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Flip Cup: Problems Related to Alcohol Consumption in Modern China Helen Lamm SIT Graduate Institute - Study Abroad

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Flip Cup: Problems Related to Alcohol Consumption in Modern China Helen Lamm SIT Graduate Institute - Study Abroad SIT Graduate Institute/SIT Study Abroad SIT Digital Collections Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection SIT Study Abroad Spring 2016 Flip Cup: Problems Related to Alcohol Consumption in Modern China Helen Lamm SIT Graduate Institute - Study Abroad Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection Part of the Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, Business Commons, Mental and Social Health Commons, Political Science Commons, Public Health Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Lamm, Helen, "Flip Cup: Problems Related to Alcohol Consumption in Modern China" (2016). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 2295. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/2295 This Unpublished Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the SIT Study Abroad at SIT Digital Collections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection by an authorized administrator of SIT Digital Collections. For more information, please contact [email protected]. I 烟酒研究 Flip Cup: Problems Related to Alcohol Consumption in Modern China Lamm, Helen Academic Director: Yuan, Lu Project Advisor: Kinnison, Li Qing Wofford College Chinese Language Major China: Kunming, Beijing, Shanghai Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for China: Languages, Cultures, and Ethnic Minorities, SIT Study Abroad, Spring 2016 II Abstract The habits and attitudes surrounding the consumption of alcohol, in any culture, are just another lens through which we can look to better understand social life. The hierarchical social systems in China, which dictate common behavior, are unique. Much work has been written on the topic of guanxiand face: the defining factors for China’s ubiquitous, self-affirming system of relationships. Drinking culture is perhaps more interesting to travel bloggers than academics, but I believe that China’s drinking culture is a direct practice in guanxi production. The darker side of China’s drinking culture is anexercise in preserving face. The gap in the literature is somewhere between editorial pieces aimed at businessmen, advising them the develop an iron liver before opening up shop in the Middle Kingdom, and broader studies in health, where authors are frustrated by a lack of reliable information. My procedures included active participant observation in alcohol-infused social settings, guided and unguided interviews of people of many age, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds, and the analysis of several books and studies about the purpose of drinking alcohol in modern China. My results are that the extravagance and extremity of Chinese drinking culture both come from and are reinforced by the cultural practice of preserving face and guanxi. This project became a critique of systematic inefficiency. I conclude that the system perpetuates willful ignorance over problem solving in areas ranging from mental health to corruption. However, there is hope for change in the younger generations. Topic Codes: Mental Health, Public Health, Cultural Anthropology, Linguistics, Commerce-Business, Political Science, Recreation III Table of Contents Abstract, Topic Codes……II Acknowledgements, Figures……IV I. Introduction……1 a. The Good, the Bad, and the Bubbly……1 b. Methods……4 II. The Main Players……6 a. Baijiu: the ball……6 b. Government: the referee, entity of oversight……7 c. People: the players……7 d. Guanxi and Face: de facto rules of engagement……7 III. As a Mental Health Issue……8 IV. In Business and Politics……14 V. The Younger Generation……19 VI. Conclusions……21 VII. References……23 a. Works Cited……23 b. Recommendations for further study……24 c. Appendices……24 i. Endnotes ……24 ii. Personal Experience……25 IV Acknowledgements My most sincere thanks go to Lu Yuan and all of the SIT faculty for encouraging and allowing me to pursue this weird choice in topic. Making me narrow my topic was good advice, and the best academic choice I made about this. Also, to my advisor Li Qing Kinnison who has been a mentor to me since I began college, thank you for guiding me in this and everything else. Especially for help in revision, providing interesting print sources, and writing my abstract, I am grateful. The Middlebury School in Kunming provided me with the language tools necessary to have meaningful dialogue with my interviewees, hence allowed me to make friends, without whom I would have no project. Cheers. Figures Figure 1, page 9: List of cited interviewees 1 1: Introduction 1A: The Good, the Bad, and the Bubbly I have been fascinated by China’s drinking culture since November of 2015. At the time, the C.V. Starr Middlebury School in Kunming, of which I was a student, had partnered with The