In traditional Chinese culture, wine is the soul of "etiquette". Mr. Liu Yizheng, an expert in the history of ancient Chinese culture, said: "In ancient times, there was no respect and inferiority, and after planting grain as wine, it was first divided into honor and inferiority by the etiquette of eating. (History of Chinese Culture). It can be seen that wine can even be said to be the source of the formation of traditional Chinese etiquette.
In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the wine ceremony was the strictest etiquette. In the "Wine Curse" promulgated by the Duke of Zhou, it is clearly pointed out that the purpose of the Emperor of Heaven is not to make wine for people to enjoy, but to sacrifice the gods of heaven and earth and the ancestors, and strictly prohibits "group drinking" and "worshipful drinking", and violators are punished by death. It can be seen that wine appeared as an aristocratic drink in the early days of human society. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Confucius, the founder of the Confucian school, proposed that "the meeting of hundred gifts is not accomplished without wine", "Drinkers are things that are learned, and things that are not food and drink". Confucius believed that drinking alcohol is not as simple as eating and drinking, but is related to the rule of virtue and the people's living and working in peace and contentment. Therefore, wine culture is also an important part of Confucius thought.
After the Qin and Han Dynasties, with the establishment and consolidation of the liturgical music culture, the color of "etiquette" in the wine culture has become more and more intense, and articles such as "Wine Ring", "Liquor Police", "Wine Curse", "Wine Curse", "Wine Proverbs", "Wine Virtue", "Wine Administration" and so on abound, completely incorporating wine into the category of order and etiquette.
In traditional Chinese culture, drinking alcohol is to pay attention to the object of drinking, the place of drinking and even the place of drunkenness, especially at the level of the intellectual elite, and attaches great importance to the etiquette of drinking. For example, in Wu Bin's "Liquor Administration", it has been stated that the drinking objects should be "elegant, heroic, straightforward, forgetful, confidant, old friends, jade people, ke'er", the drinking places are "Huaxia, Bamboo Forest, GaoGe, Painting Boat, Youguan, Qujian, Pingyu, Lotus Pavilion", and the drinking season is "Spring Suburbs, Flower Time, Qingqiu, New Green, Rain Ji, Snow, Crescent Moon, Evening Cool" (Wu Bin's "Wine Administration").
Yuan Hongdao also mentioned in the "Liquor Order" that the ideal place to get drunk is "drunken flowers should be drunk in the daytime, attacking its light also; drunken snow should be night, eliminating its purity; drunken literati should be cautious of the rhythm of the regulations, afraid of their insults; drunken people should add the banner of the cup to help their spirits; drunken buildings should be summery, capital is clean, drunk water is suitable for autumn, pan its coolness is also ..."
However, today's drinking, often to force wine as respect, to drunkenness as glory, in fact, in traditional Chinese culture, not only for the time and place of drinking has a definition, forcing wine, pouring wine and other bad habits in the process of drinking, there are also unique views, the Qing Dynasty Ruan Kuisheng in the "Tea Yu Guest Talk" said "to force as respect, to abuse as generosity, to drunk as happiness ... He who is rude and unrighteous and does not read. ”
It can be seen that in traditional Chinese culture, drinking is an elegant thing, drunkenness is a realm, and meeting friends with wine is the highest etiquette. Because of this, wine runs through the whole process of traditional Chinese culture, especially in poetry and song, the shadow of wine can be seen everywhere, the literati and scholars have no bad wine, Confucius can drink "Hundred Yao", Li Bai can drink "three thousand cups", Cao Xueqin is "the whole family's credit porridge wine is often drunk", in the history of Chinese culture, these people have left brilliant and enduring literary masterpieces, and influenced for thousands of years.
Nowadays, more and more people have changed from "treating people with courtesy" to "treating others with benefit", and they have become extremely utilitarian in drinking, which has lost the soul of traditional Chinese wine culture. Behind this phenomenon, it is highlighted that people's relationship with each other has degenerated into no trust and full of benefits.
Therefore, we should be in awe of wine, because it is a gift from Heaven to mankind. Therefore, what we need is to establish a correct view of drinking, rather than using alcohol as a means of planning.