Getting Tipsy in Ancient China
Read Marisa's interviews with other SAMA curators:
Getting Tipsy in Ancient China
Interview with:
Mai Yamaguchi, PhD, Coates-Cowden-Brown Associate Curator of Asian Art
Lana Meador, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Marisa Morán Jahn, Gateway 2025–2027 artist
October 15, 2025
Lana: Indulging in wine, beer, and psychotropic substances has provided a real service throughout time and across cultures in terms of gathering people. These rituals, traditions, and ceremonies involve the sharing of an experience that allows you to step outside of reality.
Mai: In East Asia, alcohol production and consumption can be traced to approximately 9 000 years ago. Drinking was and is serious business, even now. In SAMA’s ancient Chinese collection, we have bronze drinking vessels that date back to the twelfth century CE. The Chinese acquired bronze metallurgy from West Asia, likely through the nomads traveling through the steppes, and developed their own piece-mold casting process.
Recently, a team of archaeologists at Stanford worked on residual alcohol preserved in a bronze vessel from a Qin state tomb in Yancun, Shaanxi province, in northwest China. The excavators tried the alcohol and noted that it tasted metallic—probably because it was in a bronze vessel.
Marisa: What kind of alcohol was it?
Mai: The Chinese brewed beer–fermented alcohol made from grains such as wheat, barley, rice, and millet. English-speaking scholars have called this drink “wine,” but it is essentially cloudy, low-proof beer without hops. In the late second millennium BCE, the Chinese made offerings of food and drinks at ancestral cult ceremonies, which were then followed by a banquet. Though we have some evidence from archaeological remains and references in transmitted texts, much of the ceremonies’ details are still unknown to us.
Lana: What I find really fascinating about these vessels is that the piece-mold casting process was pretty intense and laborious to make one unique vessel, which is a very different process than the lost wax cast that allows for multiple copies. To make these vessels, it was incredibly time consuming, which signals how important these objects were to ritual traditions.
Mai: Yes, bronze was a prestigious material in ancient China, and bronze vessels were exceptionally difficult to manufacture. Only the royal foundries and perhaps a handful of major princely workshops were capable of making works such as these. Bronzes were used to maintain connections with ancestors and to display status. Chinese elites took these bronzes to their tombs in hopes of continuing their use in the afterlife.
We have evidence that early Chinese founders were aware of lost-wax casting. The millennia-long pottery-making tradition in China allowed its artisans to develop a highly innovative piece-mold casting process, which, as you mentioned, was incredibly complicated. A founder would assemble multiple—sometimes dozens—of clay molds and transfer the decoration from the molds to the finished bronze itself.
Marisa: What did the shapes symbolize or signify?
Wine Storage Vessel (you), Chinese, 11th-10th century B.C., Piece-mold cast bronze, ,h. 11 5/8 in. (29.5 cm); w. 10 in. (25.4 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of Lenora and Walter F. Brown, 2007.20.2.a-b. Photography by Ansen Seale
Mai: So, let’s look at this ceremonial object from the Shang period (1500–1028 BCE) [2007.20.2.a-b]. A lot of these vessels have elaborate patterns. In the middle, there is patterning that is cast. I look for animals. On the right you see a ram who is eating something. On the main band you see eyes that belong to a mystical being.
Wine Vessel (zun), Chinese, 11th century B.C., Piece-mold cast bronze, h. 13 7/8 in. (35.2 cm); diam. 9 3/8 in. (23.8 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Dr. Jason Bason, by exchange, 94.58.2
In another one we see the same motif—we see the eyes, or “taotie” motif or mask [94.58.2]. The more elaborate they were, the more wealthy the commissioning patrons were.
Later objects made out of porcelain mimic the shape of bronze drinking vessels but served other functions, like holding incense. This is a way for later elites to borrow prestige and legitimacy from China’s ancient history through the object’s form.
Marisa: Do we know anything about the provenance of the alcohol?
Mai: They were using rice, millet, Job’s tears, yams, snakewort, ginger, so it was more like a beer. You’d have a base and then add bacteria or yeast to ferment it. Wine is made from fermented fruit, like grapes.
Marisa: So maybe something like a mulled wine or punch or cocktail.
Lana: Or sake, for example, we refer to as wine, but maybe we don’t call it beer because it isn’t carbonated like beer.
