Drinking Culture in China: Baijiu, Toasts and How to Decline

Most travellers to China will never encounter this. If you are sightseeing, eating in restaurants and going to bed at a reasonable hour, Chinese drinking culture is something you observe at the next table.

It becomes relevant the moment you are a guest — at a business dinner, a wedding, a meal with a Chinese family, or a village banquet you were invited to because you happened to be there. In those settings there is a structure, it has rules, and knowing them changes the evening considerably.

The most useful thing on this page is the section on declining, and it is near the bottom. If that is what you came for, skip ahead.

What baijiu is

白酒 (báijiǔ) — literally "white spirit" — is a clear grain spirit, usually distilled from sorghum, typically between 40% and 60% alcohol by volume. It is the most-consumed spirit in the world by volume and almost none of that is outside China.

It does not taste like anything in the Western spirits canon. The dominant styles:

酱香 (jiàngxiāng), "sauce aroma" — the Moutai style. Funky, fermented, savoury, closer to soy sauce and mushroom than to grain alcohol. The most prestigious and the most challenging for a first-timer.

浓香 (nóngxiāng), "strong aroma" — the Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao style. Fruity, sweet, pungent. The most widely drunk.

清香 (qīngxiāng), "light aroma" — the Fenjiu style. Cleaner and drier, and the easiest starting point if you want to try it.

米香 (mǐxiāng), rice aroma — southern, lighter still.

If you want to try baijiu and are not sure, ask for a light-aroma one and take it slowly. If someone hands you a small glass of something that smells like a farmyard, that is a sauce-aroma baijiu and it is probably expensive.

It is served neat, at room temperature, in very small glasses — often 15 to 25 ml. The glasses are small because the drink is strong and because the ritual involves emptying them repeatedly.

The other drinks

Beer (啤酒 píjiǔ) is the everyday drink and it is weak — Chinese lagers commonly run around 2.5% to 4% ABV, which is why people can drink a great deal of it over a long meal. Tsingtao, Snow, Harbin, Yanjing. Craft beer is now good and widespread in the major cities.

Huangjiu (黄酒), "yellow wine" — a fermented rice wine, amber, around 15%, sometimes served warm. Shaoxing is the famous one. Closer to sherry than to sake. Common in Jiangnan.

Wine (葡萄酒) is increasingly popular and Chinese domestic wine — largely from Ningxia — has improved substantially. Red is far more common than white at a banquet, and it is sometimes mixed with a soft drink, which will offend you and should not.

How a toast actually works

The structure matters more than the drink.

Nobody drinks alone. In a group setting you generally do not sip your own glass unsolicited. Drinking happens in toasts, and a toast is an act directed at someone.

The host toasts first, usually a general one to the whole table at the start of the meal.

Then it goes around. People toast individuals — standing or half-standing, raising the glass, saying something brief. Over a long dinner you may be toasted by everyone at the table, individually.

干杯 (gānbēi) literally means "dry the cup" and traditionally means empty it. 随意 (suíyì) means "as you please" — drink what you like. If someone says suíyì, you may take a sip. If someone says ganbei and drains their glass, the expectation is that you match.

You can propose 随意 yourself when you toast someone. This is normal, polite, and a completely legitimate way to lower the intensity.

Hold your glass lower than theirs when clinking with someone senior to you — older, more senior in an organisation, or the host. The rim of your glass touching below the rim of theirs is a gesture of respect. You will see people doing this and going progressively lower in a friendly competition of humility.

Two hands. Hold the glass with your right hand and support it with your left, or touch your left hand to your right forearm. Same principle as receiving a business card.

Toast the person, not the room, when responding to an individual toast. Make eye contact.

Reciprocate. If someone toasts you, toast them back at some point during the meal. Not immediately — that reads as settling a debt.

Where the pressure comes from

Chinese banquet drinking can be intense, and the intensity is social rather than personal. Toasting is how respect, hierarchy and goodwill get expressed at a table, and refusing a toast can read as refusing the relationship.

This is much stronger in business and official settings than in casual ones, and stronger in the north than the south, and stronger among older generations. Younger urban Chinese professionals drink considerably less than the stereotype suggests, and the culture has been shifting.

As a foreign guest you have latitude. Nobody expects you to keep up, and a graceful decline is generally accepted without difficulty. The problem is only ever the manner of the decline, never the fact of it.

How to decline

The important part.

以茶代酒 (yǐ chá dài jiǔ) — "substituting tea for wine."

