'Drunk Is Beautiful': Boire au bord de l’eau : usage de l’alcool dans la communauté punk chinoise

Abstract

This paper tries to understand how alcohol consumption inside the Chinese punk community can be linked to a plurality of deviant practices specific to jianghu communities. Literally “rivers and lakes”, the concept of jianghu embodies, since the Zhou dynasty, a physical and symbolic space where Chinese maverick communities gathered to escape from the official authorities. This affinity between the punks and the jianghu can also be shown through the links between the punks and the local “mafias”. Alcohol consumption can thus be analyzed in its ritual and social function, but also through a political lens, since alcohol is opposed to the effort of the central government to “civilize” the population, and it often allows free speech. Alcohol consumption represents also a methodological issue for the researcher: how can the researcher deals with the risk of intoxication, when his integration to the fieldwork requires the total commitment of his body?