Ping Xiang

Pingxiang sits on the Hunan-Jiangxi border and has long competed with Changsha and Chengdu for the title of China's spiciest city. Locals eat chili at every meal — pickled, dried, fermented, and fresh — and the city's xiaochao stir-fries are ferociously hot. It's also the hometown of China's first revolutionary Anyuan coal mine, an unlikely combination of fire in the kitchen and fire in history.