Even so, many diners now refuse to touch wine at all, the excuse always being that it flushes the face uncomfortably.

Perhaps they fear an undeserved imputation of drunkenness, remembering their own cynical saying: "A bottle-nosed man may be a tee-totaller, but no one will believe it." To judge from their histories and their poetry, the Chinese seem once upon a time to have been a fairly tipsy nation: now-a-days, the truth lies the other way.

An official who died A.D.
639, and was the originator of epitaphs in China, wrote his own, as follows:-- Fu I loved the green hills and white clouds.

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Alas! he died of drink! There are exceptions, no doubt, as to every rule in every country; but such sights as drunken men tumbling about the streets, or lying senseless by the roadside, are not to be seen in China.