{"id":116,"date":"2008-07-29T14:45:24","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T20:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/?p=116"},"modified":"2008-07-29T14:45:24","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T20:45:24","slug":"first-person-narrative-from-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/29\/first-person-narrative-from-china\/","title":{"rendered":"First-person Narrative from China"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
AFC Members:<\/div>\n
This arrived from a Chicagoan visiting China. We received it from Earl, someone known to our Board. Enjoy!<\/div>\n
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\u00a0<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Greetings\u00a0from Emei Mountain, China,<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Southwestern University has concluded its spring semester, delayed and rescheduled because of the tragic Sichuan earthquake.\u00a0 As the term came to an end, we all, staff and students alike, were\u00a0tired and distressed.\u00a0 We unwound with\u00a0banquets and parties, acknowledging a job well done under difficult circumstances, and anticipating\u00a0higher achievements in the new school\u00a0year 2008-2009 that begins in September.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the first photo attached, you see a celebration with friends and fellow teachers at a fine Chinese restaurant on the Fourth of July, the United States of America’s National Day.\u00a0 We ate Chinese delicacies including duck’s tongue, goose tongue, and eel, and toasted with Chinese spirits and beer.\u00a0 The restaurant owner and servers came over to toast us, as did guests at other tables.\u00a0 Here you see me sharing a ‘bottom’s up’ with a guest from another dining party.\u00a0 The man in the black shirt, standing, is Nick, another English teacher and my good friend who arranged the venue and suggested the dishes.\u00a0 His\u00a0father-in-law is seated to Nick’s left.\u00a0 At the left of the picture is Sunee, a\u00a0great-hearted Chinese lady from Thailand whose American husband, Cecil, also teaches in my department.\u00a0 In the second picture, you see the stacks of beer bottles at a recycling\u00a0station a short walk from the campus.\u00a0 We at the university generate our share of the empties.\u00a0 Thanks to Cecil\u00a0for these pics.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So let’s talk about\u00a0food and\u00a0drink in China.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are three pillars of Chinese hospitality, especially\u00a0where men are present: tobacco, alcohol, and food.\u00a0 Next time I will talk about Chinese cuisines.\u00a0 <\/span>But first, the accompaniments, which, in many situations particularly among males, eclipse the food for their social significance: tobacco and alcohol.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 During meals, celebrations, and sometimes even office meetings, alcohol and cigarettes are important parts of the proceedings.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Back in the States, I have occasionally appreciated a cigar: HavATampa, or, when I studied and taught at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati’s own brand, Ibold, not connoisseur quality but a bit of the local color.\u00a0 When we were kids in college,\u00a0classmates and I smoked cherry-flavored Swisher Sweets cigarillos, our misguided way of feeling sophisticated.\u00a0 We also drank Boone’s Farm and Annie Green Springs rot-gut pop wines.\u00a0 Folks my age will remember those\u00a0fads, and shudder: we were young and didn’t know\u00a0any better.\u00a0 Ah, innocence!\u00a0 I and friends in Chicago more recently would enjoy a glass of wine and\u00a0gourmet cheeses as a weekend diversion, or attend a wine or cigar tasting.\u00a0 In China,\u00a0tobacco and alcohol are staples of social life.\u00a0 Gradually assimilating to the Chinese customs, which I at first declined, for example, I now accept when a cigarette is offered, and carry them myself to\u00a0share with\u00a0others.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As a Buddhist I accept the Five Precepts: respect life, property, sexuality, truthfulness, and sobriety.\u00a0 Don’t these vows\u00a0preclude smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol?\u00a0 Some think so.\u00a0\u00a0More properly, the Precepts are guidelines rather than prohibitions, intended to make us mindful of our behavior and its consequences for oneself and others.\u00a0 Also instructive is the figure of Mi Lo Pu Sa, the Chinese rendition of the Buddha Maitreya: the rotund, jolly figure gracing the entrance halls of Chinese\u00a0Buddhist temples.\u00a0 Westerners know him as the ‘Laughing Buddha’ from kitsch gift shops: rub his belly for good luck!