This Saturday (now Sunday)

(now this coming Saturday),

(now postponed again )

Hot Flaming Death Awaits!

Someone is going to die, and it could be me.  

Twice, I have met the enemy.  Once, I emerged victorious and accepted my opponent’s surrender.  Once, primarily due to insufficient preparation on my part, I was subjected to a crushing defeat and had to surrender.  This time, I have no intention of surrendering, and neither does my enemy.  Unless one of us is willing (and still able) to beg for mercy, things will continue until one of us is consumed in flames.

Here is my opponent.

The enemy I must confront

The girl, not the panda.  She’s a lovely girl from Hunan Province.  If she was one of the Spice Girls, she’d be Flaming Spice.  Like me, she’s a little too addicted to super-hot spicy peppers.

Back in 2007, I challenged her to a spicy food eating contest.  Much to my amazement (as well as everyone else’s), I subjected her to a truly humiliating defeat and forced her to surrender.  In 2009 when I came back to China, I foolishly agreed to a hot pepper eating rematch without properly re-adapting myself to super-spicy Hunan food and suffered my own turn as a humiliated loser.

Since I moved to China in 2010, we’ve talked about a rematch to settle the issue once and for all, but never managed to schedule one.  This time I’m prepared.  For years now, I’ve been training at every opportunity.  I’ve even recently discovered a source of Sichuan super-spicy wonton soup.

Spicy Wonton Soup – Needs a little more hot pepper

They thought I was crazy when I asked for it extra hot.  It was great, but it needed MORE PEPPER.

On Saturday, the lovely Flaming Spice Girl is coming over for the final contest.  Tears won’t matter.  By the time anyone is ready to beg, speech will be impossible.  There’s only one way for this to end. . .

The hot pepper eating contest is going to continue until one of us bursts into flames and dies.  

I’ve prepared my arsenal of hot pepper sauces and powders.

Some of my spicy hot pepper sauce and powder collection

I’ve got everything from Tabasco up to scorpion pepper.  I’ve got a spoonful of mixed scorpion pepper powder and ghost pepper powder burning my tongue as I write this.  Saturday is it.  It’s time for another edition of . . .

PEPPERDOME!

Two idiots enter!  One idiot leaves!

If I live through the hot pepper eating contest, I’ll post a followup.  If I don’t come back, you’ll know why.

SATURDAY UPDATE: After some additional negotiations, we were scheduled to meet for dinner and have our dance of death in front of hundreds of horrified witnesses.   Although having my victory be public would be fun, it’s also rather inconvenient, since this means I’ll have to drag her charred corpse home to hang it on my wall as a trophy.

In any event, my lovely wife and I were waiting for a taxi when my opponent called.  She rescheduled for sometime on Sunday.  I guess she needs one more day to get her affairs in order and draw up a will.

SUNDAY UPDATE:  This morning, she called me up and we arranged to meet for lunch.  My wife and a few other friends showed up.  My opponent seems to need a little more time to get her will drawn up, since she had excuses to delay the hot pepper dual until Saturday the 21st.

Personally, I intend to use the extra time for more training.  I think she does too – she managed to grab one of my bottles of ghost pepper powder away from me. 

ANOTHER UPDATE:  My opponent wimped out again.  She said she was too tired.  I reminded her that the contest was pepper eating, not running up and down QiFeng.  I think she’s practicing and hoping I’ll slack off.  I’ve got some bad news for her – I’m just practicing harder.  Victory will be mine!!!

Now I have to get her committed to a new date for the contest.