

Ah, jeez.

You're gonna sink like a stone in this thing.

My friend Éric is a Buddhist.

Not a weekend Buddhist either.

A serious, long-term practitioner

of Tibetan Buddhism.

It's what makes him so different from me.

He, for instance, is nice.

I am not always so nice.

On the rock is something written in Chinese.

Maybe it's, you know, "Gift shop this way."

-Whoa, check it out, man.

- I know.

About two hours south of Chengdu at the confluence

of the Min Jiang, Dadu, and Qingyi Rivers

is the giant Leshan Buddha

carved out of the cliff wall back in 713.

It still stands as the largest

stone Buddha in the world.

-Whoa, that was pretty awesome.

- That was beautiful, no?

And me without my selfie stick.

Though Éric's Buddhism diverges somewhat

from the kind practiced here, as you might imagine,

the site is respected and revered by all Buddhists.

I am respectful of faiths not my own

and I am more than happy to let

my friend do what he does.

It means a lot to him.

And like I said, I respect that. Really.

-Pretty cool.

- Isn't it?

All right.

This is a tasty rabbit head dispensary.

All right.

- Is it here? No. - Is it here?

Yeah, man. That's what you've been waiting for.

But all this time, in a little evil part of my brain,

I've been secretly looking forward to this moment.

A tasty Sichuan snack famous and much-loved

around these parts.

I'm talkin' bunny heads, yo.

Tasty, tasty bunny heads.

-I think you use the glove.

-Yeah.

Like you're doing a little prostate exam.

- Look at it. - Look at those teeth.

- He hates it... whoa. - Oh, you have the tongue too.

Yank the jaw right out.

Oh, that's good.

That is delicious.

Seriously spicy, delicious, flesh still clinging

to little Thumper's skull, look at those little teeth.

And the best part, after you rip off the jaw

and split the skull... the tasty, chicklet-sized brain.

Mmm, it's a lot of meat.

Suck that brain right out.

I'm not a fan of brains, but I'm gonna try.

- You haven't had these brains. - Rabbit brains are different.

They're not like custardy creamy.

They're kind of like a little... a little like uni.

♪ Here comes Peter Cottontail ♪

♪ Hoppin' down the bunny trail ♪

Right into my mouth.

How did you crack that?

You just get that soft spot.

You're gonna crack that thumb in and pry it apart.

Aw, jeez.

Yeah, or you just pound it on the curb.

So you basically crack it... Oh, you're winnowing out

the brain with its own jawbone.

There's a certain country justice to that.

I wish I'd known about these things.

You know, I'm gonna make these next Easter.

I mean the whole Easter egg hunt, what does that have

to do with bunnies?

- You know what I'm saying? - Yeah.

Bunnies don't lay eggs.

But they do have heads.

Look deep.

Deep into the murky depths of that most glorious

and iconic of Sichuan dishes.

It burns. It burns you down to your soul.

Cheers.

Local friend Xiao Bin and musician friend, Seven,

Wu Jiao Ling, and Gao Shin all enjoy a good hotpot.

Almost everybody around here does.

Eric, however, seems apprehensive.

So this is Éric's first time for Sichuan hotpot.

- Really? - I think you're really going to enjoy this.

So this is particularly good, right?

Which is known for being spicy, so...

- Not a good news.

- I see it in my eyes already.

Yeah.

The way it works is, you order a whole bunch

of ingredients, meat, vegetables, noodles,

fish, whatever you like.

A lot of different ingredients, and you feed them

into the pot.

The dog tail, we should just throw them first.

Yeah, because that's gonna take a long time.

- Yeah. - Let's throw that tripe in.

It's called like "thousand layer stomach."

- It's all going in there, man. - Yeah.

The inner ring is a more neutral broth.

The outer ring, though, is the good stuff.

The hard stuff.

Oh, that's good man.

That's good.

- That was Eric's first bite... - Bite.

Of hotpot.

- Awesome, right?

-Yes.

It only gets better, my friend.

- Oh, this is nice. - Oh, yeah.

Tofu.

- Oh, this is Tofu? - Yeah.

-Oh, it's the skin on top?

- Yeah.

Common ingredients like tofu and seaweed,

various meats and fishes are stirred in

along with ingredients that are, shall we say,

less familiar to the Western palate.