\u00a0 (A thing Asians never do.)\u00a0 Mi Lo is free to partake of the world’s pleasures (hence his well-fed appearance) because he is not controlled by them.\u00a0 This is wisdom indeed.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco.\u00a0 About 60 percent of Chinese men over age 15 smoke,\u00a0and\u00a0younger boys are sometimes seen smoking.\u00a0 A far smaller proportion of the women, probably about\u00a04 percent,\u00a0smoke.\u00a0 When they do, it is almost always in private or among themselves, and not around the men.\u00a0 The 350 million Chinese smokers are almost a third of the world’s total.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are some\u00a0quality Chinese cigars, but the\u00a0‘Great Wall’ cigars that come five to a pack for\u00a0a three yuan (about 40 cents US) are poorly manufactured, unravel easily, have a harsh taste, and the smoke does not provide a pleasing aroma.\u00a0 You get what you pay for.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 China’s output of 2 trillion cigarettes a year is about 40 percent of world production.\u00a0 There are\u00a0dozens of brands and variations\u00a0within brands, with\u00a0many major cities having their own local factories and labels.\u00a0 Some are cheap: a pack of Tianxiaxiu, made here in Sichuan Province and smoked by laborers, goes for two yuan.\u00a0 Exclusive brands favored by the well-heeled and the Communist Party elite (= often the same thing) can run 80 yuan a pack.\u00a0 It is no cheaper to buy by the carton of ten than the individual pack; a carton is just the price of a pack multiplied by the number of packs
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In China’s hierarchical society, there is\u00a0an association of rank with the brand of cigarettes one displays.\u00a0 Out of curiosity I have tried numerous brands.\u00a0 If I happen to display a cheap brand, common workers such as bus drivers, or students, are\u00a0satisfied, but university staff and restauranteurs around the university\u00a0tell me\u00a0that, as a professor, a person of some social standing, I should be smoking more upmarket kinds.\u00a0 I now stock both tiers of brands, to bring forth according to the social setting I am in.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When offering a cigarette to someone, pull two cigarettes from the pack and hold out both to one’s associate.\u00a0 He takes one, and you take the other.\u00a0\u00a0If you are offering to several people around a dining table or meeting table, offer successively two at a time, beginning with the highest status person present (a workplace boss, or the father of the family), or else hold out the pack itself so that the men may take directly from it.\u00a0 Then take turns\u00a0with the matches or butane lighter, to light up one anothers’ smokes.\u00a0 If you are the one distributing the cigarettes, you can offer to light the highest-ranking person’s cigarette, although a lower-status\u00a0man who hopes to score points with the bigwigs is likely to\u00a0knock your hand away so that he can grovelingly do that himself.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is an increasing number of articles in the bigger Chinese newspapers about the health hazards of smoking, signaling a rising but still low-key official campaign against smoking.\u00a0 An example is an article in the Beijing-based English-language newspaper China Daily<\/em>, which laments that the main characters in a popular TV show, The Bund<\/em>,\u00a0portraying Mafia life in 1930s Shanghai, smoke, and that viewers are imitating the hero’s ‘cool’ style of holding a cigarette with three fingers.\u00a0[1]\u00a0 Cities increasingly prohibit smoking in public places.\u00a0 For a time the building of new\u00a0cigarette factories, including\u00a0joint ventures with overseas concerns (reviled in the media as evil exploiters of the babes-in-the-woods Chinese, though their relocation of jobs from the US to China is welcomed), was halted.\u00a0 But it does not seem the social smoking will diminish any time soon, especially in the countryside.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now to the second\u00a0mainstay of Chinese hospitality, alcohol.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My Aussie colleague Trevor from\u00a0my days at Hubei University in Wuhan referred to\u00a0the key Chinese alcohols as ‘the three joes’: bai jiu<\/em>, white wine, hong jiu<\/em>, red (or brown, which\u00a0is the same thing in Chinese perception) wine, and pi jiu<\/em>, beer.\u00a0 Besides the play on the pronunciation of jiu<\/em>, much like\u00a0‘joe,’ is the Australian slang expression ‘Joe\u00a0Blake,’ meaning a snake.\u00a0 Some kinds of Chinese wine, notably bai jiu<\/em>, are infused with herbs such as ginseng, or insects, scorpions, and snakes,\u00a0which are believed to impart medicinal value to the drafts.