This is the phrase. It is a recognised, traditional, entirely respectable formula. You raise your glass of tea — or water, or soft drink — and say it as you toast. You are participating fully in the ritual; you are just not drinking alcohol.

Nobody will argue with it. It has been the polite solution for centuries.

Other things that work:

"我开车" (wǒ kāichē) — "I'm driving." China has strict drink-driving laws with severe penalties, and this ends the conversation immediately and completely.

"我不能喝酒" (wǒ bù néng hē jiǔ) — "I can't drink alcohol." Cannot, not don't want to. Framing it as an inability rather than a preference removes the social negotiation entirely. Health reasons, medication, religion — you do not need to elaborate, and people generally will not ask.

"我酒精过敏" (wǒ jiǔjīng guòmǐn) — "I'm allergic to alcohol." Widely used and widely accepted.

Practical tactics that also work:

Drink slowly and keep the glass full — a full glass invites fewer refills than an empty one.

Toast first and toast often with tea, so you are visibly participating.

Eat steadily. Food slows everything and it is what the meal is for.

Sit next to someone sympathetic.

If someone persists after a clear decline, repeat the same phrase and smile. Do not escalate, do not explain more, do not make it a debate. Persistent pressure after a stated inability is unusual and it is the other person being rude, not you.

You do not owe anyone your health. If you do not drink — for whatever reason, including simply not wanting to — that is entirely sufficient, and yi cha dai jiu lets you say so in a way that fits the occasion rather than interrupting it.

If you are drinking

Eat first and eat throughout. Chinese banquets serve food continuously and this is not incidental.

Baijiu is strong and the glasses are small, which makes it very easy to lose count. Five toasts is around 100 ml of 50% spirit.

Do not mix baijiu and beer, which is a common banquet pattern and a reliable route to a bad morning.

Drink water alongside. Hot water or tea is always on the table.

Know your limit and stop before it. Nobody at the table will think less of you for switching to tea partway through the evening. The phrase works at any point.

Never drive. China enforces drink-driving law strictly, with criminal penalties at higher blood-alcohol levels. Use DiDi — see the ride-hailing guide.

Watch your belongings. Ordinary sense, and the scams guide covers the specific pattern where a friendly stranger invites a foreign visitor to a bar and an enormous bill appears. If someone approaches you on the street and suggests a drink, decline.

The bar scam, specifically

Worth its own warning because it targets exactly this situation.

The pattern: a friendly, English-speaking person — often a pair, often presenting as students or as someone practising their English — approaches a foreign visitor near a tourist area and suggests a drink or a tea house. The venue is chosen by them. The bill at the end is several thousand yuan and there are people at the door.

The defence is simple: do not go to a bar, tea house or restaurant chosen by someone who approached you in the street. Suggest somewhere yourself, or decline.

This is unrelated to genuine hospitality. A real invitation comes from someone you already have a reason to be talking to.

Bars and going out, by city

Separate from banquet culture, and more familiar territory.

Shanghai has the deepest bar scene in China — cocktail bars in the former French Concession, several of which appear on international lists, plus wine bars, natural wine, and a large craft beer scene. Also the most expensive.

Beijing is rougher and often more interesting. The hutong bars around Gulou and Fangjia Hutong, the live music venues, and the Sanlitun strip which is where most visitors end up.

Chengdu punches well above its size — a genuine independent bar and live music culture, and prices well below the coastal cities.

Guangzhou and Shenzhen have solid craft beer and a large expatriate-facing scene.

Xiamen, Kunming and Dali have relaxed, small-scale bar cultures worth an evening.

Practical notes:

Beer is cheap and weak. A large bottle of local lager in a neighbourhood restaurant costs very little. Craft beer costs several times that.

Cocktail bars are priced internationally in Shanghai and Beijing and are noticeably cheaper elsewhere.

Payment is mobile. See the Alipay guide.

KTV (karaoke) is the default group night out for many Chinese people and it is a private room rather than a public stage. If you are invited, go — it is one of the better windows into ordinary social life, and the drinking is generally beer rather than baijiu.

Getting home. Metros stop between roughly 22:30 and 23:30 depending on the city and line. DiDi runs all night — see the ride-hailing guide.

Non-drinkers, in short

You can travel through China, attend banquets, be a good guest and never drink anything. 以茶代酒 covers it. Raise the tea, say the phrase, make the toast, mean it.

Related

• Tipping and Etiquette in China
• Common Tourist Scams in China and How to Avoid Them
• Regional Cuisines of China: A Traveller's Map
• Chinese Phrases and Translation Tools for Travelers

Last reviewed: 30 July 2026.