What did Song Wu drink at Jingyanggang Hotel?

Anyone who has seen the scene of Jingyanggang killing a tiger in Water Margin will inevitably have a question: Although the shopkeeper warned that "three bowls are not enough", Song Wu can still kill the tiger after drinking fifteen bowls. So is the wine in Jingyanggang Hotel the shochu in the north or the rice wine in Jiangnan?

In fact, this problem has been noticed shortly after the appearance of Water Margin. Dou Peng night talk in Ming Dynasty believed that Song Wu ate soju in Jingyanggang. One reason is that since "three bowls are not enough", this wine has a high alcohol content. Based on a bowl of 342, three bowls are about a catty. Today, this can also be counted as a huge sum of money. If it is Jiangnan rice wine, three bowls are not as good as one bowl of shochu. How can it be that "three bowls are not as good as hills"? The second reason is that Shandong does not produce rice, and sorghum has always been used as the raw material for shochu. Naturally, there would be no rice wine and glutinous rice wine.

Qian, a native of Suzhou in the Qing Dynasty, thought it was Shaoxing wine in Drunk Gossip. He quoted Compendium of Materia Medica as saying that shochu did not exist in ancient times and originated in Yuan Dynasty. "The method is to use strong wine and inferior wine, steam the eyes and take dew drops with utensils." Since shochu only appeared in the Yuan Dynasty, people in the Song Dynasty would not eat it. He can only drink Jiangnan rice wine.

These two statements have their own reasons, and it is difficult to draw a conclusion. Because judging from the number of bowls that Song Wu drank, it should be rice wine. Because fifteen bowls of shochu are equivalent to about five catties. This is obviously beyond human capacity. However, since literary works are allowed to exaggerate, it is not bad to drink fifteen bowls of burning. Moreover, writing that Song Wu can kill a tiger after drinking fifteen bowls of soju is actually a way to set off and exaggerate Song Wu's brave spirit. As for the problem of shochu in the Song Dynasty, it is not sufficient. Because the Water Margin was written in the Song Dynasty, but it was written between the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. The author doesn't write history books, and he won't be afraid to use white wine to contrast the characters because there is no soju in the Song Dynasty. This is the truth of "shochu theory"; But from another point of view, since exaggeration is allowed, the author can also be allowed to exaggerate the efficacy of rice wine. Besides, the wine in the water margin actually refers to high-quality rice wine (see the article "What is Huangnigang Bai Sheng Wine"). The words of Jingyanggang store also seem to imply that this is rice wine. He said: "Although my wine is village wine, it is better than old wine." Village wine is muddy home-brewed rice wine, and old wine seems to be distilled shochu. This obviously means that although my wine is rice wine, it is as strong as shochu. This is the truth of the "rice wine theory". It may not be possible or necessary to know exactly who is right or wrong.

Text/Ning Jiayu