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There's oat and green pepper sauce, dried scallop and chitaki mushroom sauce,

fermented tofu sauce, mashed garlic, chopped chives.

Do you have a specific combination here, Wei Hong, that you like, that you do?

Hot pot's flavor is heavy, so I use less extra sauce.

I want Wei Hong's signature sauce.

Okay, I got it.

Oh, I'm blocking the robot.

Sorry, sorry, buddy.

This is the Sporkful.

It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.

I'm Dan Pashman.

Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

Earlier this year, I got the opportunity to go to Beijing to speak at a podcasting conference organized through NYU.

Recently, there's been an explosion of interest in podcasts, so they wanted me to talk about the craft of making podcasts, booking guests, and interviewing people.

I had never been anywhere in Asia, so obviously this was a very exciting opportunity, not just to connect with aspiring podcasters, but also to eat.

So today we're kicking off back-to-back episodes recorded on my trip to China and Japan.

This week, we're focusing on China's restaurant scene, which didn't even exist 40 years ago.

When Chairman Mao died in 1976, China was one of the poorest countries on the planet.

The government was struggling just to feed everyone. For a long time, all restaurants in China

were government-owned, and they weren't intended for a nice night out with friends. They were

mostly canteens for communal eating, focused on craking out enough food just to keep people

...