Food that we would describe, in English, as 'hot' is divided, in Chinese, into three distinct types. Namely, these are 麻 (ma) a numbing, peppery hotness, 辣 a fiery, chilli hotness, and 烫 or temperature hotness. In fact, there is a type of Sichuanese hotpot which is called 麻辣烫 (or 'hot-hot-hot'!) which incorporates all three of these hot-nesses in one tasty meal!
In addition to all this, there is a play on words involving the words "not" or "no", "scared" and "hot" in various permutations, in which 怕不辣 (I fear it won't be hot), 辣不怕 (I'm not afraid of hotness)， and 不怕辣 (I don't fear hotness) all feature. To be honest, I'm not 100% au fait on this. Suffice to say the richness of the Chinese language is matched only by its rich culinary culture.
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