"It was an impish concoction, and things were bound to get fervid once hydroxy-alpha-sanshool and capsaicin hooked up." That's how the opening line of the inaugural edition of MaLa, Chengdu's English-language literary-arts magazine, sets the tone, almost daring the reader to sample this potentially nerve-tingling, taste-bud-numbing spicy, hot punch - so endemic to Sichuan cuisine.

Editor Peter Goff, who launched the magazine in June, christened it MaLa (meaning "numb and hot") - "a title that is a bow to creativity, passion and originality", "a doffing of the cap" to the paper's "East and West collusion".

The magazine emerged, primarily, from the weekly outpourings of the writing group that would turn up every Wednesday evening at the bookstore-cum-caf in Chengdu's Bookworm.