- They get the duck... - Yeah... Then they

reach inside, they grab the... grab the intestines

and yank 'em out of the live duck.

- No! - Yeah.

Supposedly, that's the... That gives you, like,

-the most fresh.

-But it's a bit cruel, right?

Well, you want 'em fresh, Éric.

- Yeah. - I think we should drink some beer.

-Yes, I think so.

- Cheers.

-How are you doing there, Eric?

-I'm doing amazingly well.

- Can you hang in there?

- My sinuses are... - Open.

-So open, you have no idea.

Best part of hotpot is to share.

- Is to share? - To share.

- Yes, I like that too. - It's very convivial.

- Yeah. - Sometimes we have, like, hotpots for four hours.

Four hours... As it cooks down,

it gets stronger and stronger

and the heat more intense.

A delicious, yet unpredictable silt of spice

gathering at the bottom of this river of hot lava.

Wow.

If you dig deep, like, down in the sediment

down there, the riverbed?

Man, it's spicy.

You feel enlightened yet?

Look how the color's changed in the broth.

♪

Is it what you kind of expected?

Hotpot?

Yes, it is exactly what I expected it.

- More beers, guys?

- Yeah, definitely.

♪

I cannot think anymore.

So I'm gonna eat and drink.

But the Baijiu comes out,

and everything is fine again.

For me, anyway.

I'm not so sure about Éric.

-You're out of it, man.

It's all good, though.

It's all good.

- Okay. - Don't say "okay."

-The evening's just beginning.

- Everything you just had was appetizer.

It's all good, though. It's all good.

He's the devil.

Look at him.

♪

Let's drink, Baijiu.

All right, Éric.

Yeah, you're getting into the spirit of things.

You know, he took me... He took me on this trip

to make me suffer.

-Yeah.

- To kill me slowly... - That's what friend does

to another friend, you know.

That's what good friends do.

In drinking culture of China, we enjoy torturing

your friends.

- Well, let's drink - to friendship.

- Yeah.

To friendship.

Morning in Chengdu, and my restless pilgrim friend

is up early.

Always a seeker, checking out the sites,

sucking up knowledge, nibbling at the edges

of celebrity due, no doubt, to the fact

that most of these people think he's Richard Gere.

Me, I don't need the glitter or the recognition.

And screw wisdom.

Give me some damn noodles.

Now, you know that's good, come on.

- I don't even have to taste it. - Just look at it.

Now get in my mouth.

Mmm.

Uh, excuse me.

Can you help my family, I saw...

-Nothing from Éric.

- They think I am Anthony Bourdain.

I'm gonna play son of a bitch.

He probably turned his phone off.

Sorry, Tony.

- Thank you. Thank you so much. - You're welcome. Thank you.

-Thank you.

- I think he was up last night doing, uh,

Sichuanese karaoke.

♪

- Okay. - Good, thank you. Thank you.

- Thank you. - He could be, uh... I don't know,

Riding the porcelain bus, as they say.

This is very sweet and sticky, but I like it a lot.

I don't even know what I'm eating, but why not?

Mmm. Spicy... oof!

-Thank you.

- I just know this soup is awesome.

I could rule the world after this.

Still no word from Éric.

♪

♪

The Chinese invented being obsessed with food.

They invented, you know, being obsessed

with the providence of ingredients with going

to a particular place - for a particular dish.

- Right.

So they've had that tradition for at least 800 years.

Fuchsia Dunlop has had an extraordinary

relationship with China, and Sichuan in particular,

since she first arrived here as a student in 1994.

She was the first foreigner to study at the Sichuan

Higher Institute of Cuisine

and has written numerous books about her experiences

and about Sichuanese food,

which are rightly considered

groundbreaking and definitive.

To say she was way ahead of her time,

is an understatement.

She's brought us to chef Lan Gui Jin's restaurant,

-Yu Zhi Lan.

- What he's trying to do is sort of raise the level

of Sichuanese food to sort of, um,

very refined banquet cookery.

Is what he's doing unusual for Chengdu, for China?

It's really unusual because I think in the West,

we're so very used to the idea of a celebrity chef

and the individual chef as artist.

But in China, people traditionally

look down on chefs.

So this is quite a new thing.

There are very few chefs who really like

the creative vision behind the food

and doing the work in the kitchen.

♪

The meal begins.

A large array of cold dishes are laid out.

