But just what is "jiu" (酒)?

In Drinking Alone under the Moon (月下獨酌), one of the most famous poems in the Chinese language, Li Bai (李白; 701-762) begins “Among the flowers with a jar of wine, I drink alone, companionless” (花間一壺酒，獨酌無相親).

Li – because it is safe to assume this poem is autobiographical – then goes on to invite the moon and his own shadow to get drunk with him, though of course only he succeeds.

But what was this “wine” he was drinking? And was this the same as the wine drunk by Confucius (孔夫子; circa 551-479 BC) a millennium earlier, who added this when defining acceptable rules for food: “Only wine may be unlimited, but do not become confused [by it]” (唯酒無量，不及亂。)?

And what was consumed a millennium later by Jia Bao-yu (賈寶玉) in the Qing-dynasty novel Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢), when in one of a great many drinking passages, Daiyu (黛玉) has Xiangyun (湘雲) say to him: “It is very cold outside, you should drink a cup of warm wine and then go,” (外頭冷得很，你且吃杯熱酒再去). Indeed, what was the beverage of choice of the novel’s author, Cao Xue-qin (曹雪芹, 1719-64), himself a notorious tippler?

In short, what drink or drinks did the ubiquitous character 酒 (jiu), so often translated simply as “wine,” really refer to? And are there any products available in Taiwan today that are similar to those consumed by Confucius, Li, and Cao?



[This was the question I asked in an article in this month's Taiwan Business Topics magazine published by the American Chamber of Commerce, Taipei; see here or buy the magazine.]


[... and the conclusions I came to? read on ...]





For most tourists, a trip to the mountains is not complete without buying a bottle or two of Aboriginal millet wine (小米酒; xiaomijiu).

“This is about as close as Taiwanese can get to drinking what Confucius drank,” says Pan Chieh-chang, assistant manager at the state-owned Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp. who has researched the history of alcoholic drinks. “Either that or macgeolli, if they vacation in Korea. These are both examples of roughly filtered, low-strength sake, which produces a milk-like suspension of particles.”

Li Bai probably also drank something very similar, even though grapes had been introduced from Central Asia. But what about Jia Bao-yu and his creator Cao Xue-qin? “Ah!” says Pan. “They would have had more choice. It could well have been a better-filtered sake, but perhaps also a distilled baijiu (白酒; “white alcohol”) with significantly more bang.”

So Jia and Cao probably drank mostly rice sake, some distilled rice- or sorghum-based liquor, and perhaps the occasional bottle of grape wine.

Confucius drank thick, raw sake

... and Li Bai’s opening couplet might be more accurately (but less poetically) translated as:

“Among the flowers with a jar of low-strength, poorly-filtered, milky-colored, naturally fermented, millet beer, I drink alone, companionless.”



text and photos copyright Jiyue Publications