*** If you’ve never been sure how to answer the inevitable question of whether you can eat spicy food then now you can find out one way or the other. I found out under the fluorescent lights of Fu Niu Tang and the watchful gaze of Marx, Engels, Stalin, Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping. I still have no idea why they are part of the decoration of a Chaowai Soho joint that lays claim to making the spiciest beef noodles in the world but they certainly are. The deal is simple. You finish a whole bowl of 35rmb noodles in the ten minutes they allow you and you can walk off with a t-shirt and a 10% discount card. That is if you can walk off at all. The rest of their food, which I am told is edible enough, comes without the promise of free swag. I guess that means that they don’t really want to give away t-shirts. Oh, the noodles are said to be 125 times spicier than Tabasco. Before all of that, though, I had to sign a waiver and give my fingerprint to prove that anything that befell me would be no fault of the gimmick. Waivers are never a good sign, especially when you have no idea what it says. Fuck it, I came for some noodles and if that means getting into a legally binding contract that I don’t fully understand then that is the price I will pay. That and 35rmb. Trans: Life and Death Contract -- Participating the “Spicy Bomb in Mouth” hell-like tournament is according to my own wish. If there is any danger or accident, it’s not related to any group or individual but all due to my own responsibility. While I was waiting for the noodles the crowd assembled. All of the staff, the photographer and videographer that the restaurant keep on retainer to record fools eating noodles, Smart Beijing’s very own Morgan, and both a current and former dining editor from one of the city’s expatriate print outlets. I was presented the noodles and a phone that would count up the seconds until I was either a winner or a loser. No backing out, I guess. Not liking to eat food that is too far above ambient temperature I bided my time for a minute or so to let them cool down. This would prove pointless. I’d waited long enough. The crowd wanted their pound of flesh. I sensed that they would ideally prefer it fall out of a hole burned through my intestines. That was it, chopsticks at the ready. To quote the Mandlebaums’ mantra, “it’s go time.” I went for the beef first. The beef smothered in chilli seeds. Oddly, that was fine. It seemed that this was going to be OK despite knowing that what I was about to eat was essentially a plate of 200,000 Scoville units lightly topped with noodles. The beef was fine. The noodles, on the other hand, were very much not. They were covered in more oil then a clumsy mechanic’s hands except that this oil was the spiciest thing I have ever eaten in my life. Cough. This contained more fire than MOP’s greatest hits. That’s how it continued for the next eight and a half minutes: a bite of noodles, the strong sensation of breathing in during a fire at a chilli plantation as I tried to get them down my throat and then the odd cough. I ploughed on it but it became clear I was not going to beat the challenge. This was a disappointment to my companions who obviously had no idea what I was going through. “Just eat the noodles,” they said. “I’m trying,” I said. “You’ll see,” I thought. See they did. After the ten-minute mark was hit without an ill-fitting t-shirt being stretched over my crown, I offered a bite of the quarter or so of the very-delicious-and-not-at-all-unpleasant-dish that remained in my bowl. Oh, they saw all right. One bite led to a walk around the block for some air. Another yielded an apology and the admission that they were “super fucking spicy.” Then there was another challenger, our party’s former dining editor. He soon saw all too well. A minute and a half or so and he was vocalizing throwing in the towel. A minute after that and he had. With another ten minutes I reckon I could have eaten the whole bowl. Ten minutes after I was finished, I knew I would never have wanted to. The face of failure... *** EPILOGUE We walked about four steps before I realized something was up. I was being punched in the stomach from the inside. I needed a sit down. On a toilet. It was not then that the worst happened. That was yet to come. It was about an hour later. It just snuck up behind me and bundled in me into a bathroom. Cold sweats. Then the type of extreme evacuation usually saved for when someone calls the police with a coded message. You have to ask questions of your life when you’re essentially recreating Trainspotting in a squatter. This is a challenge that is beatable -- it’s on the unpleasant rather than the life-threatening end of the Scoville scale -- but you must really like t-shirts. It’s not just taking the heat but being able to wolf down a bowl of noodles in double quick time to boot. If you are going to do it then a word of warning, don’t have a job interview the next morning. Or a long haul flight after that. Anyway, the beef was nice. *** Fu Niu Tang is at 0172, 1/F, Tower C, Chaowai SOHO, 6 Chaowai Dajie. They're open daily from 9am to 8pm. Details and map here.