
Baijiu - peter_d_sherman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baijiu
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Isamu
>also known as shaojiu

As I understand it, Soju in Korea and Shochu in Japan both derive from this
historically, and in turn shaojiu derives from simple grain distillation that
came from Mesopotamia.

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alottafunchata
Baiju is a great love of mine. I've gone through countless bottles of it while
in China and in the famous Chinese Mai tai a la LiPo Lounge in SF.

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cneurotic
Lived in China for a while. Us (admittedly, extremely white) American ex-pats
had a very fratty attitude toward "the baij."

Maybe it's because we could only afford the cheap stuff — but any baijiu we
got our hands on was really, really nasty. Only palatable with a 1:25 Sprite
solution.

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darawk
I've tasted expensive Baijiu. It's also pretty nasty, possibly even moreso to
my taste than the cheap stuff. I think it's one of those machismo things where
everyone pretends they like something that is objectively terrible to prove
their manhood, or something. Comparable to ultra-bitter IPAs in the west.

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downerending
Chuhais for everyone!

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njn
Why is this on hacker news, lol.

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kasperni
There was a reference to this from a post earlier today
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21742485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21742485)

"Baijiu is the world’s most popular spirit, with 10bn litres sold each year,
almost entirely in China. The second most popular spirit in the world is
vodka, with just 5bn litres sold."

I think this comes as quite a surprise to many people in the west.

