Seeking the Familiar: Alcohol

It's been a while since I've written a StF post, so what better way to return than with a look at good, wholesome Chinese liquor. As I've mentioned previously, alcohol is not hard to come by, being readily available in supermarkets. Foreign-made spirits are fairly commonplace too. Vodka is obviously as easy find, but there's more if you look. A small shop in HengKeLong offers honest-to-goodness American bourbon. The import shops offer German been and European wines. Even many restaurants are stocked with gin, rum, scotch, and other ingredients for cocktails.

Still, you're not reading this to hear about liquor you can get back home. And indeed, Chinese alcohol is astonishingly rare in the States. Japanese liquor is not hard to find, and many Chinese and Asian restaurants carry Asian beer. But what about the spirits? What about that mythical "white wine"?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Today, I'd like to introduce something a bit milder.



This is baojianjiu (保健酒）, or "medicine wine." At 70-proof, it is among the milder liquors available - most spirits made here are well over 50% alcohol. This makes it closer to huangjiu, or yellow liquor, than its more famous cousin. It is much darker than most spirits, about the color of whiskey, hence the moniker.*

It is not just similar in appearance, though. The taste is not unlike that of a decent quality, mid-range bourbon. It is a touch sweeter (yellow liquor being known for its sweetness), but the overall effect is very mild. It makes for good sipping liquor, though I'll need to see if it mixes into cola as well as its Kentucky brethren.

*Interesting fact: The Chinese word for yellow, huangse (黄色), originally referred to a darker, mud-like color. Most of what was once called huangse would now be called hese (褐色, brown). Consider Huanghe, the Yellow River. Does this look 'yellow' to you?