High-brow and low-brow drinking games

4 min read

As culture can be classified as vulgar and elegant，the same applies when it comes to drinking games.Originated from a particular background and reasons，elegant culture follows a specific development order and track and applies in certain occasions.Vulgar culture is the same in that its originality，development，transmission and its applicable scopes are closely related to folk-custom and people.However，when people proposing a toast，in fact，it often happens that elegant people follow vulgar custom and vulgar people try to seek elegance.

Therefore，elegant toast should also adjust to vulgar situations and only in this way can it be accepted by more people；vulgar toast is often used by civilized and elegant people.

To those civilized and elegant people，drinking was a pleasure，an experience oreven an integral part of life.Men of letters throughout history showed special interests in wine.They considered wine as a bosom friend and kept wine their company for their whole life.One of them was Tao Yuanming，a famous poet of theEastern Jin dynasty.He maintained a special love for drinking.Though living in poverty，his great love for wine never declined.He made，drank and chanted wine byincorporating the spirit of wine culture into his works，which won him compliment and praise.Li Bai，a famous poet of the Tang dynasty，was not in the least passionately devoted to wine and maintained a life-long predestined relationship with wine.Happy or sad，wine was always his friend till death made them part.

Meanwhile，wine had helped to form his free，elegant，unrestrained and unreserved temperament，which had been obviously instilled into his poem writing and left us with a huge number of masterpieces.

of course，these are elegant man of letters and virtuous persons’attitude towards wine.For ordinary people，on the occasion of Spring Festival or other holiday，wedding and funeral ceremony，receiving a dear friend or someone who came a long way，slack season，be it courtyard，threshing ground on the verge of the village，streets and lanes，hotel or alley，several people gather together around afew dishes and bottles of wine，enjoying themselves while talking，shouting，rowing up sleeves and waving arms.In comparison with the literary sentence jointing game of elegant man of letters，those farmhouse toasts were simply waving arms and extending fingers，but people who were involved enjoyed this very much.Hearing those simple，unsophisticated，earthly toasts，you would feel that those were more than simply a toast speech，they were a culture characteristic of farmer’s simplicity，cunning，alertness and humor，which is reflecting a culture with several thousand years of social psychological accumulation，showing the culture of Chinese farmers’life.

A good toast should not only be accepted by popular pot companions and be prevalent in a wide area，but also it should reach a certain level of civilization cultural standard.For example，farmhouse drinking game seems to be shouting and very vulgar when you first hear it，but it is really the most prevalent drinking game up to now.what is more，its toast speech actually contains content of social culture as（One flower）、（Twice blossoms of the plum flower）、（Three stars of good luck shining above）、（Four happiness arriving at home）、（Five sons receiving government degrees）、（Six snowflakes）、（Seven Qiao）、（Eight immortals crossing the sea）、”（Nine fold sky）.On the other hand，it is because these toast speeches contain rich cultural connotation and taste that they were accepted and enjoyed by scholars as well as common people for generations.Consequently they were widely used in feasts.In contrast，the elegant toast speech created by intellectuals wasless used despite of its elegance.It is the elegance that limited its popularity and promotion.

There is an old saying.A feast without wine cannot be called a feast，which clearly shows us the importance of wine in people’s mind.Whatever a feast it is intended to be, wine has to be served if you want your feast to be a grand and happy one. Besides wine, the success of a feast also involves the attendees’ literacy level and their purpose to attend the feast, the manner to follow drinking etiquette and to practice drinking games. It is obvious that drinking etiquette and drinkinggames are very complicated. Imagine several vulgar men in a formal feast rowing up their sleeves, waving arms and shouting regardless of drinking etiquette and the host, the banquet would certainly be ruined. On the contrary, if an honest and reasonable man is elected to preside over a popular drinking game or everyone takes his order to lead the games, it would be appropriate and elegant, which definitely would add color to the banquet.

When talking about Chinese drinking games,a Chinese writer, Lin Yutang, once made these remarks:”As far as Chinese attitude towards wine and their behavior in a banquet are concerned, some of them are difficult to understand and should be reproached, but some deserve praise.”