Hair of the Dog, Tail of the Dragon

You may not believe this, but in a previous life, I was a physician’s assistant. Now, my supervisor was a most distinguished, grey-haired Chinese physician, and I once found myself invited to dine with him. A man of medicine, yes, but also, as it turned out, a raving alcoholic.

Now, being the culturally sensitive man I am, I decided to honor the elder doctor’s traditions—even if those traditions involved being thrust into oblivion by a liquid that could strip paint. “Ganbei!” he cried, and ganbei I did, though to this day, I haven’t the foggiest idea what we were toasting. For all I know, he could have been dedicating each glass to insulting my mother’s honor.

With the solemnity of a priest performing last rites, the good doctor produced from his medical satchel a bottle of vintage baijiu, several golden cups and a measuring device, as if precision mattered when the end result was certain unconsciousness. I took this as a challenge—not merely to my manhood, but to the very honor of my Levantine forebears. Could my ancestors’ livers withstand the onslaught of descendants of the Kublai Khan?

By the eighth or ninth cup, the doctor waved a white napkin. He conceded defeat by presenting me with a brand-new bottle, as if to say, “Here, you need this more than I do.”

Ah, Shanghai! A city where work is demanding, yes, but where the need to drink oneself into a stupor is treated not as a vice, but a duty. And should you wake the next morning with a head full of thunder and a mouth full of regret? Worry not! The Shanghainese have devised an entire ecosystem of recovery—each more diabolical than the last.

Those dainty cups of tea you may have seen at brunch are spiked with enough baijiu to fell a water buffalo. Milk Thistle, IV bars, and on and on it goes. Shanghainese have turned the hangover into a lifestyle, as casually embraced as a day at the spa. They even eat ‘drunken chicken’—a dish that, much like its consumers, is steeped in alcohol and poor decision- making. (Absent from the expat tour itineraries, I’ve noticed.)

Yet no matter how many KTV bars they’ve ravaged, how many bottles of baijiu they’ve slain, the Shanghainese emerge each morning crisp and shiny as a new coin—suits pressed, shoes gleaming, not a trace of the previous night’s debauchery. It’s a magic trick worthy of Houdini.

So I say, why fight it? Why cling to our Puritan guilt when we could instead embrace the glorious, booze-soaked chaos? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow—there’s an IV drip with your name on it. And if you can’t remember that name by morning? Well, that’s what the nurses are for.