\u00a0\u00a0At Trevor and his wife Isla’s apartment at Hubei University, I sampled the snake wine they had purchased on their own trip to Emei Mountain.\u00a0 Americans have the expression ‘snake oil,’\u00a0meaning a dubious panacea, based on the bogus\u00a0medical cures legendarily sold by traveling merchants and showmen in Wild West days.\u00a0 In China, a\u00a0literal kind of snake oil persists as a folk remedy.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What is popularly translated by the word ‘wine,’ jiu<\/em>, is really hard liquor.\u00a0 The Chinese have been making such drinks for thousands of years, and are quite skilled at it.\u00a0 While the Mesopotamians brewed beer 4000 years ago, the Chinese seem to have the lengthiest history of high-grade alcohol.\u00a0 Arabian merchants introduced grapes and drinks made from them to China in the second century BCE, but those wines did not catch on.\u00a0 The Chinese turned grapes into brandy, a drink which seems to have originated here, and continue to produce wonderful fruit brandies.\u00a0\u00a0In collaboration with French concerns, the Chinese are beginning to produce red wines\u00a0on the European pattern.\u00a0 Many of these are overly sweet, or so dry one’s face puckers.\u00a0 Some\u00a0‘Great Wall’ wine (remember ‘Great Wall’ cigars?\u00a0– the Great Wall icon is a widely used marketing icon in China) are a palatable balance of the two\u00a0poles.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The most common alcoholic drink of specifically Chinese derivation is bai jiu<\/em>, ‘white liquor,’ a sweet-tasting, colorless spirit that comes in proofs of 30 to 65.\u00a0 It is sold everywhere in grocery stores, snack stands, and in restaurants.\u00a0 It is made from cereals,\u00a0rice, sorghum, and wheat, and fermented with yeast and sugar.\u00a0 When filtered and bottled, it is called cui jiu<\/em>.\u00a0 If distilled after fermentation, it is known as shao jiu<\/em>, a stronger drink more common in the north of the country.\u00a0 Wu liang ye<\/em> is a related ‘five-grain spirit’ made from wheat, rice, barley, sorghum, and maize.\u00a0 Chinese like to put things into lists.\u00a0 The ‘five grains’ are usually catalogued as rice, millet, barley, wheat, and sorghum, although in some old lists oats, maize, or soybeans substitute as the fifth element.\u00a0 The five-grain liquor is quite good, and the price is almost as high as that of the premier Chinese vodka, mou tai<\/em>.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When first getting a whiff of bai jiu<\/em>, one recognizes how powerful it is.\u00a0\u00a0On first taste, one feels the firewater in one’s sinuses, the perfect illustration of why taking a drink of\u00a0strong alcohol is called, in American slang,\u00a0‘a snort.’
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many Chinese liquors are seen as aphrodisiacs.\u00a0 There is a kind of brown wine, hong jiu<\/em>,\u00a0that goes under the brand name, ‘Strong husband’: not strong in the manner of a\u00a0sturdy and steady provider and protector for his family, but\u00a0strong in the sense of potent in bed!\u00a0 Remember, Jim from the US, when you and I were walking around Emei’s ‘Snack Street’ two summers ago, a young\u00a0Chinese man talked with us for a bit.\u00a0 When I pointed out bai jiu<\/em> to you, he remarked, ‘It makes you strong – strong for sex!’\u00a0 In actuality, it increases the desire but diminishes the performance.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While women seldom drink in public, among the men, a meal usually begins with a glass of bai jiu<\/em> from a large\u00a0jug on the restaurant register counter, or else\u00a0from a bottle purchased on the spot or even brought with us.\u00a0 In China, unlike in the United States, it is OK to carry outside food\u00a0and drinks into a restaurant.\u00a0 When that\u00a0round of stronger liquor is finished, the men\u00a0proceed to drinking beer.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My Aussie colleague Karen,\u00a0from Wuhan’s Hubei University,\u00a0dubs\u00a0bai jiu<\/em>\u00a0‘rocket fuel.’\u00a0 By contrast, Chinese beer has lower alcohol content than European or American beers.\u00a0 But it comes in bigger bottles.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tsingtao, China’s most famous brand of beer, exported worldwide, is named for the city that was once a German colony. \u00a0(The city’s name is\u00a0spelled ‘Qingdao’ by the Pinyin system of turning Chinese sounds into the Latin alphabet.\u00a0 The beer\u00a0name retains the older Wade-Giles romanization.)\u00a0 Being good Germans, the settlers, in 1903, established a brewery which continues today.\u00a0 There are\u00a0presently three Tsingtao factories.