Fake Liquors Flow as Demand Soars for China’s Fabled Sorghum Spirit

Home distilleries like this one are common in Maotai, where China’s state-owned distillery produces the genuine sorghum liquor called Moutai.
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: February 13, 2011

MAOTAI, China — If history is indeed written by the victors, then this isolated mountain hamlet in southern Guizhou Province hit the jackpot when Red Army soldiers sought refuge here in the spring of 1935. Exhausted by their long-distance retreat from Nationalist forces, Mao’s guerrillas used the town’s bracing 144-proof liquor to disinfect wounds, tame diarrhea and take the edge off their jangled nerves.

“The Long March was a success in large part due to Maotai,” the rebel commander Zhou Enlai later told historians. In 1949, after becoming prime minister of the newly established People’s Republic, Mr. Zhou designated the sorghum-based liquor, called Moutai, China’s “national wine,” giving it an undeniable marketing edge over the other gullet-searing grain spirits, collectively known as baijiu, tossed back at banquet tables across the nation. More

Nom, Nom, Nom

Eat The Future
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 13, 2011

On Friday, House Republicans unveiled their proposal for immediate cuts in federal spending. Uncharacteristically, they failed to accompany the release with a catchy slogan. So I’d like to propose one: Eat the Future. More

American Erotic

The Closing of the American Erotic
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: February 12, 2011

Lenny Bruce used to ask why it was obscene to show sex in American movies but not violence. Fifty years later, our screens remain washed in red, with severed if not necessarily naked body parts. More than half of the mostly American titles that received R ratings last year contained some kind of violence (as in strong, bloody and “grisly bloody violence and torture”) while only a third had sexual content. No NC-17 ratings were handed out, which bar youngsters, the viewers the studios most lust after. More

Lest

Ms. Dench said another get-over-yourself moment came in 1986, when a London theater was named after her. The announcer at the naming ceremony inexplicably gave her this introduction: “Here she is! Miss Judy Geeson.” (Ms. Geeson is a British actress.) More