In its hometown, the world’s second most consumed beer, China’s Tsingtao, is sipped out of large plastic bags. Like any good beer bottle, the bags are emblazoned with the company’s logo: the Huilan Pavilion underscored with some waves, an homage to Qingdao’s Zhanqiao Pier and maritime culture. Beer drinkers can fill a bag with the light brew and suck it up through straws. In a world of steins, mugs, and bottles, the Tsingtao bag is a novelty. But the bag is a far more common beverage vessel than the world would like to admit.
The plastic bag is perhaps the cheapest, most bountiful mass-manufactured container in the world. In many countries around the world, the cheapest bottled water to be found is not actually bottled, it is bagged. In fact, in Latin America, Africa, and parts of central and southern Asia, plastic bags are an extremely common and cheap container for a wide variety of beverages.
On the east coast of Madagascar, where I lived for nearly 2 years, the largest social events of the month were invariably soccer games. The town would parade down a winding dirt road that roughly followed the course of the slow and muddy Rongorongo River, eventually reaching a vast clearing in the forest—a field with bamboo-framed goals. Typically, young children would play the first games, but the town came out in force for the young men’s matches. Obviously a thirst-inducing activity, some entrepreneurial townsfolk would make the hike with bags of water and frozen bags of juice in plastic basins carried on the hip or head.
I would lug my 1 liter metal water bottle to these sporting events, but reusable water bottles are not a well known commodity in rural Madagascar. When players and spectators did eventually get thirsty, they would pay 100 Ariary to these vendors for a bag of water or a frozen sachet of juice. In Madagascar, these containers are sealed off by heat. The experienced bag drinker uses the teeth to pinch off a corner and pipe the refreshing contents into their mouth.
After these events, as the flood of activity subsided back down the road, exhausted plastic pouches would remain, tangled in the reeds on the boundaries of the clearing. Just as plastic bottles are a scourge to our environments, the plastic bag is no less insidious.
I could never stomach the bagged water in Madagascar. It was a cheap option with presumably potable contents, but the water tasted of the container more than American bottled water. It seems likely that the format pollutes both the body and the environment. Such bags are common throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
In Latin America also, the plastic-bag-as-drinking-vessel runs rampant. In some countries, consumers must front a deposit if they wish to take the glass soda bottles with them from a store. Only intending to consume the sweet soda inside, some drinkers will opt to pour a Fanta or Coca Cola into a plastic bag and leave the bottle for the shopkeep to return to her distributor.
But Latin American juices are often not sealed off into bags by heat presses. Vendors are agua fresca, horchata, chicha, and pinolillo will all ladle their liquids into sandwich bags and tie them off at the top. I have even seen rubber bands used to kiss the edge of the bag around the base of a straw.
In Mexico, tepache vendors deftly tie the neck of each of their bags of tangy pineapple juice. In Honduras, bagged water is sold in factory sealed pouches. In Nicaragua, chicha and pumpkin seed horchata are both rationed out in plastic baggies. Even in India, I have seen chai vendors serve out little chai cup portions in a bundle of bags for someone to bring back tea for the whole office. The milk at chai stands is invariably poured from pre-sealed plastic bags.
Why do we see so few of these drinking bags in America? Well, we drink very few locally produced soft drinks. All of our sodas come from industrial factories where the temporary, drink-right-away concept of the bag is irrelevant. Bags of liquids are simply harder to transport than something semi-rigid. These factories are also equipped with the technology and equipment to produce their own bottles on premise.
Don’t be surprised, though, if you go to Cancun and find locals drinking pozol con cacao, a grainy chocolate corn drink, out of plastic bags with straws.
Do we really get drunker when we drink on a plane? The theory goes that altitude exaggerates our state of intoxication, so that 2 drinks in flight is like 4 on the ground. The reality is more complicated. Some academic studies support the theory, but others flatly contradict it. Overall, no one has really cared enough to prove it. So, we may never know if we really do get drunker at altitude.
In the world of fine wine and in the world of herbal medicine there exists a drink called ratafia. Local versions of ratafia can vary, but it is generally an infusion of fruits and sugar into brandy. Today, ratafias are made in France and Spain. Americans, particularly folks in Louisiana, also made their own version of the infusion.
Huapilla is a drink fermented from the fruit of the Bromelia pinguin plant, a relative of the pineapple. It is a daily refreshment in the Huasteca region of Mexico, particularly in the city of Tampico. But, with hot weather and thirsty customers, competition in the market is fierce and vendors sell huapilla in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, it is still the same refreshing beverage that Tampico is known for.
Why is the World Cup a cup? So many of our modern athletic competitions and their trophies derive their names from drinking vessels. These trophies are only 100-150 years old, so the tradition likely dates back to a time when silversmiths made both cups and trophies. The Ancient Greeks also awarded cups to victors though.
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