The reunion dinner on New Year's Eve is the most solemn meal of the Chinese year. However far away they live, people try to get home for this one evening and sit down at the same table 1. The dishes differ from north to south, but there is very often a bottle of baijiu on the table. It is not the star of the meal, yet it gives the evening the weight of ritual.
Tusu wine, and the youngest drink first
Drinking at the New Year is an old custom. The sixth-century Jingchu Suishiji records that on the first morning of the year the whole household dressed properly and offered greetings in turn, then served pepper-and-cypress wine and tusu wine. The order of drinking began with the youngest 2. Later commentators explained the logic: a child gains a year at New Year and deserves congratulations first, while an elder has one year fewer, and so drinks last. It is a gentle piece of reasoning that still feels warm today.
The Song statesman Wang Anshi fixed the custom in one of the best-known New Year poems in Chinese:
Amid the firecrackers the old year departs; the spring wind brings warmth into the tusu wine.
— Wang Anshi, "New Year's Day"
Tusu was wine steeped with a blend of herbs, and people drank it as a symbol of sending off ill fortune and welcoming the new 3. It is rarely seen now, but the ceremony of the year's first cup has survived.
Order and affection in a single cup
At the reunion dinner, what matters is not how much is drunk but the order and the intention. Before the meal begins, the younger generation stands, raises a cup with both hands to the elders, and wishes them good health; the elders answer with wishes for study or work. A father and son who rarely talk say a year's worth of things in one toast. Brothers who live in different cities are reunited in the clink of two cups.
In Sichuan the dinner often runs from dusk until the midnight watch. There is cured pork and sausage, twice-cooked pork, a steaming pot of soup. On the walls of Mianzhu homes hang the bright woodblock New Year prints the town is famous for: door gods, chubby children, scenes from festive operas. Mianzhu New Year woodblock printing is listed as national intangible cultural heritage, and it suits a New Year table perfectly.
A good bottle for the reunion
A bottle for the reunion dinner should have three things: honesty of craft, a sense of occasion, and a good name. Bainian Qifu · 8 fits. It comes from the Qifu distillery at the foot of the Longmen Mountains in Mianzhu, made from five grains (sorghum, wheat, rice, glutinous rice and corn), fermented in solid state in yellow-mud pits for about two months, cut by quality and aged in clay jars. It is 52% vol in a 500 ml bottle. It enters smoothly with a lingering sweetness and full pit aroma, finishing with nutty, caramel-like notes. The red bottle with gold calligraphy sits naturally beside red lanterns and couplets, and its name, Qifu, "blessings, all together", says exactly what this evening is about.
One line of the Qifu family motto reads: "character above the wine." The reunion bottle works the same way. The toast is to the people, and the point is the feeling. Raise your cup with measure, sip slowly from small cups, stop at a gentle glow, and stay clear-headed to see the new year in with your family. That is a bottle well drunk.