Marisa: Do we have figurative depictions of people drinking?
Mai: In later artworks, you can see a servant holding drinks. We have some on the third floor at SAMA. A notable example is the Orchid Pavilion, which was a singular event that later people started to copy and recreate. It has become a symbol of culture and prestige in East Asian societies, even to the present day. In this drinking game, you’re supposed to sit along a meandering river and immediately compose a poem. The poem must make references to the occasion, weather, season, and poems by other participants. If you can’t compose a poem in time or if you write a bad poem, you have to take a drink.
Marisa: Can we do this as a public event at SAMA?
Lana: [laughing] We could—adults only.
Marisa: I thought what was interesting was how in the Mesoamerican and ancient Greek and Roman holdings there were depictions of people being inebriated and drunk—it was a sort of tolerance or joking attitude. Sometimes overlaid with relations of power—the ability to hold your liquor. It was an interesting counterpart to Puritanical notions of control.
Mai: We have depictions of scholars so drunk they have to be supported by their servants. This suggests drunkenness was not categorically taboo but rather contextualized by social position and circumstance. One common subject in East Asian art shows a drunken hermit-scholar returning home, riding a donkey walking through narrow paths under the clear moonlight. He is liberated from official duties and political obligations and is thus truly carefree.
Marisa: This is all very fascinating. What else would you want to impart to viewers?
Mai: As a curator, I think about how to make Asian art accessible to visitors who are less familiar with it. A key strategy is finding points of entry—moments where people from the past feel less strange to people today. Ancient elites drank beer. They got drunk and fell down. They gathered socially over wine, much as people do now. These are all evidence of persistent human patterns.
Sometimes, Asian art can be overwhelming because of its references to imperial titles, genealogies, ritual protocols, and other cultural or historical details. A better approach highlights shared experiences—to recognize the intoxication, the social pleasure, the loosening of constraints. Once that connection is made, you can then explore what was different and culturally specific.
Lana: The ceremonial banquets and offerings to ancestors make interesting connections today. Since we are going into the holiday season, I am thinking of how we gather for a meal and perhaps give a toast to someone who is no longer there as a similar ritual.
Marisa: Right, so much about libations are about the performative gestures and what it signals socially.
Mai: If you eat with Chinese people, they do a toast to appreciate even the smallest or most mundane thing. If you’re younger, you have to acknowledge the toast. Younger people are supposed to raise your glass and hold the rim just below older or more senior people, like your uncles and supervisors. Among the Cantonese, you tap the table with three fingers to express appreciation, say, when someone offers you a dish or tops up your glass with baijiu (hard liquor). It builds the communal aspect—you’re getting to know someone, reinforcing connections—it’s a kind of fun thing that happens. You can get deep into that—the little things that people do around the table.
Lana: It’s a whole different language.
Mai: These cultural nuances are difficult to catch if you are a cultural outsider. But it’s an interesting way of thinking about insiders and outsiders in society that build relationships through eating and drinking. They welcome you as a guest and then teach you the rules.
Marisa: Who was “allowed” to be drunk in ancient China?
Mai: Public intoxication was a privilege tied to status. Scholars and men of a certain age could be tipsy and remain respected, while women at court could not. Scholars were permitted to be outlandish without losing social standing. Hermits, or educated men who rejected public office, occupied an even more relaxed position: they could behave as they wished and still commanded respect.
Marisa: What about artists? I assume there wasn’t the same notion of individualism, and so the liberties they are granted in Western contemporary society don’t apply. Right?
Mai: Right. There were occasional cases of society celebrating an artist’s eccentric behavior, including drunkenness. Most of these “artists” were educated literati to begin with. Artistic creation was their secondary focus.
Wine Jar with Lid (hu), Chinese, ca. 206 B.C.-A.D. 9, Bronze, height: 16 in. (40.6 cm); width: 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm); depth: 8 1/8 in. (20.6 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of Drs. Ann and Robert Walzer on the occasion of the opening of the Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing, 2003.39.4.a-b. Photography by Alayna Barrett Fox
Wine Pouring Vessel (he), Chinese, ca. 475-221 B.C., Bronze, h. 9 1/2 in. (24.1 cm); w. 9 1/2 in. (24.1 cm); d. 8 in. (20.3 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of Lenora and Walter F. Brown, 2007.20.3. Photography by Peggy Tenison
