Two friends float down the Chishui River (赤水河) in Maotai (茅台鎮) with an inner tube. We were told that chemical factories are banned from operating on the river within 100 kilometers of Maotai.
Jul
07
2010
07
2010
Photo: The Maotai Fitness Program
A worker at a baijiu factory shovels sorghum out of the steamer. The sugars are fermented in the grain in a pit, then dug out and distilled by steaming the grain. The process is repeated seven times. As nearly everyone in the town of Maotai (茅台镇) is employed either on the floor of a baijiu factory or as a coolie, there are a lot of ridiculously ripped people walking around.
Jul
05
2010
05
2010
Booze Biking: Maotai and Beyond (永”酒”牌單車：茅台南川一遊)
By Evan
*I’m way too lazy today to put the pictures straight into this post. See the Maotai pictures here and the first of Sichuan here.
It’s been awhile since my last substance update, so I’ll back up and explain a few things behind the title. First, after Kunming we picked up Aaron, our old buddy from Shanghai, who followed us just across the border with Guizhou on a creaky 20” wheel Dahon. He is now an official member of the USA-China Friendship Bicycling Team. Then we trimmed some of China’s most stunning landscapes, the kind of stuff that inspired landscape paintings (山水畫) like this for hundreds of years, right after taking Aaron through the most bland riding we’ve done in a while. Probably bad karma on his part. before arrival in Guiyang. In Guiyang, Andy R&R’ed in Shanghai while I stayed behind to see the USA lose to Ghana (crapola) and spend time with an interesting group of expats (another story for another time, but thanks to my new Nigerian friend Henry!). From Guiyang, we had to pick a route north into Sichuan, and fate again took a hand, placing the little town of Maotai smack in our way.
For those who’ve lived in China, Maotai (also known as Kweichow Moutai), home of China’s most celebrated liquor, requires no introduction. For everybody else, let me try to explain. In terms of local reputation and legacy, Maotai is to baijiu what Dom Perignon is to champagne. But PLEASE, PLEASE don’t take that to mean that we are lovers of baijiu, or that baijiu is a liquid which should be used — by reasonable people — for more than blowing fire as a party trick or sanitizing wounds. To journey to Maotai for the love of baijiu would be like visiting Abu Ghraib on an “experience the world’s most inhumane tortures” tour. In case you still don’t get it, the stuff blows, and I mean hard. It burns like hell and gives you wicked hangovers, but for reasons I’ll never understand, that hasn’t stopped the Chinese from enjoying it in copious quantities for thousands of years, making it on the strength of this country alone the world’s most consumed spirit. Honestly, China came out pretty well with its cuisine, its tea, its arts, etc. etc. Unfortunately, they got the short end of the alcohol stick with baijiu and huangjiu (黃酒, much much better than baijiu but still pretty gross) as their front runners. (more…)
