When in China, drink as the Chinese do: methodological considerations of alcohol consumption in research and fieldwork

[Extract] It was a strange situation I found myself in – I had accompanied my colleague on fieldwork in China, and was attending an official dinner. My co-author and I are both junior female researchers. I am an ethnic Chinese, while she is a Chinese national educated and academically trained in North America. As a welcome for the research team, we were hosted at a dinner of about 20 adults seated around a long rectangular table, where on one side were members of our research team, and on the other side we were matched in numbers by the local host and his associates. The alcohol was first consumed as part of official reciprocal toasts, and then individuals stood up to toast members of the other party. There was a clear protocol in all this – the toasting seemed predictable and almost systematic to everyone around me. I, on the other hand, was mildly confused and still trying to gauge what I should be doing