Highway to intoxication
Rice liquor lubricates life in Vietnam, providing one of Asia's cheapest routes to pleasure, inspiration or oblivion
HANOI - When thirsty, approach an apparently pregnant woman. That was how Vietnamese in 1930s Hanoi flouted the French colonial ban on home-brewed rice liquor. Typically, a woman vendor would take a buffalo bladder fitted with two spouts, fill it with liquor, tie it around her stomach, then cover the bulge with a loose brown vest. In the market, male customers would squat under her belly for a few surreptitious gulps.
It's easier to get a drink in Hanoi these days. While the communist leadership formally brands drunkenness a "social evil," officials recognize the futility of clamping down on ruou, a distilled rice liquor steeped in tradition. Beyond toasts at weddings and funerals, the firewater permeates daily life, whether served in tiny ceramic cups at street stalls, shot glasses in bars or bowls in more rustic villages.
In winter, the warming spirits are especially popular. Cyclo drivers and other common folk often have a few shots with their breakfast of pho (chicken noodle soup). Afternoon tippling is also widespread, particularly among Vietnam's underemployed and the artistic crowd. At a street stall, a standard shot costs as little as 500 dong (30 cents). At night comes another round or two, as some potent varieties are thought to enhance sexual prowess. Hence the Vietnamese proverb: "A man without ruou is like a flag without wind."
To test that proverb, or simply to enjoy some brew in particularly stylish surroundings, head to Highway 4, a Hanoi drinking (and eating) establishment named after a road that winds through four northern mountainous provinces, where many villages have refined their own ruou recipes over centuries of backyard experimentation.
Since opening its doors two years ago, the narrow three-storey hang-out has drawn a remarkably mixed crowd, and helped ruou transcend its image as rough, cheap firewater. A busy night packs in about 160 patrons--roughly 70% Vietnamese--as young professionals, self-styled bohemians, petty gangsters, tourists and resident expatriates sit on floor mats, lean against ethnic embroidered cushions, and clink glasses over low rattan tables.
The 34-year-old owner, Vu Thi Thoa, happens to be pregnant at the moment, but don't expect any buffalo bladders. On the downstairs bar are displayed jars of the more exotic varieties of liquor--an eerie floating world of flattened geckos, bloated starfish, tiny sea horses and a king cobra. On Highway 4's educational menu, some monikers are left to the imagination, such as "One night five times," while others are more fully described, such as "Minh Mang," a brew of 27 herbal ingredients named after a 19th-century emperor "notorious for uncountable concubines and over 100 children."
First-timers may wish to opt for a tray of four sample shots. Samplers are grouped around fruit concoctions, herbs, animals and insects. The common base is rice, though this too includes several varieties, such as unhusked rice and glutinous red rice. Most of the liquors are made in the village of Phu Loc in Hai Duong province not far from Hanoi, where Thoa's mother and extended family monitor quality. But the recipes are strictly vetted by Thoa's 77-year old uncle, a member of the traditional medicine association in the northern town of Sapa.
The menu claims ruou can turn grey hair black, cure backache and strengthen bodily functions. It urges: "Drink our potions at ease without fear of headache." But while most Vietnamese imbibe gradually while eating, foreigners show a disturbing tendency to gulp with haste. That can make Highway 4 a road to a shocking hangover.
Highway 4
5 Hang Tre, Hanoi
Tel.: (4) 926 0639
E-mail: highwayfour@yahoo.com
By Margot Cohen - The Far Eastern Economic Review - December 19, 2002
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