Drinking Rites饮酒礼仪

Major festivals and important occasions in China are usually associated with special drinking activities. For example, people drink “calamus wine”(菖蒲酒) on the Dragon Boat Festival and “chrysanthemum wine” (菊花酒) on the Double Ninth Festival and “New Year Wine” on the New Year’s Eve. In some places such as in the countryside in Jiangxi Province, after planting rice seedlings in spring, people will get together and drink wine for celebration. They will have more reasons to drink wine when celebrating a good harvest. Hence, when banquets are over, there are often drunkards (酒鬼) in every household.

The New Year’s Eve is the most important festival for Chinese family reunion. The New-Year- Eve’s dinner is the most sumptuous banquet in one year. Wine is dispensable in the gathering dinner , even for the poor families who seldom drink wine.

Each year, before the autumn harvest, the Hani nationality, who live in Yuanjiang of Yunnan Province, holds a sumptuous ceremony of “drinking new grain wine” to celebrate bumper grain harvest and safety of people and livestock according to traditional customs. The “New Grain Alcohol” refers to a kind of home-made wine. The locals will pick up a handful of grain about to be ripe from the fields and hang it upside down at the edge of a fence made of thin bamboo strips praying for a good harvest. One hundred and ten grains from the strip will be removed, some being fried into pop-grain and some being marinated in wine source in a bottle.

“Wedding feast ” always follows the wedding ceremony. When Chinese people say that they are going to drink wine at a wedding feast, they mean taking part in a wedding ceremony.

“Engagement feast” is held on the engagement ceremony. Having held the engagement feast means that the marriage has been settled and the marriage articles have already taken effect. After that, the two parts are not allowed to break off an engagement or repudiate a marriage contract arbitrarily.

“Feast of Return to the Bride’s home”: On the next day after the wedding ceremony, the newly wed couple will “return to the bride's home”, namely, coming back to the bride’s family and visit the elders. The bride’s family will hold a feast to entertain them, which is popularly called “the feast of return to the bride’s home”. After the feast, the couple goes back to their home.

Abridged and revised from

http://www.chinatravel.com/facts/drinking-rites-on-major-festivals.htm