Great Wall in 50 Objects

by William Lindesay

  Elsewhere in China, I thank Pan Yue from the Shanhaiguan Great WalI Museum; Hou Jingang and Yu Chunrong from the Jiayuguan Great Wall Museum; Li Xiaofeng from Jiayuguan; Li Shengcheng from Anbian; Huang Lijing and Ren Yantao from the Badaling Great Wall Museum; various staff members at the National Museum of China; the Liaoning Provincial Museum, the National Library of China and Peking University Library’s Rare Books Collection; and individuals Professor Wei Jian of Renmin University and bowyer Yang Fuxi . A letter of introduction and support for my project from the Beijing Administration for Cultural Heritage helped greatly as I knocked on new doors, and I’m indebted to Mrs Wang Xi and Mrs Li Yixue for their kind assistance.

  A number of international institutions and individuals have over the years helped with the Great Wall 50, and I thank the British Library; the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Bodleian Library, particularly Dr Colin Harris; the Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University, especially Dr Chris Cullen; the Doylestown Historical Society, especially Tim Adamsky, Judge Ed Ludwig and Marilyn Gustafson; the University of Utrecht Library and the National Museum of Korea; and individuals Marcel van den Broecke, Maarten Buitelaar, Leon Guo, Wilt Idema, Freda Murck, Kjell Stenstadvold, Raynor Shaw, Rodney Shirley, Richard Smith, Tiago Tan, Dick Wang, Hilde De Weerdt and Ying Xue.

  I am greatly indebted also to the late Arthur Waley (1889–1966) for his evocative translation of Li Bai’s poem ‘Fighting South of the Rampart’ and to Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University for granting kind permission to use his translation of Franz Kafka’s ‘The Great Wall of China’.

  The Great Wall 50 has had two stages of production. First, fifty stories were rolled out in National Geographic magazine, and then the stories were put into book form. Each aspect is intimately linked to the other. The book could not have happened without the magazine rollout, while the rollout deserved preservation and longevity in book form for various language markets.

  In Beijing, Ye Nan, the then editor of the Chinese edition of National Geographic, gave me my big chance to make my idea a reality. After I had written a feature story for him on ‘The Wall of Genghis Khan’, he asked: ‘What next?’ Given that inch, I boldly attempted to take a mile; he surely expected another journey-story proposal, but I talked of fifty journeys to fifty objects and fifty short stories. But he stuck his neck out and signed me up. Twenty-five months later I’d become one of the longest-standing contributors to any of the magazine’s many international editions.

  There was more to the magazine editor’s decision than trusting in my knowledge and approach. He knew there was a great woman at my side: my wife, Wu Qi. She had already made an impression by editing, rewriting and fact-checking my features on the Genghis Khan Wall. The present project has been a collaboration to such an extent that, for all intents and purposes, Wu Qi is my co-author.

  Qi would discuss our joint work piece by piece with Wang Xuenong, emeritus curator of the Shanhaiguan Great Wall Museum. We’re greatly indebted to him for his prompt, enthusiastic and sometimes critical responses to our queries over the last two years. We’re also indebted to Evelyn Rao at the magazine, who championed our work in Beijing and in Washington D.C., home of the flagship edition, and to the editors of other international editions.

  Getting the words ready was just half the effort: photography was a constant challenge. Thankfully, we managed to meet twenty-five consecutive monthly deadlines with the assistance of photo editor Yang Chang and resident cameraman Chen Xinyu, as well as my eldest son, James Lindesay. Thanks also to Wang Jin and Thomas Mueller for their contributions.

  At about a quarter of the way into the project, I mentioned what I was doing to Jo Lusby of Penguin Books in Beijing. Her reaction was promising: ‘Now, that is the kind of book we could get behind. Have you read A History of the World in 100 Objects?’

  Of course, all of us interested in history and museums couldn’t fail to be impressed and inspired by Neil MacGregor’s refreshingly skilful telling of world history through objects chosen from the British Museum. That milestone project, rolled out on BBC Radio and put to print by Penguin, marked a turning point in the popularisation of history. All history authors following in his wake have had new heights in the art of communication to which they should aspire, and for this we must thank Neil MacGregor, the British Museum, the BBC and Penguin.

  After I submitted ten or so of my stories, Mike Tsang, Penguin’s managing editor, liked them and signed me up. Once the final instalments of the series were printed in the magazine, I set about transforming the fifty stories into this book, working with Penguin’s new acquisitions editor, Imogen Liu in Beijing, and my text editor, Julian Welch, based in Melbourne. The concept of this project was always to make the Wall’s complexity more accessible, and the work of both Imogen and Julian has certainly done that, turning a manuscript into a book, and twenty-five pairs of stories into one Great Wall narrative. Finally, wrapping it all up, thanks to Steffan Leyshon-Jones for his innovative jacket design.