\u00a0 One turns out the top-flight product for export.\u00a0 The output for the domestic market is considered premium, too, both\u00a0for quality and by\u00a0a correspondingly higher price than other brands.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Despite the\u00a0renown of Tsingtao, Harbin Beer began brewing\u00a0even earlier,\u00a0in 1900, by the Russian colonizers in the northeastern Chinese city of that name.\u00a0 It is almost as good as Tsingtao.\u00a0 The Harbin Brewery was acquired by Anheuser-Busch, which exports\u00a0the beer\u00a0to America and Europe, though its international market share is\u00a0much below that of well-advertized Tsingtao.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The beer called Snow (a six-pointed white snowflake in an orange circle on a green background is its logo) is\u00a0made here in Emei.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The draft beers one encounters are often watery.\u00a0 One learns which sidewalk barbecues and cafes serve good draft or water the stuff down.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many folk here in Emei prepare their own homemade wine.\u00a0 It\u00a0has a hazel color, thick liqueur-like consistency, and sweet, mild, brandy-like taste.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then there is mou tai<\/em> (also spelled mao tai<\/em>), China’s most famous alcoholic beverage.\u00a0 This smooth, clear sorghum spirit is distilled exclusively in Guizhou Province.\u00a0 It is named after a town there, where a certain combination of water percolating through rock and a climate nurturing benign airborne microbes is said to provide the right conditions for its creation.\u00a0 It is produced in versions ranging in alcohol content from 35 to 53 percent.\u00a0 It has a brewing history dating back to the Han Dynasty in 135 BCE, and won a gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition\u00a0in San Francisco (that year’s\u00a0world’s fair, named for the opening of the Panama Canal).\u00a0 Mou tai<\/em> became popular nationally and internationally when\u00a0Chairman Mao, who did not care for bai jiu<\/em>, was served it instead, and used it to entertain Richard Nixon at a state banquet during that American President’s historic visit to China in 1972.\u00a0 The taste merits its acclaim.\u00a0 But it is pricey: a quantity about that of a quart costs 450 yuan, about US $55.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 During meals, the host will\u00a0propose an initial toast for everyone, and then anyone present may toast another or the entire group.\u00a0 Some men tap their glass on the table to alert the diners that a toast is about to be made.\u00a0 The toast usually takes the form of gan bei,<\/em> ‘dry the glass’: drink it all down.\u00a0 (Even when drinking brandies or grape wines, the Chinese drain the glass, rather than sip for the taste.)\u00a0 The host or the person proposing the toast is pleased if\u00a0you\u00a0drain the glass with enthusiasm and flourish.\u00a0 If you are concerned that you are being pressed to drink too much or too fast, you can invoke gao xin mai mai lai<\/em>, ‘happily, happily, slowly, slowly.’\u00a0 Or say sui bian<\/em>, ‘as one pleases,’ meaning drink as much or as little as you wish.\u00a0 Premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) only touched his\u00a0glass to his lips when toasting.\u00a0 If you say, ‘I will\u00a0drink like Zhou Enlai,’ it will be accepted.\u00a0 Now, people acknowledge the potency of bai jiu<\/em>, and do not typically expect one to go completely gan bei<\/em> with a glass of that product; gan bei<\/em> usually involves beer.\u00a0 Everywhere in China, it is acceptable for someone who does not care to partake of the beer or spirits to refrain from doing so (although one’s manliness is gauged by one’s ability to hold his liquor).\u00a0 One can respond to a toast with tea, or soy milk, or even a bowl of soup or rice porridge.\u00a0 Be warned\u00a0that at\u00a0some banquets and at weddings the host will\u00a0have water in his bottle or glass instead of bai jiu<\/em>, and only appear to be drinking.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Beware of contradictions in the drinking ritual.\u00a0 Once I was generously, so I thought, filling a friend’s\u00a0glass with beer after he had emptied it.\u00a0 He scolded me for trying to get him drunk.\u00a0 Each person, he said, is allocated a separate bottle of beer, and drinks it himself.\u00a0 Yet often I see people, especially the hosts at dinner gatherings, filling others’ glasses.\u00a0\u00a0The same person who chided me for filling his glass from ‘my’ bottle I\u00a0noticed on another occasion\u00a0pouring beer into other people’s glasses from ‘his’ bottle.\u00a0 When I pointed\u00a0out this discrepancy, he could\u00a0provide no explanation.