Booze & Business

I could write a book about drinking in China in the days when drinking was a must, when alcohol was a business requirement and when your liver had to struggle to survive. The word was 'banquet', the game was drinking, the liquor was hard and the point was business. The alcohol was mostly Moutai, or Wuliangye, but sometimes you would enjoy Erguotou or unknown local 'white lightning' brews when traveling afar and the aforementioned brands were not available. Beer was a chaser.

A typical banquet would involve 8-12 people seated around a large round table, in a private room with numerous dishes. And at least two glasses in front of you: a large one for beer and a shot glass for Moutai. Sometimes, there were up to seven shot glasses in front of each person. There were usually attendants on hand, whose primary job was to refill the glasses.

There was a whole protocol in toasting. The host would start, and it was ganbei ('bottoms up') with Moutai. The guest would toast next; after that the second host would make a toast, and so on. Protocol would then allow a free-for-all, where everyone would toast in no specific order. All this was done with great decorum, with key people maintaining their dignity and poise even after the alcohol took hold. It was definitely bad form to 'lose it' and behave improperly.

There were fines (i.e. you had to drink one shot for being late) and many unwritten rules. If you tried not to drink, you would have to drink double. If you volunteered to drink for a helpless associate, you would have to drink his shot - and then yours. It was customary to be under attack from the whole table, especially if you were the only foreigner or the highest-ranking of your group. The usual procedure was that each person at say, a table of ten, rose to drink with you, each in turn. Do the math: after ten rounds they had each had one shot, you'd had ten.

Child's play

'War stories' were numerous and sometimes unusual. One I remember fondly occurred in the city of Shijiazhuang in the mid-1980s. My wife and I were invited to a banquet by the governor of Hebei province. It was a big affair with many tables. The governor insisted that our son David, who was about 3 at the time, be seated at our table. So they placed him with due honor next to the co-host of the table, and they gave him a shot glass too, filled with orange juice. Which was a big mistake - because David saw what everyone was doing and thought it was great fun, so he kept toasting the official next to him: ganbei! And the official felt obliged to drain his shot glass every time - except that he had Moutai in his. We finally had to remove him - David, I mean.

So how did you avoid getting drunk while keeping up with the toasts? How did you remain sober without offending your host? First you needed to develop some resistance to the evil brew. Second, as far as possible, you needed to avoid drinking at all: this was an imperative of self-preservation, as you could have up to seven or eight banquets a week (lunch and dinner, sometimes two dinners). Avoidance methods required practice, skill and experience.

Sleight of hand shots

The most effective approach was 'matching'. This involved identifying one specific individual at the table, preferably the host, and stating to all present that you would drink no more and no less than him - or her.

This protected you from over-drinking, but it was not foolproof. For one, you needed to make sure that your match was a moderate drinker, for another there were protocol issues i.e. you could not pick someone too low on the totem pole. You also needed to stick to your match and not waver, which in itself could be challenging in an alcoholic haze. And you had to be vigilant. I once caught an older official red-handed: he had arranged for the waitress to refill his glass with water, from an identical but separate Moutai bottle. Such shenanigans were not unusual.

You needed gumption and a sense of humor, but there were various ways to avoid drinking altogether. Some people used various tricks and sleight of hand (i.e. pretending to drink, but not really) but the most creative approach I witnessed was that of an American businessman, who each time he was being toasted, would ponderously get up and make everyone stand. He made sure that everyone was ready and then said ganbei! - and with a flourish, he would go through the motions of a bottoms-up toast at the same time as everyone else, but promptly empty his glass over his shoulder.

One could also use excuses (for example, 'I'm on antibiotics') or simply refuse point blank to drink at all. This was not a good way to establish your reputation, but it usually worked with repeat players who knew you well, or with first-timers whom you would never meet again. Once in Jiangxi province, under severe assault from a very persistent bunch of banquet-goers, who were literally forcing glasses of white spirit down my throat, I resorted in desperation to a Western drinking game, which happily involved the whole table. After twenty minutes, they were too inebriated to notice I was hardly drinking at all.

Cognac connection

Notable variations were introduced. In the mid-1990s, Hong Kong businessmen made Cognac (the more expensive the better) the banquet drink of choice. It was not unusual to go through four or five bottles of VSOP in one sitting. Those who sip Cognac slowly from a wide-bottomed glass would disapprove, but the French companies loved it: more Cognac was sold in Hong Kong than in the whole of the rest of the world. Later wine, meaning grape wine, became popular. And when it did, it took time for most Chinese to adapt their palates to its taste. It was considered too tart and was (and still is in many cases) mixed with Sprite or diluted with ice cubes.

Whether you were buying or selling, a banquet was a friendly but important way for your counterparts to test your mettle. It was a way for your Chinese host to discover the real you that was hiding under that inscrutable Western mien. Banquets were also an extended form of negotiation. The usual line was: 'Let's have dinner and not talk business any more' - but more decisions were made during banquets than at the negotiating table. The upside of the drinking game was that, if you held your own with the firewater, you often formed valuable, long-term relationships.

With time, the popularity of the drinking game started to wane. Visiting foreigners became more routine and easier to read and banquets became less popular. By the year 2000, the drinking game habit had totally disappeared from the main Eastern seaboard cities and now it only occurs sporadically in the hinterland provinces.

(China Daily 11/24/2008 page2)