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Wee Kek Koon

I recently remembered why I had decided to stop drinking several years ago.
“It is a happy occasion,” I told myself at a Lunar New Year party last month, “and a couple of tiny glasses of soju wouldn’t hurt.” How wrong I was.
The next day was a complete write-off. I could not get any work done and I was miserable for the better part of the day.
Even so, I was not as sick as I had been in the first few days of 2020, following a champagne brunch that was my send-off before I was to leave Hong Kong.
The bottomless bubbly wiped out my memory for that few hours. What I do remember is stumbling out of the restaurant, and having difficulty in getting a taxi because the roads were in the process of being closed off by dozens of riot police.
After I recovered from that apocalyptic hangover, the worst I have ever endured, I swore that I would never subject myself to such a debilitating state of intoxication again.

I was never a lush to begin with, enjoying the occasional tipple and the very rare binge when the circumstances demanded it, but I began to reduce my drinking until my intolerance for alcohol is such that even half a glass of wine will make me feel woozy.
All sorts of bad things happen when alcohol makes us lose control. It was reported in early February that during a drunken night out in Yokohama, an official of Japan’s financial ministry lost a bag containing documents with the personal information of 187 suspected drug smugglers and recipients of cannabis seeds.
When the Zhou people replaced the Shang people around 1050BC as the overlords of the different ethnic groups that formed the early Chinese nation, the Zhou rulers were particularly watchful of drunkenness because they attributed the fall of the Shang to their last king, a psychotic alcoholic who flew into murderous rages when drunk.
The regent of the new regime issued an edict in the name of his nephew, the king of Zhou, ordering one of the feudal lords to apprehend people who gathered to drink and send them to the capital, where the regent would personally “put them to death”. The injunction did not last.
Within a few generations, there were records of individuals who were habitually inebriated and getting away with it.

While we have long been aware that excessive alcohol consumption is “bad for our health”, recent studies reveal definite causal links between drinking and cancer.
The research has been so convincing that in January, the Surgeon General of the United States proposed that alcoholic drinks should carry a label warning consumers about cancer risks, in the same way as the packaging of tobacco products feature prominent cancer warnings and lurid photographs of diseased body parts.
The consumption of alcohol, regardless of whether it is in beer, wine or spirits, increases the risk of cancers, including those of the mouth, oesophagus, liver, breast and colon.
The alcohol that we drink is broken down by our bodies into acetaldehyde, a toxin that damages our DNA. The World Health Organization classifies acetaldehyde as a Group 1 carcinogen, placing it in the same league as tobacco smoke, hepatitis B and C viruses and asbestos.
Persons of East Asian descent – and I am three-quarters Han Chinese, according to an ancestry test I took last year – are more likely to carry a gene variant that makes it harder for the body to break down acetaldehyde, the accumulation of which immediately turns our faces red and increases the risk of oesophageal cancer in the long term.
I used to think that, unlike smoking, there were at least some health benefits to moderate drinking, especially red wine. It turns out that drinking alcohol, just like smoking, has no benefits whatsoever other than providing the grease for social interactions.
I am as sociable as the next person, but I will stick to water, thanks.


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Visitors take part in a drinking competition at the Wine & Dine Festival in Hong Kong in 2024. Discover why one writer has chosen a sober lifestyle, and why a ruler in ancient China decreed the death penalty for people caught drinking. Photo: Eugene Lee

A woman passed out on the floor after a party. All sorts of bad things happen when alcohol makes us lose control. Photo: Shutterstock 

Visitors savour wine at the Wine & Dine Festival in Central, Hong Kong, in 2024. Photo: Eugene Lee

Kueh lapis and pandan chiffon cake from Bengawan Solo. Although it is often associated with Singapore, pandan is popular all over Southeast Asia and used in food and drinks across the region. Photo: Zhang Dayu

A Bengawan Solo shop in Changi Airport, Singapore. Photo: Shutterstock 

Iwel iwel is a traditional Indonesia dish of glutinous rice, grated coconut and brown sugar served wrapped in pandan leaves. Photo: Shutterstock

Fried chicken wrapped in pandan leaves. Photo: Shutterstock

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How often do you shower each day? Singaporeans reacted to a social media post about sweaty, smelly commuters by saying having a shower in the morning would cut into their sleep. Photo: Shutterstock

A man dressed like an ancient Chinese emperor sits in a pool in between waitresses dressed like imperial palace maids at a bathhouse opening ceremony in China’s Henan province. Once ubiquitous, public bathhouses in China are closing. Photo: Reuters

A depiction of a bathing scene by an eighth century Chinese artist. Photo: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Customer lockers at Shuang Xing Tang, a public bathhouse, in southern Beijing said to be the city’s oldest, in 2019. Photo: Simon Song

Why Malaysian and Singaporean food hasn’t gone global, but Chinese food has

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Singaporean bak kut teh. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Nasi lemak, a traditional Malay curry paste rice dish served on a banana leaf. Photo: Shutterstock

Smashed cucumbers. Photo: Jonathan Wong

‘Mysterious’ fish that’s famous in Fukuoka, and why it is sumo wrestlers’ food of choice

Fukuoka chef Kazutaka Hagiwara prepares longtooth grouper. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Ingredients for “chanko nabe” or sumo wrestler’s stew, including longtooth grouper, a fish Japanese call kue which is a speciality of the southern city of Fukuoka. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Kazutaka Hagiwara, chef de cuisine of sushi restaurant Tomozuna on the top floor of the Hilton Fukuoka Sea Hawk, gets to work on a longtooth grouper in its kitchen. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Hitoshi Hirokawa, executive director of Fukuoka’s Nagahama Fish Market, calls longtooth grouper “the most famous fish in Fukuoka”. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

The sharp teeth of the longtooth grouper make it difficult for sushi chefs to handle. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Dishes prepared using the flesh of the longtooth grouper fish, including sashimi (front). Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

A longtooth grouper at the seafood market in Fukuoka. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Longtooth grouper stew. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Lifestyle

Chinese culture

Food & Drink

Health & Wellness

Health

The legacy of a psychotic Chinese king who flew into murderous rages when drunk led his successor to decree death for anyone caught drinking


The legacy of a psychotic Chinese king who flew into murderous rages when drunk led his successor to decree death for anyone caught drinking.


Wellness

Wine and Spirits

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Reflections

Reflections | Why a Chinese ruler ordered people put to death for having alcoholic drinks

The legacy of a psychotic Chinese king who flew into murderous rages when drunk led his successor to decree death for anyone caught drinking