Delicate flavors like lily buds

scented with rose petals are presented alongside

more assertive tastes like thinly sliced, brazed

beef shank with chili oil.

Tea tree mushrooms blanched and lightly stir fried

with Chinese stem lettuce.

And you suggest starting with the... Lily buds?

Yeah, I would start with the lily buds 'cause they're

nice and oiled, yeah.

♪

-It's nice texture.

- Yeah.

That's... those mushrooms are amazing.

Yeah, I love these cashew nuts.

Also prawns served cold with handmade noodles

dressed with natural vegetable extracts.

So you've probably been having all kinds of amazing

Sichuanese flavors because Sichuan,

it's not just about chili and Sichuan pepper,

it's about fujawei.

Complex, layered flavors like French sauces.

- Yes. - And there's one of them called guai wei,

Strange flavor.

- "Strange flavor." - Yeah.

Because it's a mixture of sweet, sour, salty,

spicy, numbing, and nutty all together.

And this is strange flavor noodles.

So it's just like a real traditional Sichuan dish

but done in a very refined way.

Then some soup.

A rich, slow simmered chicken and pork stock,

a raft of chopped meat floats on top

to clarify the broth.

A small bundle of impossibly thin

hand-cut noodles made with duck egg yolks,

a Western Sichuan specialty.

[chef speaks Sichuanese Mandarin]

- Okay.

- [chef speaks Sichuanese Mandarin]

Okay, so he's saying, um, first, um, have a smell

of this and then, um, and then taste the broth.

♪

Oh, it's beautiful.

And just... just gently press the noodles.

[chef speaks Sichuanese Mandarin]

And then lift them up and eat them.

♪

Oh, very refined.

You know some of these dishes, the character,

is very similar to what you get on the street,

but it's just done so beautifully.

Well, we were talking the other day

- that so many of the dishes - we were eating in the restaurant

Started out... these were not invented by chefs

or even cooks, they were invented by farmers

uh, and hungry people.

I mean, and that's certainly the story of... of much

of French cooking.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

For sure.

But when... when you can achieve refinement

and you keep the soul food in the process

you don't have only pretty food,

you have amazing food.

♪

- Wow. Beautiful.

This is a really amazing dish.

- I especially requested this dish... - Oh, yeah.

Which is one of his specialties.

So it's sea cucumber from Darliem

of the northeastern coast.

So that's a very expensive,

rarified banquet ingredient.

But, um, it's done with a typical Sichuanese sour

and hot dressing or sour and hot seasonings.

Like on the street, you'd get just these seasonings

with slippery sweet potato noodles - and a load of

- Right.

This is a banquet version.

- Ah.

- Yeah.

-Mmm.

- Mmm.

That's gonna be a challenge for me.

I'm still battling with my, uh, skills.

I would hold your bowl a little closer.

Like this, and then it gets easier.

- Thank you. - Less room for disaster.

You could have told me that before, Tony.

I was... I was having so much fun.

So that resistance, that boing, that rubberiness,

actually elasticity, it's kind of the last frontier

for Western palates.

-The gelatinous?

-The... and... and cartilaginous.

You know? Where there's actual, like, crunch.

This dish, this delicacy makes no sense in terms

of Western gastronomy at all because in the West

there's just no concept of eating something

for the pleasure of its texture.

Mmm. Delicious.

-Really good.

- Mm-hmm.

♪

So you're sort of single-handedly making

the beautiful argument that people should

go against their natural instincts in the West

and... and open up to what is, really,

an entirely new spectrum of initially difficult

and extremely nuanced flavors.

I... I just... I think Chinese is a world's most

underrated cuisine.

Because everyone loves Chinese food,

but until recently people, you know,

mainly in the West thought of Chinese food

as being something very familiar and good to eat.

But cheap and like, you know, a bit junky honestly.

And, um, I think that now people can see

that it has so much more to offer.

It's got everything from the most elevated

banquet food, imperial cooking, hearty peasant food,

street food, Buddhist vegetarian cooking,

Muslim cooking.

Ethnic minorities with their own styles.

And so it's really what you can call

a gastronomic culture.

♪

In the high stress world of the professional kitchen

the job of the executive chef is much like

an air-traffic controller.

One misheard order, one garbled communication

could lead to, well, disaster.

It is with this in mind that I arrange for Éric

to receive the attentions of a specialist

in the maintaining of perfect hearing

and ear-related health.

