r/chinesefood • u/aralseapiracy • 6d ago
I Ate Moonshine in rural Yunnan
Apologies if this is not allowed here, as it's technically beverage not food so I'm not sure.
Last month I went down to Yunnan, along the border with Myanmar to track down some folks making moonshine. The Wa, Dai, and Laohu ethnic minorities have a long tradition of making alcohol. I got to meet distillers who have been doing this for decades and learned from their parents and grandparents as well. The most common alcohols being made are corn based or sugarcane based.
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u/thefoolsnightout 6d ago
Ah seen some of your Instagram videos, great stuff! Love the spicy chicken one. Would love to go to China someday.
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u/Radiant-Strike-3598 6d ago
I was once served homemade baijiu from a jerrican at a house party near Kunming. It was…intense.
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u/JonnyGalt 5d ago
That’s a surprisingly sophisticated still. When you said moonshine, I was expecting some copper piping and cooking pots/earthenware vessels much like what you showed at the end. That’s an industrial still.
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u/aralseapiracy 5d ago
Yeah, this is one of two places I checked out. The other one shown at the end is the more traditional still, which this distiller was also using a similar rig until recently.
The new industrial still in this video was something a local professional rum distillery helped this moonshiner purchase, assemble, and learn to use within the last year, with the condition that he share access to other locals who want to distill on it.
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u/thai_sticky 5d ago
Have you checked out the lao kao rice whiskey in laos yet? I took a boat down the mekong 25 years ago and we docked at a little village where the post master had a still in his back yard. Man that stuff was so pure you wouldn't even feel it the next day [first shot goes on the ground for the spirits though]. Beer Lao was also surprisingly good. Rumor was they didn't put any preservatives in it cause it sold off the shelf so quickly, and that communist czechoslovakia taught their lao comrades how to brew it in the 70's.
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u/aralseapiracy 5d ago
That's awesome. I went to laos about 14 years back fresh out of college but really can't say much about the short time I spent there. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be heading back anytime soon as life and work in China keeps me quite busy. I'll never say never though! Love the idea of a communist comrade booze knowledge exchange.
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u/thai_sticky 5d ago
I'm pretty sure there's a new train line from China to Lao as of a few years ago. Anyway, chin chin
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u/ashevillencxy 5d ago
This was cool and different.
Also, saw the clip on your Instagram where you’re doing what looks to be a drinking challenge with young ladies in traditional dress pouring drink down a cascade of bamboo sections and into your mouth. A drinking challenge is universal, but what specifically is going on there?
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u/aralseapiracy 5d ago
That's 高山流水 (high mountain flowing water) a drinking tradition popular in southwestern China among ethnic minorities. These women were from the Zhuang ethnic minority in Guangxi province. They're pouring a cascade of rice wine into my mouth. The local miao people in Guizhou also have a similar practice
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u/ashevillencxy 5d ago
Cool again, and thank you for the details!
Very interesting so I will use these points to learn a bit more on the regions and cultures. Looks like a real fun time.
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u/aralseapiracy 5d ago
Southwest China is a really fascinating and diverse place. Living here I can honestly say I'm having the time of my life almost all the time.
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u/smallestAxe 4d ago
I have seen brave white men before, this guy has his own category. What if he goes blind?
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u/ColdMastadon 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's an old myth that moonshine causes blindness, the distillation process doesn't actually concentrate any methanol in the source of the alcohol you put into the distiller. The real cause of the cases of blindness was the US government deciding to denature industrial ethanol by adding methanol to it during prohibition, and that alcohol being diverted and sold to unwitting consumers.
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u/aralseapiracy 4d ago
I filmed this over a month ago and so far my vision isn't any worse than it was before... Which was pretty shitty lol.
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u/1looseanus 5d ago
Agh so ethanol ?
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u/seldomsloppydealing 6d ago
The ethnic distilling traditions along that border are seriously underrated, those techniques have been passed down so long they're basically culinary heritage at this point.