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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: Drinking a lot - if you're drunk you lose face, if you're not you gain face?
Trying to understand the Chinese logic to face and alcohol. I've been praised on multiple accounts for not being drunk after drinking X amount. Are people praising me while secretly thinking I'm a drunkard, or are they being honest?
my understanding having a few drinks till your liquored shows you can handle your piss and some like this. If you are liquored and chunder or go missing in the toilet for a few mins they will think you cant handle your piss and might look down on you
Normally who can ever drink the much is "The man". If you ever been to dinner with some Chinese guys you notice the constant competition with people toasting each other with bijiu, which normally ends up with most completely drunk and puking even over the dinner table which i've seen.
Learn a trick, water under the table to replace your white wine, if you ever noticed around the dinner table with everyone drinking white wine, you'll notice it looks like everyone used the bathroom under the table. You're still going to get plastered, but at least it will save you from an eventual downfall of drinking too much
You gain face here by being able to drink a lot.
As a loawai they try to team up on you and see if they can get you drunk...and if you get drunk before them...yes you lose face. If they all get drunk before you then you gain face.
I routinely have to drink 8 times what everyone else does when out for dinner with Chinese men...with all the ganbe's directed at me from everyone at the table....and I can still out drink them.
You want to prevent having a group ganging up on you for 1 on 1 ganbei without turning them down? I'll share my trick. When I know I'm going to be drinking baijiu with a group, I carry a flask and/or bottle of Everclear with me. If they want to show me their "respect" having me drink cup after cup of baijiiu, then I return the "respect" by insisting I will drink their baijiu and they drink my meiguo baijiu. It burns enough that most won't push past the first cup, and those that do are out early enough that I don't have to spend the night drinking so much baijiu that I can smell it coming out of my pores the next day.
That group learns not to try that gang up bs with me, and warns others not to try and make a drinking competition with me.