Scent of the Story

This was one of China's entries to the 1915 World Exposition at Panama, along with a leg of Yunnan ham. The Xuanwei ham got all the culinary accolades, and the world was introduced to a gold-medal winning Chinese baijiu, to mixed reviews.

Some thought it smelled like the barnyard and tasted like turpentine. Others praised it for its unique fragrance. It went on to win more gold medals, including another at the Paris Expo in 1985.

At a state banquet, when ping-pong diplomacy brought Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to Beijing, Kissinger was supposed to have told Deng Xiaoping this: "If we drink enough maotai, we can solve everything."