The television series Blossoms Shanghai (繁花), Wong Kar-wai’s first television work, premiered on CCTV-8 on December 27, 2023. Huanghe Road in Shanghai was rebuilt at full scale for the series. The restaurant Zhizhenyuan in the series is modeled on Taishengyuan, a real restaurant there.
A Sichuan financial paper recalled the real street. “Most of the people who came to Huanghe Road to eat were merchants. While eating, they could not avoid talking business.”
In 2011, the economists Hongbin Cai, Hanming Fang and Lixin Colin Xu published a study of the entertainment and travel costs of Chinese firms in the Journal of Law and Economics. On average, these costs amounted to about 3 percent of a firm’s total value added.
The study found the spending to be a mix. It included “grease money to obtain better government services,” “protection money to lower tax rates,” managerial excess, and “normal business expenditures to build relational capital with suppliers and clients.”
In 2017, the city of Huaibei in Anhui issued trial rules on weddings, funerals and other celebrations. Party members, cadres and public employees were generally not to attend such events other than those of close relatives, or to give cash or gifts. Nor were they to accept invitations to preside over a wedding, to act as its witness or to manage the event.
On April 27 and 28, 2018, Xi Jinping and the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi held what China’s Foreign Ministry called an “informal meeting” (非正式会晤) in Wuhan. The ministry said that the meeting would deepen mutual trust and set the general direction for relations between the two countries.
According to a report on Sina, the meeting had no set agenda. No agreements were signed and no joint document was issued. The two leaders walked beside East Lake and then took a boat ride. The report described the format in three short phrases: 散散步，喝喝茶，聊聊天, “take a walk, drink some tea, have a chat.”
“Once, ‘a good deal must be done at the wine table.’ For many officials in charge of attracting investment, this had become a fixed way of thinking.” The business paper National Business Daily wrote this in June 2017.
In June 2016, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection reported a campaign in Anhui against jiuzhuo bangong (酒桌办公), “doing office work at the wine table.” It targeted officials who used the wine table “to ask for funds, to chase projects, to compete for places in evaluations or to seek improper benefits.”
On the evening of November 11, 2014, Xi Jinping met Barack Obama at Yingtai in Zhongnanhai. “As night deepened, the two heads of state kept talking, and strolled to the Yingxun Pavilion for tea.” Xi said the two countries should talk often and closely, “not about matters case by case,” but frankly and in depth about fundamental questions. Xinhua later reported that the tea, planned for thirty minutes, lasted nearly an hour.
In the first story of Ling Mengchu’s collection Slapping the Table in Amazement, Chinese merchants reach a foreign port and are received by a Persian merchant. “By old custom, when a sea ship arrived, the host first gave this banquet, and only then were the goods unloaded and prices discussed.”
The host asks to see each guest’s list of goods, “so as to fix the seating.” Those with treasures worth ten thousand take the first seats, and the rest sit by the value of their goods, “regardless of age, regardless of rank.” Wen Ruoxu, who has silver but has bought no goods, is given the last seat, “his face full of shame.”
A media survey of 2,005 people, cited by the Legal Daily in January 2022, found that 92.3 percent had been pressed to drink, and 74 percent said they accepted when they could not get out of it.
Drinking rhymes make the link between alcohol and feeling: 感情深，一口闷, “if the feeling is deep, drink it in one,” and 只要感情铁，哪怕胃出血, “as long as the friendship is iron, never mind a bleeding stomach.” In a 2021 appeal in Shanghai, two men who had urged a woman to drink before her death were held liable for 12 and 8 percent of the compensation.
接风 To receive the wind. To give a banquet for someone who has arrived from far away. In Dream of the Red Chamber, a host “had wine set out to receive the wind.”
做东 To be the east. To host a meal and pay for it. The host is also called 东道主, “host on the eastern road,” a phrase from the Zuo Zhuan.
回请 To invite back. To host someone in return after being their guest.
赏光 To grant light. A polite formula asking someone to honor an invitation.
千里送鹅毛 To send a goose feather a thousand li. A small gift that carries deep feeling. Ouyang Xiu wrote: “A goose feather sent a thousand li is valued for the person who sent it.”
In February 2012, the China Youth Daily reported a poll of 1,704 people by its social research center. More than 56 percent complained that they attended banquets too often. Business dinners were the least welcome kind, named by 65.4 percent. Of those who felt anxious about banquets, 84.5 percent named drinking as a reason.
Only 2.4 percent flatly refused to attend. A bank clerk in Tianjin explained why he went. The banquets, he said, “can help develop and maintain relationships with clients and colleagues as well.”