MY FRIEND WENT TO CHINA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TRANSMISSION FLUID!

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This blog bit could also have been appropriately titled “The Ultimate Chinese Torture Test”.

I have an American-Chinese friend named Gui Hong, and she recently returned from a trip to China that she had given herself as a Holiday gift. In Nanning, she has a number of extended family members whom she had not seen for a long time; some of them are getting quite old and Gui Hong wanted to see them again while she still had the opportunity.

Just before she returned to the U.S., one of her uncles – or some old goat related to her in some way – gave Gui Hong what he said was a bottle of highly prized and coveted Chinese wine. Since she does not drink alcohol at all, but she knows I’m “the town drunk”, my friend decided to pass the bottle of ‘Guizhou Maotaizhen’ on to me.

My first thought upon seeing it was:

Sheesh! It looks like a bottle of motor oil, power steering fluid, or transmission fluid – something one might pour into an automobile.



[Can you find the Chinese wine amongst these common household products?]

The box it came in was labeled almost entirely in Chinese and the only things that seemed understandable to me were “500ml” and “53% vol”. Naturally I took that 53% to be alcohol content, making this “wine” a whopping 106 proof! Hokey-Smoke! One could set himself on fire with that if he wasn’t careful.

Of course I thanked Gui Hong, and I opened the bottle to smell it. It had a very unusual, complex aroma; I could catch a hint of what seemed almost sake-like, sake being a Japanese rice wine (I loves me some sake!) but there were other scents too, something almost floral and sweet, and who knows what else. I could imagine this wine had the potential to be quite good OR quite bad; the aroma wasn't a good enough clue to the flavor.

Well, a couple nights later, I decided to try Maotaizhen for the first time. I put a couple ice cubes into my little silver cup that Althea gave me in 1959 to commemorate my birth (you know, what I have referred to on my blogs as my “GraMar cup”), and I poured the Maotai over the ice and let it chill for a bit.

Finally, I raised the cup to my lips and took a small sip.

Eventually my body stopped convulsing on the floor and my vision returned to me. I kid you not, that was perhaps the foulest taste my mouth had ever experienced. And that’s saying a hell of a lot, people – you don’t know where my mouth has been!

And then I quickly had this awful thought (and, no, I’m not kidding here and being snarky in an attempt at humor) . . .

Gui Hong speaks only very basic Chinese - having been born in the U.S., her vocabulary is rather limited. How can I be sure this stuffs is REALLY meant to be consumed by human beings? What if she misunderstood that old man who gave this to her and in fact it truly is Chinese transmission fluid? Or perhaps that "53% vol" meant it was 53-weight motor oil!

So, before taking another sip, I immediately went to the computer and started Googling the name of this supposed Chinese wine, and wondering if I had already, just by that one sip, poisoned myself to death.

To my surprise, I discovered that Guizhou Maotaizhen, or Maotai, as it’s more commonly referred to, truly is a Chinese wine. Not only that, but indeed it really is highly prized and admired in China.
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At http://www.cswxjl.com/en/product_info_2186.html  it is described this way:

Gather the spirit of mountains and rivers, accumulate the sun and the moon essence.

Open maotai-flavor liquor, the first tree model. Outstanding, quiet and tastefully laid out and delicate, very full-bodied, the aftertaste is long, the empty cup stay joss-stick lasting.

Successive crown of national alcohol comparison, as the national wine.

OK! OK! Color me Convinced. Yeah, it “stay joss-stick lasting” alright!

There was quite a bit of information about this stuffs on a Wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maotai

In part, Wiki sez:

Maotai has been used on official occasions in feasts with foreign heads of state and distinguished guests visiting China. It is the only alcoholic beverage presented as an official gift by Chinese embassies in foreign countries and regions.

It received additional exposure in China and abroad when Zhou Enlai used the liquor to entertain Richard Nixon during the state banquet for the U.S. presidential visit to China in 1972. It is one of China's official state banquet wines and claims to be one of the world's three best known liquors (together with whisky and cognac) and is therefore presented to all official guests of state.

For a long time I’ve said that if I could spend a day speaking with any person in history, my first choice would be Jesus Christ, and my second would be Senator Joseph McCarthy.

I’m forced to make an adjustment. Who I would now most want to talk with is Richard Nixon, just to be able to say, “Tell me, Tricky Dick, what did you honestly think of the Maotai?”

I also found a pretty funny Internet exchange pertaining to Maotai between some wine connoiseurs [Whoa! I spelled it correctly!] at the Wine Berserkers site here:

http://wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36568

Believe me, people, this Maotai stuffs will melt the enamel right off your teeth; it could be used to kill fleas on dogs, de-claw cats and execute laogai prisoners.



The real challenging thing for me now is try to come up with something I can use as a mixer for it.

What? - Huh? - Am I REALLY going to drink the rest of this stuffs?

Well, hell yes, I’m going to drink it! How could you even ask me that? What’s wrong with you? Did you not read above where I said Maotai is 106 proof?! Sheesh! You people are a bit slow in the head.

So, what can I use to dilute it and hide the awful taste of it? I’m thinking that first I will try Windex. According to Gus Portokalos in the movie 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding', Windex will fix anything.

If that doesn’t cut it, I’m thinking I’ll try the nubile blood of virgin sacrifices. Perhaps I can trade something for some of the leftovers from those nice folks at BOHEMIAN GROVE.

Failing that, as a last resort, I will simply drink straight shots of Maotai, followed by vodka and peppermint schnapps chasers.

You see, even at the height of my alcoholic haze dayz in my early and mid twenties, I never did like the taste of those two drinks. So, I’m figuring that using them as a chaser to wash down the Maotai, at the very least, I will finally learn to love vodka and peppermint schnapps after all these years.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

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