Culture: Food, Drink, and Song

I think everybody in the world likes to have fun now and then. But how to have a "good time" depends on culture (among other things). If you asked me to name the most popular kind of fun in this area of China, I would answer straight away: food, drink, and song. Not one or the other, but all three combined.

We've just returned from a two day trip, taking a Canadian visitor to see several remote schools. Wherever we went, we were welcomed with the same ritual: celebratory hada scarves were draped around our necks, and we were invited (read: forced!) to drink cups of alcohol offered on a tray to each of us in turn. Luckily, just sipping is acceptable. Sometimes, the same thing was repeated when we departed as well. At the schools, there was usually an avenue of students chanting relie huanying ("warm welcome").

At lunch and dinner, there was always alcohol too. The alcohol is clear baijiu distilled from barley, and it's very strong. In Dalian, no meal was complete without beer, but here the preference is baijiu.

Baijiu Bottle Trivia

The cheapest (and most repulsive) baijiu can be bought for 12 yuan per litre if you provide your own container, but the better stuff usually comes in half-litre bottles. For some reason, every brand has a uniquely shaped bottle. I've even seen one kind that comes in a ceramic flask. Another innovation that some bottles have is a narrow pouring spout that emerges when you twist the cap. Considering that the cups are very small, and the pourer's hand-eye coordination might be temporarily impaired, this makes a lot of sense!

Two baijiu bottles

Instead of everybody having a cup, there will be just a set of three or four small cups on a platter, and all the drinking is based on one person proffering the platter to another person and inviting them to drink one or more cups. Then the cups are refilled and the process repeated with a different person. Well, it's not quite so simple as that, because most people will give elaborate excuses why they cannot drink it. Sometimes this is politeness—they will insist that the alcohol be offered to another person first—but mainly it is because they know they will eventually be forced to drink, and the longer they can hold out the better. I've even heard people claim they never drink, only to be clinking cups with somebody fifteen minutes later. So the person offering the alcohol needs to be prepared with excuses for why the other person should drink. "Just half a cup," they might say, or "give me a little bit of face," or they might offer to drink a cup as well. And after singing a song, people waste no time in taking up the platter to offer alcohol to the most important guests, saying that if they refuse to drink then it indicates that they didn't enjoy the performance...

And there is often a lot of singing. The people I met in Dalian are real sticks-in-the-mud by comparison! Most of them would only sing to a karaoke machine. But here, all that is needed is a cup or two of alcohol, and almost everybody will take a turn at performing. I resisted singing in public for a long time, but my first mistake was to let my boss overhear me murmuring a chinese tune to myself while doing some housework. Then it was very difficult to refuse to sing, and during this trip I eventually gave in and sung a short song. But that was my second mistake, because then it was not merely very difficult but quite impossible to refuse to sing at subsequent occasions!

As far as I can tell, this is the most fun that you can have around here, and people don't ask for much more. Intoxication is a convenient side-effect of this drinking ritual, but there is also fun in coaxing other people to drink, or watching people try to escape it. It's all done in good humour, and since there is just one set of cups this "game", as I think of it, often becomes the centre of attention.

Is this fun? It's not something I had experienced before I came to Qinghai (although I've always thought that a party gets better when a guitar appears) but if you join in—urge your neighbours to drink, clap along to the songs, and maybe sing one or two numbers yourself—then it can be very enjoyable. Next time I'm back in Australia, ask me to sing a chinese song!

Teacher playing a ukulele
While we were eating lunch at this school, one teacher even brought out a ukulele!