Passport Beerlandia
If you want to build a website in 2017, you can. Thanks to the growing variety of web design platforms available today, you don’t need to know HMTL/CSS to get a beautiful website for your business. However, it still takes time to learn how to use these platforms, time that most small business owners don’t have. Also, design sense is important, and not everyone has it.
I try to keep up to date with all of these platforms in order to be as versatile as possible for my clients. Recently, I started learning Wix by building a test site with it. I’ve enjoyed the platform and the final result so much, that I’m going to keep the site and make it an indefinite project.
The project in question is simple: travel and drink.
Culture and Alcohol
“I want to try everything, right down to the village home-brew in a plastic jug.”
Humans are very capable of doing one thing no matter what continent they call home, the color of their skin, or the language that they speak, and that is making alcohol. Depending on where we live, we’ve developed different strategies for coping with and conquering sobriety, whether it be fermented grapes or fermented horse milk. It all does the trick.
That’s what the new site is all about. For every new stamp I get in my passport, I want to explore that place’s drink, both culturally and through consumption. It will mostly be a review site because I’m a beer snob and have secretly always wanted to do something like this. But this isn’t your dime-a-dozen beer blog. I want to try everything, right down to the village home-brew in a plastic jug.
There will be a new post every week - mostly reviews, but also a few notes on the drinking culture of each location. The first country I’ll be drinking my way through is a country I’ve already drunken my way through a few times over: China. Only this time I’ll be armed with pen and paper.
Drinking in China
China has one of the most vibrant drinking cultures of any place I’ve ever visited. There is evidence for alcohol being consumed in China as early as 7000 BC. An ancient edict dating back to 1100 BC declares that moderate alcohol consumption is prescribed by heaven to live a healthy and prosperous life. The way the locals drink, this edict appears to have been absorbed into the culture, although it seems like hell might have more to do with the spirits currently being consumed.
Baijiu - literally “white wine” - is the toast of the town from the megacities of the Pearl River Delta to the smallest Tier-88 mountain village. There are two types; one distilled from rice and one distilled from sorghum, with a few other grain varieties in between. Clear and punching in at 50-60% ABV, one might mistake a glass of it for vodka, but the smell and taste are, well…you’ll have to wait and see. I plan on trying many varieties, from the high-end Moutai to the foul stuff you can get in a nondescript, plastic half-gallon jug for a dollar.
Getting the stuff down and living to write about it is only part of the challenge. China has a labyrinth of drinking culture to navigate, but I won’t spoil everything here. Check out Passport Beerlandia for boozy updates from the road every week! ◉
Written by Seth Barham