\u00a0 I infer the real rule is:\u00a0be considerate, but have a good time.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I have been, on the one hand, advised to participate in the drinking rituals with leaders during formal banquets.\u00a0 This, I am told,\u00a0shows I am adapted to\u00a0Chinese culture.\u00a0\u00a0On the other hand, I have also been told that I should sit there looking befuddled and unable to drink,\u00a0that I am expected to fit the stereotype of a ‘foreigner’ who does not know the customs; if I act like a Chinese, leaders will think me too forward.\u00a0 The latter is more likely to happen in outlying areas like Emei, while in the larger, more cosmopolitan cities,\u00a0‘foreigners’ are more easily accepted.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In most places in China, when toasting, one downs the whole glass of beer, then shows the glass to the fellow toaster(s) to confirm that it has been gallantly emptied.\u00a0 Note that in China, beer is served in glasses about twice the size of a Western shot glass but less than half the size of a water glass, so the quantity of beer imbibed at one gulp is not excessive.\u00a0 In Beijing, one leaves a little left in the glass.\u00a0 By not taking all the golden liquid, one shows an abundance, i.e., the ‘gold,’ which, by sympathetic magic, indicates prosperity will come.\u00a0 Few Chinese drink red grape wines, but I have learned that when one does so, a little of that kind of wine should\u00a0be left in the glass as a talisman and harbinger of prosperity to come.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As for soft drinks:\u00a0 Tang, in various fruit flavors,\u00a0not just the powdered orange drink I grew up with and which in the 1960s was touted as\u00a0used ‘by the astronauts,’\u00a0is available both as\u00a0mixes, and already made up in individual or two liter size plastic bottles.\u00a0 There is a\u00a0coffee-cola that is…well, funky.\u00a0 It tastes like cola that someone dumped coffee grounds into.\u00a0\u00a0I tried it out of curiosity, even though this combination of ingredients sounds\u00a0strange to an American.\u00a0\u00a0There are\u00a0tasty grape and peach sodas.\u00a0 I have never seen diet sodas in China.\u00a0 I don’t drink diet sodas, so that’s no hardship.\u00a0 Diet sodas taste like chemicals to me.\u00a0 ‘Just for the taste of it, Diet Coke,’ mewed the advertising.\u00a0 Who are they kidding?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tea, an Indian discovery, is China’s pervasive drink.\u00a0 Even in the summer, people drink hot tea.\u00a0 Teahouses are\u00a0everywhere.\u00a0 Bars or pubs on the European and American pattern, though,\u00a0are\u00a0rare.\u00a0 The drinking of alcohol\u00a0is done in restaurants and karaoke houses.\u00a0 Sadly, the pub operated by my friend Ryan has closed down, for Ryan’s department, tourism, is being consolidated from Emei to the university’s Chengdu campus.\u00a0 Then it will be phased out when the students currently enrolled in the program process through to graduation.\u00a0 The\u00a0administration has decided this vocational major does not jive with the university’s engineering and academic emphasis.\u00a0 Too bad, because ours was one of the best-rated\u00a0tourism programs in China.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Though we have the saying ‘All the tea in China,’ China has as interesting a culture of alcohol as of tea.\u00a0 Ancient Chinese shamans\u00a0used alcohol and whirling dances to get into altered states of consciousness in order to contact the supernatural realm.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a014th-century historical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms<\/em> speaks\u00a0of Chinese generals of the second century CE drinking heavily, but then rousing instantly to perform feats of derring-do when enemies attacked.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the novel A Dream of Red Mansions<\/em>, written in 1750, both men and women of the upper class drink heavily.\u00a0 Today most Chinese women do not drink or smoke so much in public, although I have seen some do it, and even out-match the men in\u00a0‘bottom’s up’ challenges.\u00a0\u00a0Two of the aunts in a family I know can outdrink the men, much like the character Marion Ravenwood (played by actress Karen Allen) in the 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>, who drank the Nepalese yak herders under the table.\u00a0 Once during a birthday party when the bai jiu<\/em> and beer flowed freely, I wanted to complement the aunts on\u00a0this, but did not\u00a0know how to say it in Chinese.\u00a0\u00a0The male\u00a0friend who had invited me and who was helping translate things I could not express myself replied, ‘I will not say that.\u00a0 It is insulting to the men.’
