Ancient Drinking Appurtenances

By staff reporter HUO JIANYING

Bronze jia, a Shang Dynasty drinking vessel.

ALCOHOLIC beverage was the earliest liquid refreshment created by humankind. In the thousands of years that have since elapsed, the countless ceremonial and everyday use sets of cups, goblets, and decanters that were produced specifically to contain and convey wine and liquor have now become important historical artifacts.

Neolithic Drinking Implements

In 1979, at the Dawenkou tombs in Juxian County, Shandong Province, Chinese archaeologists unearthed pottery vessels that date back 4,000 years. They included a large pottery zun used for fermentation, straining jars for filtering, pottery vats for storage, and over 100 drinking vessels of various types. The archaeologists concluded that the occupant of the tomb was a professional wine maker.

These are not, however, the earliest drinking vessels ever found. Among excavated pottery vessels dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years are wine vats, albeit empty. It is not known whether or not the drink they originally contained evaporated or seeped out. To this day, the origins of recreational alcohol are uncertain.

Bronze you with a loop handle, from the Shang Dynasty.

There are various theories as to the origins of wine making. One is that it began with apes, when the fruit they stored in their cave dwellings fermented naturally and produced wine. Humankind was thereafter inspired to formulate more refined methods. Another theory concerns a man name Yi Di, who is believed to have lived during the reign of Yu the Great, in the late 23rd century B.C. He is said to have invented wine at the behest of Yu's daughter, in order that she might present it to her father as a gift.

Drink, and its volatile effects, perplexed the ancients. It was sometimes used as a sacrament in the worship of ancestors and deities, but was also associated with disaster, and therefore prohibited.

Bronze Drinking Vessels: Symbols of Power and Status

Large quantities of bronze objects of the Shang (16th-11th centuries B.C.) and Zhou (11th century to 771 B.C.) dynasties -- Chinese Bronze Age, have been unearthed, and about half of them are wine vessels. During this period bronze articles were valued as highly as gold is today. Bronze was mainly used to make weapons, sacramental vessels and musical instruments. Ceremonial bronze vessels were indicative of the status of their owners.

In the Shang Dynasty, such vessels also had their use at banquets, and had diverse functions. Some were for heating and storage, others served as flasks, and there were also, of course, drinking sets. Each category came in various styles.

Lacquer wine cup of the Han Dynasty.

A prominent characteristic of Shang and Zhou dynasty drinking implements is that vessels were often fashioned in the shape of animals, such as tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, oxen, goats, and owls. This indicates the prevalence of nature worship among ancients. Ferocious animals were regarded as symbols of authority, capable of exorcising evil spirits, while oxen, goats and other domestic animals were symbols of wealth, and generally auspicious.

Bronze wine vessels, whether animal-shaped or otherwise, were exquisitely decorated. Their designs included the taotie (ogre-mask), clouds and thunder, kui-dragon, and tiger. There were also human mask engravings. Vessels of the Shang Dynasty were generally large, often as tall as 50 centimeters.

People of the Shang Dynasty are known to have derived great enjoyment from drinking -- nobles and commoners alike. In Shang tombs the placement of goblets took precedence over dishes of food, which would suggest that drinking was regarded as more important than eating.

Famous Products from a Flourishing Age

Gold drinking set in the Palace Museum collection.

It is acknowledged that over thousands of years of history, and especially during feudal times, drinking was a main social activity, and therefore had impact on the contemporary politics, economy, culture and art. Yet it is unfair to attribute the dark ages of any country to over indulgence in alcohol. The Tang Dynasty was a golden age in Chinese history, but then, too, there existed a thoroughgoing passion for the drink. Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, known as Li Shimin, never regarded liquor as a scourge. He realized that a country's foundations are reliant on enlightened politics, a flourishing economy, and the support of the people, and he never prohibited drinking. On the contrary, he gave excellent wine to the Shaolin Temple monks who had saved his life as reward, and gave them permission to drink, despite the drinking of alcohol by Buddhist monks being taboo. To the people of Tang, the thought of life without poetry and wine was too dull to bear. Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi, the most famous Tang Dynasty poets, were all known to have been hearty drinkers.

Wang Han's poem, "Song of Liangzhou" reads, "Fine wine of the grape, cup of phosphorescent jade. Ready to drink, the pipa plays wildly on horseback. Why laugh when they fall asleep on the sand? How many soldiers ever come home?" This poem describes life on the Tang Dynasty frontier garrisons in northwestern China, and the cup of phosphorescent jade referred to belonged to a famous drinking set from Jiuquan, Gansu Province. More than 2,000 years ago there existed a lake named Quanhu (Fountain Lake), into which General Huo Qubing, after defeating the Xiongnu invaders, poured a jar of wine awarded by the emperor, so as to share it with his officers and men. Hence its name, Jiuquan. The lake is now a famous tourist spot. Cups of phosphorescent jade have always been regarded as the very best for drinking wine and liquor. During the Zhou Dynasty, one such set was given as tribute to the monarch from the Western Regions. Jiuquan City is an important town on the Old Silk Road, and also a trade center linking the East and the West. Here, grapes from the Western Regions were made into wine, and phosphorescent jade was fashioned into cups. More recently, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center successfully launched a spacecraft into outer space.

Blue glaze pot carved with a floral pattern, of the Song Dynasty.

In the Tang Dynasty, drinking sets of gold and silver, as well as of jade, were used by the ruling class. The imperial court would use them to reward officials and well-known poets.

In 1970, among the 270 gold and silver artifacts unearthed in the southern suburbs of Xi'an, were several exquisite sets of drinking implements. They included a gold bowl weighing 400 grams and a silver decanter in the shape of herdsmen's sheepskin water carrier, indicating the influence of nomadic culture.

In 1982, a Tang Dynasty silver vessel used for drinking games was unearthed in Dantu County, Jiangsu Province. It has a tortoise-shaped pedestal and a barrel containing 50 gilded silver counters. Each counter is inscribed with a quotation from "The Analects of Confucius", and an instruction to "drink," "persuade others to drink," "punish" or "let go." It was used by men of letters when they got together to drink, in order to determine the style of drinking, who should drink, and how much would be imbibed in one game.

Ceramic Drinking Sets

Cups of phosphorescent jade from Jiuquan are a popular collector's item.

It was in the Zhou Dynasty that primitive porcelain drink containers first appeared. At that time, porcelain was of a quality somewhere between that of present-day pottery and porcelain, and was inferior to metal in both practical use and artistic appeal. Porcelain making reached its zenith during the Song Dynasty, but it was seldom used to make drinking sets. The Tang Dynasty influence, with its preference for gold and silver drinking vessels, prevailed.

Although the number of porcelain drinking sets produced during the Song Dynasty was small, those extant are exquisite. One example is a lid-less wine pot. To fill it, the liquid is injected through a small hole at the bottom of the pot, into a tube that leads to the pot brim. When set upright, the liquid does not flow from the mouth. Another novel example is a double-chamber wine pot that held two kinds of drink, good and poisoned, and which was a popular instrument of assassination.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, ceramic drinking sets dominated, and gradually replaced those of gold, silver and jade in the imperial court, and were also used in ordinary households. It was during this period that drinking sets became smaller, partly for practical reasons, but also because of the change in drinking habits. Stronger drink appeared in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Prior to this, alcohol was usually low proof, generally less than 10 percent. Following the appearance of stronger spirits, the style of drinking changed, and drinking sets became smaller.

With the advance of time, drinking sets are now daily-use articles, and pottery drinking sets are in vogue.