Alcohol and Historiography in Early China

Abstract

This paper examines the moral ambiguity that surrounded alcohol consumption in early China and the ways in which the use and abuse of alcohol served as a measure to judge the past. Rule-guided drinking was part of social life, but, importantly, it was also a corner stone in sacrificial ritual and therefore an important measure to please the spirit world. In assessing the past, early Chinese writers often judged rulers and their regimes based on the way they handled alcohol and ritualized drinking. Moderation or excess in drinking was seen as a key indicator in a regime's health: bad and overindulgent rulers were pitched against sages, who were portrayed as masters in the art of moderate consumption. These judgements run as a red thread through the written record, from Zhou bronze inscriptions to Han memorials.

Food, health, and nutrition in Chinese history

“…Though doctors fretted about the damage that alcohol, with its heating effect, could do to the body, it remained central to ritual and social life. Roel Sterckx has suggested that the sign of virtue when it came to alcohol was using it responsibly in a ritual context, not avoiding it altogether; this happy medium may have satisfied healers also (Sterckx, 2015). Tea, too, drew critical scrutiny from doctors, regardless of its moral benefits.…”

“…For their part, Buddhists advocated abstaining from both meat and alcohol, key ingredients in ancient China's sacrificial and social culture (Kieschnick, 2005; Laudan, 2013; Sterckx, 2015). They objected to meat consumption not only, or even primarily, because it violated the prohibition against killing, but also because meat was thought to stimulate and arouse the eater, thereby making it harder to achieve the detachment required to attain enlightenment.…”

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