  There was one job left to do, to design some maps to help readers who are less familiar than me with the Great Wall’s geography. The prospect of putting key place names mentioned in the text on a few maps was neither enticing to me as a mapmaker nor, I thought, particularly useful or attractive for my readers. Imogen, knowing that I am a geographer, suggested making the maps more personal by having me hand-draw them. Although I’d produced some sketch maps before, the task of accurately drawing 51 objects was rather daunting, so I asked my niece’s husband, Zhao Zhenguang, a graphic artist, to assist. The two maps we’ve produced work as a visual geographical index for the book’s contents.

  As I complete this book, and you do too, I hope that you have enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed planning it, and as Qi and I did writing and researching it. The journey was made possible by the enthusiasm of many people, close and distant, near and far, who’ve all come together to make a story from fifty parts.

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  This paperback edition published by Penguin Group (Australia)

  in association with Penguin (Beijing) Ltd, 2015

  Text copyright © William Lindesay, 2015

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  ISBN: 978-1-76014-246-9

  INTRODUCTION

  Few drinks are as widely consumed and misunderstood as baijiu. It is the national drink of China, but has hardly any foreign adherents. To most, it is deadly powerful – exploding on the nose and palate, and packing the alcoholic punch of a prizefighter. One utters its name with the same reverence as when invoking an avenging fury and outsiders who encounter its full might never forget the experience. Baijiu is coming for the world, and the invasion is already well underway.

  Baijiu, which literally translates as ‘white alcohol’, has come to signify a wide range of traditional Chinese spirits that can be as dissimilar from one another as tequila and rum. It is the most popular liquor in China and, by virtue of the population of that great nation, the world. Yet to most drinkers living beyond the Middle Kingdom’s borders, Chinese spirits remain a mystery, which is all the more remarkable given their outsized role in daily life.

  Mountainous Guizhou Province is revered for its sauce-aroma bai
jiu1

  Alcohol is the lifeblood of Chinese civilisation. Since antiquity, it has shaped and been shaped by the religion and customs of the country. It has inspired the words of poets and the strokes of painters; it has helped forge alliances and exposed enemies; it has lubricated the wheels of business and cemented the bonds of friendship. The wine cup runs over into every facet of China’s culture.

  The ‘invention’ of alcohol in China predates its recorded history, and possibly even its civilisation. In 1983, archaeologists began unearthing artefacts from the so-called Jiahu civilisation (7000–5800BC) in north-central China’s Henan Province. Pottery analysis from the site revealed trace residue of an alcohol made from a mixture of grapes, hawthorn fruit, honey and rice. Not only was it the world’s oldest known alcohol, but it was also one of the earliest known instances of rice cultivation for human consumption. The fact that Neolithic Chinese drank alcohol suggests that winemaking may have precipitated the rise of agriculture in China and, as a consequence, civilisation.

  The oldest known ding cooking vessel, excavated in Henan near the site of China’s earliest alcohols

  This presumption is supported by early written records, which describe alcohol’s revered status in ancient times. According to the Confucian classic, Book of Rites, it was used to commune with the spirit world by religious and political leaders, and served at important state ceremonies and banquets. Chieftains bequeathed gifts of alcohol to their soldiers to inspire martial valour, and to win over their rivals. The kings of Neolithic China were also no strangers to gross indulgence. Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian tells of King Zhou of Shang, whose palace contained a manmade lake of wine. The various functions of drink required a steady stream of alcohol, which in turn required an abundance of grain and the development of an elaborate alcoholic bureaucracy.

  What set China apart from its global counterparts was that alcohol was always considered a luxury rather than a daily necessity. In early European and Mediterranean civilisations, lack of adequate sanitation made water unsafe to drink and beer and wine became primary sources of clean hydration. Chinese drank boiled water and later tea, which allowed the government greater leeway in the regulation of alcohol. Whether to curb undesirable be-haviour or to protect grain stores in times of famine, the government often restricted or prohibited alcohol in antiquity. Taxes and government monopolies on wine production were the preferred method of regulation, which generated tremendous revenues for state coffers and spread the latest brewing techniques to all corners of the empire.

  The first major advancement in Chinese winemaking came around the Han Dynasty (206BC–220AD) with the invention of jiuqu or qu. Qu, which lacks a perfect English translation, is essentially a clump of grains that have been mashed and stored in a meticulously controlled environment to cultivate yeasts and other microorganisms. When mixed with the grains used in traditional Chinese alcohols, it converts starch into sugar and sugar into alcohol. The resulting drink, known as huangjiu or ‘yellow alcohol’, was a stronger drink than what had preceded and had more complex flavours. Huangjiu production centres developed near early Chinese capitals in the Central Plain – stretching from Shaanxi to Shandong Provinces along the Yellow River – and near the mouth of the Yangtze River in the south. Huangjiu became the favourite alcohol of the elite, its virtues celebrated by poets and scholars.

  Distillation, which instigated the second great revolution in Chinese alcohol, arrived much later. Believed to be a foreign invention, the technique by which one turns wine or beer into hard liquor was likely brought to China from the Middle East by either trade during the Song Dynasty (960–1270) or conquest during the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). The first distilled spirits were probably similar to a brandy or arrack. When this foreign technology was fused with domestic brewing arts, baijiu was born.