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chinese poets of yore used liquor to fire their imaginations.\u00a0 Drinking games required participants to recall and recite poems, or compose poems, or complete one anothers’ lines in an emerging group poem.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Take Cao Cao (155-220 CE; his name is pronounced ‘Tsao Tsao’), a\u00a0general, politician, and\u00a0poet.\u00a0 On the completion of a certain pavilion he commissioned, Cao Cao rejoiced with wine.\u00a0 ‘The wine had inspired Cao Cao.\u00a0 He called for writing brush and ink stone, intending to celebrate the Bronze Bird Tower in verse’ [2].\u00a0 There is\u00a0an\u00a0association in Asia between the fine arts and the martial arts.\u00a0 The samurai of Japan studied tea ceremony, meditation, and calligraphy.\u00a0 Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh was a poet, and Mao Zedong was a poet with a fine calligraphic hand.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At a party at Hubei University, after sharing a gan bei<\/em> with bai jiu<\/em>, a woman present said that, in keeping with longtime Chinese custom, it would be proper for me to compose a poem.\u00a0\u00a0I essayed a bit of doggerel:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sage poets of old
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Did ‘drain the glass’;
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May I be\u00a0so bold
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As to match their ‘class.’
\n\u00a0
\nBy that last word, I meant ‘classiness.’\u00a0 It was the best scan I could manage on the spur of the moment.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alcohol,\u00a0one of humankind’s universals, transcends time and place.\u00a0 Consider one of the scenes in ‘Rick’s Cafe Amercain’\u00a0in the classic World War II-era movie, Casablanca<\/em> <\/em>(1942).\u00a0 The German envoy Major Heinrich Strasser (played by Conrad Veidt) is quizzing the American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), with the corrupt but sentimental French police prefect,\u00a0Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), observing:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Strasser:\u00a0 ‘What is your nationality?’
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rick:\u00a0 ‘I’m a drunkard.’
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Renault:\u00a0 ‘And that makes Rick a citizen of the world.’ [3]<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Are we not all citizens of the world?\u00a0 To my friends across the miles and around the globe, I raise a glass in\u00a0joyous salute.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sent while tossing back some bai jiu,<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>no kidding, it seemed appropo;
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 no snake in the bottle this time, though.<\/p>\n

Tom Emei Yinshi – the Hermit of Emei Mountain
\n__________
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1]\u00a0 Zhang Kun, ‘Smoking in ‘The Bund’ sparks fire among viewers,’ China Daily<\/em>, 27 (18 July 2007): 1.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [2]\u00a0 Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms<\/em>, Moss Roberts, trans. (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2003), Vol. III, pp. 1349, 1351.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [3]\u00a0 It is hard to know who to credit for this dialogue.\u00a0 The screenplay for Casablanca<\/em> was based on an unproduced play by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison, rewritten by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch.\u00a0 Though crafted by committee, the seamless script was voted the best screenplay of all time by the Writer’s Guild of America in 2006.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for FanHouse Fantasy Football today<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a0\u00a02 Attached Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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AFC Members: This arrived from a Chicagoan visiting China. We received it from Earl, someone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asian-news","category-gay-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afchicago.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}