China's Drinking Culture

One of my many misconceptions about daily life for the typical Chinese that I mentioned in my first blog entry concerned drinking and partying. Though I had forced down some Chinese liquor on one or two occasions before going to Taiwan for a study abroad program, I still thought of the "Chinese personality" as rather sober and strait-laced. Boy, was I wrong. It's foolish to think in absolutes about any culture, especially one as rich and varied as China's, and I quickly discovered the party animal side of Chinese culture. For many Chinese, it's customary to make frequent toasts at meals, play drinking games, have drinking competitions, and drink prodigiously while engaging in activities like karaoke. If you're a foreigner, they may take it easier on you, or they may be eager to take you down. And you may get your liver handed to you.

Although there are a lot of drinking stories I could tell, one of the first that comes to mind is from a trip to Jiangxi Province with a couple of my wife's friends from Shanghai. Having seen them drink just about every experienced drinker they've encountered into a stupor, I now know not to provoke them. But in my first experiences with them, I was like a mischievous child poking a cute, furry wolverine with a stick. Needless to say, I got clawed, chewed up, and spit back out.

On that particular occasion, the drinking began on a red-eye train trip from Shanghai to Nanchang. Our friends brought a bottle of Chinese liquor (白酒, or "baijiu") with them, but once the drinking began after most of the passengers had gone to sleep, that bottle lasted all of a few minutes. We then relocated to the area at the end of the car, as far away from any sleeping passengers as possible, and proceeded to play drinking games while sitting on the floor. As a tenderfoot playing against sly and savvy veterans, I managed to lose just about every round and had to endure constant imbibing just to get the small satisfaction of occasionally making them take a swig. And naturally, as I got drunker, I got worse and worse at these games. It was the most vicious of vicious circles. Over the course of the night's festivities, we drank every last can or bottle of alcohol available on the entire train...and it was a BIG train with a LOT of people. I remember taking a long stumble through I don't know how many cars and past I don't know how many startled passengers (I was the lone white guy on a train full of hundreds of locals, and I was appearing out of nowhere) to the front of the train, where there was rumored to be more beer, and being elated to find that they did indeed have a few more cans. In the end, I collapsed on my bunk and passed out while my still bright-eyed companions outdrank some random passenger who had foolishly decided to join us - and who, we found out later, missed his stop while sprawled out unconscious.

The wolverines with their hapless victim

And that was only the beginning. After three or four hours of sleep for me, and even less for my friends, we got up ridiculously early to exit the train and begin our sightseeing, and the drinking continued at lunch with another bottle of baijiu. For my friends, there was nothing demoralizing or even unusual about this. For me, however, it was starting to become intimidatingly clear how much pain the next few days held in store for me.

So the moral of this post is that depending on the company you keep while in China, be prepared for your liver to take a serious beating. If my liver could talk, it would go off on me like Christian Bale on a wayward dolly grip for the abuse I've dealt out to it during my stays in China. On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of fun and some good stories in return. Just be careful, folks, because you may end up biting off more than you can chew. And watch out for those Shanghai women! They may be sophisticated and well-dressed (the photos above don't do these two justice), but they can probably drink you under the table too.

Don't say I didn't warn you.