But the guy's a doctor?

Or he's like, uh, an amateur - like in the street?

-He's kind of like a doctor.

More of a technician, a caregiver.

And you could do it right here in the park

while enjoying your tea.

Who needs a doctor, bro?

- Well, here you go.

My man needs a cleaning.

Yes, yes.

-Yeah, look at him.

-He's laughing.

Enjoy your therapy, you might wanna put that down.

If he hits the sweet spot... just relax, dude.

Just keep your head forward.

What is he doing, it's scrapping?

Well, he has a number of devices.

- It's a very... - But he's using those devices

on everybody else here?

Because... No, no, no.

They're thoroughly sanitized after every customer.

Stay in place.

If you move, you know.

Don't try this at home, folks.

One wrong move to the right or the left

and the patient could lose all memory of life

before 1985.

Which if it includes Kenny Loggins might be

a good deal, but I digress.

Oh, yeah, here comes the good part.

Oh, yeah, that's a rush, right?

It's like a... The road to enlightenment right there.

- Oh, now the massage.

- Oh, and you might as well straighten out Éric's neck

while you're at it.

Don't do that.

Oops, that didn't sound good.

Oh, God, that's funny.

So you ready for the ass cleaner?

- This guy, I mean... - They'll be right over.

Same tools as the ear cleaner, by the way.

♪

"Work harder and you will be a better man."

As I explained to Éric, a true artist

must never stop learning.

The Japanese have a name for this principle

and the intended pursuit of

knowledge and enlightenment... - "Kaizen."

- [man speaks Sichuanese Mandarin]

Today we will learn fish flavored dish.

- Really important. - So it was with this in mind,

As well as the classic work of Mr. Rodney Dangerfield,

that I decided to go back to school.

To make the ultimate sacrifice for my friend,

to return to that place of childhood torment...

Stop trying to suck up to the teacher, I saw that.

Apple polisher.

So that my friend might learn, might just maybe

better himself and hopefully bring

some of that knowledge to the hungry

and the needy people at Le Bernardin.

You got that, right?

Like a machine, no problem.

- Yeah. - Okay.

♪

Whoa, doing good.

- It's a little thick. - It's a little thick.

-Little thick, man.

-Okay.

In order to get to the top

in the harsh, competitive world

of professional cooking, sometimes you gotta use

sharp elbows.

- More? - More starch.

More starch.

- Get your own, man. - It's a cold world out there.

Better he learns it here than on the street.

Hands up!

I win the prep.

♪

[speaks Sichuanese Mandarin]

The wok is intensely hot.

Things cook quickly in there.

A few seconds too slow and things swiftly turn

from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Okay.

Finished.

Et voilá, cheese eater.

♪

- Over cooked. - Over cooked. A little.

- Only a little. - Only a little.

Overcooked.

Damn. Damn.

And, uh, what about this guy?

- The same problem. - The same problem.

- A little overcooked - A little overcooked

Overcooked. Did you hear that, Éric?

-Which one is overcooked?

- And you cut the... the meat -a little thick.

- And you cut the meat a little thick.

This is Flinstonian knife work.

You're so competitive, I can't believe it.

Look at that knife work.

Those mushroom are too big. Look at that,

you throw off the balance of the dish.

You see here? You feel the... the consistency

of the... the meat.

Almost everywhere I've been, it seems there was

a terrifyingly powerful yet much loved,

alcoholic beverage at the very center of the culture.

One whose consumption is rigorously observed

in ritual and tradition.

Whether it's some sinister moonshine

in a 55-gallon drum in Africa, or a distilled spirit

in the jungles of Borneo, the mountains

of the Caucasus, or a more refined

concoction as here, you must drink it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Baijiu.

Baijiu has been around for a very long time

and the Shui Jing Fang Distillery

has been making this stuff for over 500 years.

Normally Chinese people drink premium Baijiu

in the occasion of... Entertain important guests.

So in China, premium Baijiu means a lot.

At a business dinner, a banquet,

one can reasonably expect to drink quite

a lot of the stuff.

Especially when your hosts are in the business

of making it.

And my French friend has concerns.

Do you want to know how we drink?

Yes, of course.

-Yes, that's very important.

- Chinese tradition.

Uh, we start three cups.

So we drink together.

