It is Saturday night in a restaurant in downtown Chengdu, and it feels as though I have never been away. A hotpot simmers in the centre of the table, steam rising from the sea of chillies on the surface of its broth. We all have red faces. My old friends Zhou Yu and Tao Ping are roaring with laughter, as usual, at my feeble jokes. The whole restaurant is buzzing with lively social energy (in Chinese, it is 're nao' -- as hot and noisy as a marketplace). Five years or so after I first lived in Chengdu, I am back yet again, this time for three months to continue work on my Sichuanese cookbook. I have returned to my grubby worker's flat, which a few European student friends and I have kept on, paying the peppercorn rent between us, taking it in turns to live there. And I have slipped effortlessly back into my usual routine of studying in the kitchens of restaurants, reading cookery books in teahouses, and dining out with friends. So, of course, now that my father has come to visit Chengdu for the second time, this time with my mother in tow, I have done the Sichuanese thing and invited them out for a hotpot supper.

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