Well I've searched a thousand junky market stalls and souvenir and novelty shops and found one grotesque fridge magnet and no other chillies can you believe? The invasion point for chillies into south east Asia, lands of sambal and laksa, and while the real thing is present in most savoury foods, it's not a cultural feature of the UNESCO world heritage city project for this place.
Not yet, anyway. It just so happens the board of the UNESCO world heritage cities project is meeting here in this hotel. Yesterday today and tomorrow. Maybe I should burst in and talk up the culturals and historical significance of the chille to this city and the world?
So it was also a shock to arrive here from rundown but very real, richly complicated Georgetown in Penang to - when it comes to this heritage centre - a place that is a bit like Byron Bay and a bit like side show alley and a bit like Paddy's market. Some of the pavements and buildings look great so the UNESCO thing is making a difference, and the food and the entertainment at the markets tonight was full of local poeple prodcuing and consumeing - but you do have to wonder about how much the fabric of a city is culture and heritage and how much the people and what they really do are culture and heritage too, or instead?
Dinner at a Nyonya restaurant (Chinese + Malay over hundreds of years), which the photo below deomstrates - was more than satisfying and culturally rich. We'll head off to the Portuguese settlement tomorrow night perhaps and see the the chilli will burst into life for us then.
well it seems to me that you are searching for chili memorabilia rather than chilies per se. chili tchotchkes. or perhaps i should say kitsch-chili rather than kitchen-chili.
ReplyDeletewish we were there.
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Noting that memorabilia is culturally specific, and the kitsch lives in a kitchen context. I am discovering that the lack of evidence is the only evidence I have. Ie kitchen chillies everywhere. Chillie symbols very light on the ground.
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