Nature Conservancyi for a week-long environmental education project in northern Yunnan province, rural southwestern China. The culmination of that week was summiting Laojunshan. Laojunshan is a remote peak nestled in one of China’s biodiverse natural areas. Rife with rhododendron and home of the endangered snub-nose monkey, the place is stunning. Well, the week was successful. Not only did most of us make it up the mountain, we had created deep connections with the environmentalists at TNC. On our final night in the backcountry, lit by stars, fifteen of us squatted around a table. A spread of fatty meats and spicy potatoes had to be readjusted as our hosts broke out the baijiu and beer. Teacher Kang, director of TNC’s Yunnan center, was the first to stand. He raised his cup, and proclaimed his gratitude for the company and the mission. After sitting, he looked expectantly to the person on his right. A classmate of mine, also an American student, blankly stared back. Nudging her, our assistant director for Middlebury, Alex, rose to explain that this was a toasting tradition in China. “Everyone takes turns; we go in a circle. Stand, raise your glass, profess gratitude, throw it back,” he said. As he returned to his seat, he muttered to me, “it’s guanxi in action.” Well aware that fifteen shots of baijiu could likely kill us relatively lightweight nerds, we replaced the liquor with beer and proceeded. 2 At high elevation, the mountain air was thin and cold, but we fifteen around the table were warmer than I could remember feeling. It was what the Danish call hygge, a sentiment which according to translator ToveMarenStakkestad “was never meant to be translated - it was meant to be felt” (Parkinson, 2015). As a student of Chinese, untranslatable phenomena are familiar to me. With every encounter, they demand a certain amount of cultural comparison. In that moment, there were politics and practices at play that I knew would be a point of interest. It is no secret among my family or friends that I love a good drink. I’ve met many of my very best well-intentioned, badly-behaving friends in this way. Those memories I owe to a bit of social lubrication, made possible by a bit of the brew. It is a tradition that has pervaded human history as long as records can tell. In fact, according to archaeological evidence, the world’s oldest known alcohol was found in traces of rice wine on Neolithic pottery unearthed in 1983 in Henan Province (Sandhaus, 2014, loc 59). As I join the generations of homo sapiens who also recognized the warmth and bonding nature of the cup, I cannot help but wonder why. For my metabolism and otherwise, drinking alcohol is something I have to keep in check. My father’s father was an alcoholic. I never met him, and I find that regrettable. He completed the coursework for PhDs in philosophy and theology; everything but the dissertations. As much as this mystery relative’s mind both terrifies and impresses, so do his vices intrigue. So, alcohol: it is personal. It is cultural. It is good, bad, and ugly. Furthermore, it plays a special role in the development and detriment of relationships everywhere. This element of relationships, of guanxi, brings us back to China, where my official application of a life-long curiosity begins. Originally, I planned on taking the historiographical route: how have people written about drinking through the ages? I was confronted with a significant gap in the literature. Every single oft-cited book on Chinese history and culture might mention alcohol a few times, as 3 a bit part. Nowhere did it find a leading role. Well, it does a few times in articles in, for example, the International Business Times, where Michelle Florcruz (2013) advises businessmen seeking success in China to develop an iron liver before that can happen. Whether they know it or not, Florcruz and others are talking about more than business as usual. They are talking about guanxiand face; in China, alcohol is the high speed rail to guanxi. In the subsequent section they will be defined together as major players in the great Chinese drinking game. If I had the time or the money to support the kind of research necessary for the piece I would like to write, this would be a book. The good parts drew me in; the bad parts made me obsessive. I would expand on problems, certainly, but I would also have the space to write stories like the one from the beginning of this introduction. I would write about how drinking culture’s shift from the old way to the current way, alcohol’s historical role in the arts, drinking traditions of China’s ethnic minorities, drinking alcohol as it relates to gender, and probably do a case study on club promoters of China’s floating population. ‘Drinking culture,’ as it is, is just too broad and too deep a topic for an undergraduate research paper to do more than scratch the surface. A major theme of this paper, which only came out once I began writing (read: arguing with myself) was the question of purpose.
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