  In the later dynasties, baijiu became a drink beloved of the farmer and labourer, while huangjiu remained more popular with the scholar-official aristocracy. Spirits were at that time considered less refined than wines, and initial quality standards were low. But huangjiu was expensive and its regular consumption out of the reach of the Chinese peasantry. Baijiu used less grain and was far more potent, and that was precisely what appealed to ordinary people.

  Baijiu spread to every province and as it travelled it evolved into several distinct spirits. In the southeast, it took the form of lighter rice spirits. In the rest of the country, Chinese sorghum became the grain of choice. Sorghum was fermented in earthen pits in the southwest and in clay jars in the northeast. Almost every city and village developed its own recipe and techniques, passed down from one generation of distillers to the next.

  The past century has witnessed the wholesale transformation of baijiu. Around the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, which marked the end of the imperial system, China began pushing for modernisation and globalisation with a newfound vigour. In 1915, the government sent a delegation of alcohol prod-ucers to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Several of them, including distillers from Maotai and Xinghuacun, returned home with awards of distinction. Moreover, they returned home with a burgeoning awareness of the Chinese alcohol industry’s relative shortcomings and a desire to catch up with their global counterparts. In the decades that followed, Chinese alcohols would compete at several subsequent international and domestic trade fairs to promote the idea of industrialisation and to push forward national Chinese brands. Throughout the country, Chinese entrepreneurs began building China’s earliest modern distilleries. But the progress made in the first half of the twentieth century was eventually stalled by foreign invasion and civil war.

  The bottling line at Wuliangye Distillery in Yibin, Sichuan Province2

  Shortly after seizing power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party embarked on an ambitious plan to nationalise the country’s alcohol industry. Production techniques were recorded for the first time, refined to incorporate modern industrial technology, and codified. The government consolidated smaller distilleries into enormous state-run behemoths. Many of China’s best-known producers emerged out of this wave of consolidation and industrialisation, including Luzhou Laojiao, Red Star and countless others. Under the government’s aegis, baijiu was able to improve its quality and consistency. Most famously, the patronage of long-time Premier Zhou Enlai helped make Kweichow Moutai the Party favourite, and it has been served at state dinners since the 1950s. With such powerful friends, baijiu finally surpassed huangjiu in prestige.

  Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Opening Up’ economic policies, which began in the late 1970s, spurred the further expansion of the baijiu industry. The government of Chairman Mao had rationed baijiu, but the drink was now readily available on the market. The reintroduction of private enterprise led to a surge in the formation of new distilleries. In the early 1990s the number of baijiu producers peaked at an estimated 18–36 000. Distilleries invented new baijiu brands, and even new baijiu categories, to capture a greater share of the emerging market. For the first time, people could easily enjoy a variety of spirits produced in distant provinces. This period also saw the advent of up-market baijius, exorbitantly expensive premium and super-premium vanity spirits catering to the newly rich.

  The general industry trend in the time since has been towards consolidation and expansion. There are still more than 10 000 distilleries in Mainland China, most of them small to medium-sized regional players, but there exists also a handful of distilleries that have created national, and in some cases international, brands. By 2012, an estimated 10 to 17 billion litres (2.6–4.5 billion gallons) of baijiu were being produced annually, a volume more than double that of the nearest global competitor: vodka. That same year, baijiu accounted for as much as two-thirds of the world’s ultra-premium spirit sales. Throughout it all, prices skyrocketed, in some cases exceeding several hundred US dollars per bottle.

  Shortly after being officially named president in late 2012, China’s Xi Jinping announced t
hat the state would withdraw its patronage of the baijiu industry. Many of the nation’s leading producers had long relied on massive government orders intended for use at official functions. In 2011, state-run Global Times estimated that the Chinese government’s food and beverage expenditures exceeded the national defence budget for that year. Xi’s policy shift has caused an industry-wide contraction, seeing major producers lower their prices to compete in the crowded consumer market. This has sent ripples through the entire industry, driving down prices of less expensive brands. The heightened competition should also spur innovation and, perhaps more exciting, expansion into foreign markets.

  The Jiuguijiu Distillery in Xiangxi, Hunan Province, and its celebrated signature baijiu3

  Several Chinese distilleries have begun promoting their products overseas, initially to Chinese expatriates but also increasingly towards local consumers.

  At the same time, foreign investment in baijiu is on the rise. Several of the global wine and spirit industry’s leading players – Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey and ThaiBev among them– have made forays into the baijiu business with varying degrees of success. Smaller companies around the world have also begun distilling and importing baijiu in the hopes of creating the first truly international baijiu brands.

  These are exciting times for the Chinese spirits industry. Like the nation that created it, baijiu has in a matter of decades achieved a level of quality and sophistication that rivals any of its global competitors. It is time that spirits lovers take note. That few have, thus far, can only be attributed to its current obscurity outside of Asia.