An annual chili pepper festival started on Sunday in central China’s spice-loving Hunan Province with a chili-eating contest in which the winner set a blistering pace by downing a gut-busting 50 peppers in just more than a minute.
Local boy Tang Shuaihui (唐帥輝) took home a 3g 24-karat gold coin for winning the competition, which is put on by a local theme park in the county of Ningxiang and is now in its second year.
With doctors on hand just in case, 10 contestants each held plates heaped with 50 Tabasco chili peppers, racing to be the first to finish off the red-hot fruits.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Tang cleared his plate in just 68 seconds in a contest held in nearly sweltering temperatures and as competitors sat in a shallow pool filled with water and 3 tonnes of floating chilis.
“He finished them at an amazing speed, barely after the emcee had finished speaking,” said Sun Min-ying, an employee at the theme park, called the Tanhe Ancient City.
The Tabasco pepper has a rank of 30,000 to 50,000 on the Scoville Heat Scale that measures the piquancy of chilis, which puts it somewhere between a jalapeno and a habanero.
However, the peppers bobbing in the pool were of a far weaker variety, partly to avoid irritating the contestants’ skin.
Hunan cuisine is marked by its fiery peppers and richly colored dishes, and is considered among China’s eight great food traditions, along with Sichuan and Cantonese.
The festival lasts until the end of next month, with a fresh chili-eating contest held daily.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
RSS