Let's Get Spicy!

What do mint, radish, and burnt plastic have in common? How do you explain a physical sensation to somebody without a shared language or experience to fall back on? How did the arrival of chile pepper from the Americas change the meaning of "spicy" in the old world? Does it make sense to refer to a smell or a physical sensation of Qi movement as "flavor"? Is the lung special?

So many questions, and so many possible answers that only lead to more questions! Argh.... once again, we invite you to join us as we explore a translation conundrum that has been bothering us quite a bit lately: how do we understand and describe, or even translate, the flavor xīn 辛, associated with the lung and metal among the five dynamic agents. The conversation moves beyond dictionary definitions into lived experience, sensory language, and the body’s felt response to taste, aroma, and the movement of Qi.

We play with the terms acrid, pungent, spicy, and aromatic, but ultimately reject each one. Along the way, we examine how herbs and foods associated with this flavor, like garlic, mint, radish, cinnamon, and cardamom, fit into the picture and what they have in common.

The discussion also widens into culture and food systems: why chili peppers became central in regions like Sichuan, Hunan, Vietnam, Thailand, and India; how climate, scarcity, and preservation shaped culinary traditions; and how soup, fermentation, and spice function as both nourishment and medicine.

Ultimately, we determine that the concept of wèi 味 covers not just flavor (its usual translation), but taste, smell, and the deeper bodily response in the movement of Qi that Chinese medicine tracks through the lens of the "Five Flavors" or wǔwèi 五味, as experienced when a substance comes into contact with the tongue, the nose, or the throat.