After three cups, everyone will with each other

-one by one.

- Welcome to China.

Welcome to Sichuan. Drink up.

I have told him what might be expected of him

and the futility of resisting.

The aroma is very distinctive.

Very, very special.

There will be food, I told him.

- A lot of food. - And Baijiu.

And one must not, under any circumstances,

bring shame on our house.

Now the next round it's one by one?

- Yes.

-So, how does that work?

♪

Oh, no. Oh, I mean, we may as well get started.

♪

- Thank you very much. - Hope you enjoy it.

Thank you very much.

- Welcome to Chengdu.

-Thank you so much.

♪

In business, how often do you entertain like this?

Two... two, three days a week.

- Two, three days.

And sometimes, in one day three times.

- Oh, three times? - Yeah.

♪

Oh, wait.

Uh, excuse me, Éric?

Yes, Tony?

Wow.

My dear friend, thank you so much for taking me here.

I will remember forever.

Okay, good.

♪

♪

Like many residents of the City of Chengdu,

we decide to head out to the country for the weekend.

Get in touch with, like, nature, man.

I made a potentially lethal mistake this morning.

- I did something I never do. - Which is?

I ate a Western breakfast at the hotel.

It's bad... always, always bad news.

- Why? - It's just something you shouldn't do

When you're outside of the States.

Never eat the Western breakfast in a hotel.

-Now, that I agree, yeah.

- I'm feeling it already. - It's not good.

Well, the good news, we are sitting by the bathrooms.

You know, and when, you know, on a train

-is never a good thing.

- You have luxury taste, I noticed.

-Kind of elitist taste.

- Really?

I don't like to roll in my own... in a moving bathroom,

that's elitist?

Embrace... the experience.

♪

We're about maybe 115 kilometers away

from the center of... City of Chengdu.

♪

Chen Zhong is a filmmaker from Beijing

who often returns to Chengdu, the place of his birth,

to enjoy the more laid-back pace.

So on the weekends... everybody comes out to...

What's it called?

Alongdaloo. It's a... It's a term to describe

a place like this.

- Right.

- It means, you know, the... the, uh,

agricultural family happiness some say.

"Agricultural family happiness."

- Or "rural family happiness." - Rural, yeah.

Rural family happiness.

It's like the rural family they are holding

the business like this.

A restaurant, and also entertainment place

for people to come over to eat,

to enjoy the view, to fish, - Right.

-And to play mahjong.

Do you ever do that when you go back...

Go back to France, go on a weekend,

help somebody pick grapes, do agricultural work?

Not really.

You worked on... you lived on a farm for a while, yes?

- Yeah. - Can you milk a cow?

- If you had to? - Do you know how to... -Yeah, yeah I can milk a... yeah.

You know how to do it?

Uh, how hard could it be?

-It's not easy.

- I could squeeze... No, no, it's not easy.

You have to have a touch.

A special touch.

-I'm telling you.

-How long does it take to learn?

Well, it depend how good you are with your fingers.

Oh, I'm good.

Now almost every, uh, city in Sichuan has a kind of

representative dishes.

And in this area, they're very, uh, famous

for its intestine... Pig intestine.

-Oh, yeah. That's not bad.

- Uh-huh.

♪

- So if you were on a beach... - Okay.

And you're hanging out, you're drinking a nice bottle

of chilled Rosé, having some foie gras snacks

and some saucisson... - Yeah.

-As one does.

Yeah, we all do that.

Who would you rather see in a Speedo?

Wolf Blitzer, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, or Anderson Cooper?

Oh.

That's a tough one.

No. No, actually, that's an... there's an easy answer.

- None of them.

-Really?

In a Speedo?

You know what is a Speedo?

-It's those bathing suits...

- t's a banana hammock. It's... - Like, you know,

very narrow bathing suit.

-Oh!

- It's a French style... - It's a French style...

-Oh, okay.

So if someone's running in slow motion down the beach

in a silver lamé Speedo, of those three,

who would you choose?

I don't know.

Come on, it's Anderson Cooper.

- The guy, like, works out. - Does he?

-That's a good-looking man.

-Does he?

He works out?

I don't know.

You disappoint me, Éric, you really do.

Cheers.

- Ganbei. - Ganbei.

Oh, no, ganbei, you finish the... cheers.

Wow, you took it seriously.

You become more and more Chinese now.