During a recent reporting trip to central China, I went to a banquet honoring a group of visiting foreign scientists. I’d heard about these banquets: red tablecloths, elaborate dinnerware, a procession of courses long enough to turn eating into an athletic event. But what were these miniature wineglasses, filled so deftly with clear liquid? The woman next to me, an American energy expert with long experience in China, looked at the sparkling glasses with a mixture of amusement, disgust, and resignation. “Baijiu,” she sighed. “They never forget the baijiu.”
Baijiu, usually distilled from sorghum, has been part of Chinese life for hundreds if not thousands of years. The reaction of the first laowai to taste it is lost to history, but for well over a century foreigners have described baijiu with escalating horror. “One can hardly imagine what pleasure the Chinese find in imbibing these burning drinks, which are absolutely like liquid fire, and, moreover, very ill tasted,” the French Catholic missionary Évariste Régis Huc wrote in 1854. Dan Rather, reporting on Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, described Maotai, a famous variety of baijiu, as “liquid razor blades.” Others go further: “Socks with AIDS.” “Pure distilled evil in liquid form.”
