You can’t talk about living life in China if you don’t talk about baijiu. According to Wikipaedia, “Baijiu is the world’s bestselling liquor, with 10.8 billion litters sold in 2018, more than whisky, vodka, gin, rum and tequila combined”. The Chinese drink beer or baijiu or sometimes together, according to which province they are from or which part of China they are from. Baijiu has a beautiful sweet aroma that is unmistakable and in fact you can tell the quality of the baijiu just from the smell. I can still recall walking into a hotel lobby to check-in one afternoon in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia when I was hit by an avalanche of sweet intense baijiu fragrance in the air as a Chinese wedding lunch was in procession at that time.
Baijiu have an alcohol content of 35%-60%. The baijiu in the picture above was served during the dinner in the farm and had 40%. Drinking baijiu is a refined art. In fact I think its a kind of a kungfu, a skill. But it takes many years to built-up this expertise. The inexperienced ones will get knocked out fast. The masters will keep going. Normally about 1-2cm (depending on how they want to start it) of baijiu is poured into a small typical Chinese beer glass. You only need to take very small sips of it in between the food and conversations and make it last. Eat, talk sip. Repeat. That’s all. Beer drinkers will initially will have a problem with this pace. For myself, I took many years to understand these ideas and to appreciate the whole routine. I am no where near being an expert but I have learned to pace myself much better than when I started. One of the many things I have learnt from the Chinese.
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