Selling mature chencu in Shanxi Province. Photo: CFP
 

By Kerry Xie

Life is a little bit sweet, but mostly bitter. Your condiments should be the same. The people of Sichuan had gentle rains and fertile land to depend on, and became hot pepper addicts as a way to pass their many leisure hours. Beijing citizens grew fat on tribute from the rest of the country, and found the sweet tang of tian mian jiang, duck sauce, both matched their lifestyles and got the taste of wind-borne Mongolian grit out of their mouths. However, the people of Shanxi long ago discovered that eating plenty of vinegar equipped them well for the ancient Chinese pastime of chi koo, eating bitterness.

Shanxi folk had to wrest a livelihood from the parched loess plateau, and still found the strength to launch the Tang Dynasty, and later an Asia-wide banking empire. Today, while China's coast grows rich on international trade, Shanxi must wrest coal from the earth as its prime business. Coal dust and loess dust turn the air heavy, making for gritty lives indeed. But the people of Shanxi have an ally in their struggles—vinegar.

They have little use for the watery, mass-marketed stuff that so easily passes for vinegar. Rather, Shanxi vinegar is as dark as molasses and as complex as your morning coffee, thus its name, “mature vinegar”—chencu. Just about everything turns up in the lunchtime bowls of noodles gracing tables across North China, from fungus to fowl necks. In Shanxi, however, chencu is a mandatory ingredient.

Their love of vinegar may not be the secret behind their famous tenacity, but it could be a factor in their low rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Of course, low per capita income could also figure into the equation. Yet Shanxi people themselves put great store in the medical benefits of their chencu. According to an old Shanxi folk saying, “A family with two taels' worth of chencu will never need to spend money on doctors.”

Two taels equals eighty grams of silver, still enough to buy a great deal of chencu. As a stroll through an international-style supermarket will show you, vinegar can be produced from myriad ingredients: grapes, apples, rice, even peppers. Chencu, on the other hand, is the tangy result of boiling down barley, peas, and sorghum.

Vinegar-making techniques were being published as early as the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), in Jia Sixie's Qi Min Yao Shu, and in agricultural treaties. In fact, China had famous vinegar makers way back in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-221 BC). No wonder, then, that today famous Shanxi chencu makers such as Shuita guard their techniques as jealously as top wineries do theirs. However, the basic process involves at least half a year's soaking, steaming, and cooling, multiple fermentations with yeast and acid, sun-baking followed by exposure to night air, then straining and pasteurization.

The result is a smooth, faintly sweet, slightly bitter sauce that adds immensely to a plethora of Chinese cuisine recipes. While Western tongues can't go long without the tickle of high-fructose corn syrup, many Shanxi folk wouldn't think of passing a day without the pungent kick of chencu, leading to a special term for such addicts, laoxier.

Even those who involuntarily pucker at the mere thought of vinegar should seriously consider trying to value chencu as they value their good health. Naturally and powerfully alkaline, vinegar goes far in balancing out the excess acid flooding the modern body that eats too much meat and processed food, or, heaven forbid, drinks and smokes. Moreover, vinegar proves invaluable in Chinese medicine, not only in its own right as a reducer of high blood pressure, but as a solvent for other herbs, overcoming their undesirable side effects. Even if western medicine hasn't yet gotten on board, it has won a reputation among alternative health practitioners, as well as TCM doctors, for a wide array of health benefits:

Chencu balances blood PH levels, checking oxidization and neutralizing the damage of free radicals. That's why many Chinese women preserve their youth by dousing their noodles with it, and using it in homemade facial-wash solutions.

The best part for dieters: chencu reduces the craving for sugary snacks.