I'm just wondering if you have a sense as to why dairy doesn't play a bigger role in China? Is it to do with the way that farming has happened for a long time?

Well, the first thing to say is that there was a sort of dairying tradition in China, particularly, you know, parts of China where they had a lot of sort of engagement with the nomadic cultures beyond the Great Wall.

I mean, there was a lot of intermarriage and there were dynasties that actually came from abroad established by nomads.

And there's a fantastic French scholar, François Sabin, who's done a lot of work on this and found that, you know, there were a certain amount of dairy foods, you know, in China, but they sort of largely died out by the time, you know, the end of the last dynasty in modern times.

However, generally speaking, China has never been, you know, a dairy culture in the same way that we have.

And one of the reasons, you know, I already mentioned is this theory that the Chinese didn't want to be like the nomads and that there was sort of cultural distinction there.

But also they had the soybean.

five tastes your new book um i feel like this this this conversation so far has been a case for you know understanding and hopefully eating more chinese food is this the place to start in your new book and um you know i i i'm not gonna lie i don't cook a lot of chinese food at home it does still kind of mystify me i don't you know what should i go out and buy um

Talk to me about this idea of, well, I guess fusion cuisine, but also like purism and food purists and what you think of that idea about how strict or confined or true you should be to ideas about what belongs somewhere and what doesn't.

I think we all play with our food and we all mix things up.

Cooking is always an expression of where you are now and what there is to cook with.

With Sichuanese cooking, the most famous signature flavor is Sichuan pepper and chili, ma la.

They call it numbing and hot combination.

and Sichuan pepper is an ancient Chinese spice, but they've only had chillies in Sichuan for a couple of hundred years or something.

Sichuanese chefs, Chinese chefs, are always playing with new ingredients that become available to them.

Again, I appreciate this is a multi-layered question, but then we've seen this, I wouldn't say backlash, but reaction in terms of wellness crazes and the way that we think about diet and health here in the U.K. Is that happening in China, too?