Pod Insights If You're Listening How Peking Duck and Moutai changed the world About this episode Modern China has used ceremonial banquets to resolve diplomatic disputes for decades - but there's often a message hidden within. ABC reporter Bang Xiao gives Matt the meaning behind the meal.
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0:47 Speaker 03 G'day, Matt Bevan here. This is If You're Listening. What's on the menu when Beijing hosts a foreign leader for dinner? Recently, Xi Jinping has been eating with a lot of different world leaders, including Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And ABC reporter Bang Zhao has become fascinated not only by what they're talking about, but what's on their plates while they're talking. He's done some fascinating research about China's rich tradition of culinary diplomacy, how they use food to get what they want. So I've invited him round to tell me all about the relationship between the US and the People's Republic of China, and how it all came about thanks to a particularly delicious piece of roast duck. Hello Bang. I'm sorry, I don't have any food for you.
1:31 Speaker 04 It's all right, Matt. Hello, good day.
1:33 Speaker 03 As you're well aware, here at the ABC, we don't have a catering budget for our interviews.
1:37 Speaker 04 Not at all. We don't even have coffee, you know.
1:40 Speaker 03 That's right, we have to bring our own. That's right.
1:46 Speaker 03 This story starts in 1971, which is a fascinating period in US and Chinese history. At that time, the US had no official diplomatic relationship with Communist China. The US was treating Taiwan as though it was the legitimate government of China and didn't deal with mainland China at all. But Richard Nixon and-
2:10 Speaker 03 Henry Kissinger, his Secretary of State, decided that they want to look into whether that should change. So what did they do?
2:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, this is one of the great untold spy stories of the Cold War, Matt. The US and China hadn't spoken officially in over 20 years. And Nixon decides he wants to change that. So he sends Harry Kissinger on what looks like a routine trip to Pakistan. While he's there, Kissinger basically pretended to come down with a stomach bug.
2:45 Speaker 03 Okay.
2:46 Speaker 04 He sent a body double off in a motorcade, supposedly to recover at a heal station.
2:54 Speaker 03 Oh, right. So he's saying, oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sick. I need to go and recover from my gastro. And he sends a lookalike off to sit in a hotel.
3:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:02 Speaker 03 And pretend to recover from gastro.
3:04 Speaker 04 Exactly.
3:04 Speaker 03 While he goes on a secret second mission.
3:06 Speaker 04 The actual Kissinger sneaks onto a Pakistani plane and flew to Beijing.
3:12 Speaker 03 Okay.
3:12 Speaker 04 He's so nervous about the trip and he actually tried to get the Pakistani Prime Minister to come with him as a kind of human shield, you know.
3:23 Speaker 03 To hold his hand so that the Chinese wouldn't do anything to him because the Pakistani Prime Minister was there too. Okay.
3:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, and the Prime Minister wisely declined. So Kissinger landed in Beijing alone, walked into the Great Hall of the People and sat down, of course, from the Premier Zhou Enlai. And the fate of the Cold War is on the table.
3:47 Speaker 03 Right. Okay. The discussions aren't going particularly well. Imagine a US negotiation being stalled, unable to make any progress. We here in 2026 wouldn't have any idea what that's like. Uh, but, uh, but then Zhou Enlai suggests something to Kissinger that hopefully will break the ice. What does he suggest?
4:07 Speaker 04 Kissinger and Zhou are circling each other, big issues, no movement. And then Zhou did this brilliant thing. He looks at Kissinger and basically said, Let's eat.
4:18 Speaker 03 Uh huh.
4:20 Speaker 04 So, basically, they sit down and Zhou personally serves the duck. Where he sliced the Peking roast duck into one hundred and eight pieces.
4:32 Speaker 03 Whoa.
4:32 Speaker 04 Which is a typical, precisely standard that China has. And he places the slices on the lotus leaf pancakes, does it himself by hand. And then he pours Moutai, which is a very expensive, famous Chinese alcohol. That tastes a little bit similar to vodka, uh, which has fifty-three percent alcohol.
4:59 Speaker 03 Alright.
5:00 Speaker 04 That hits you like, you know, a freight train. And then, you know, somewhere between the first course and the second course, the deadlock just broke.
5:10 Speaker 03 I imagine it did.
5:10 Speaker 04 And they started finding common grounds. That dinner is the moment the modern world order has shifted.
5:18 Speaker 03 Yes, he has this dinner and they come to common ground. And the next thing you know, the Nixon administration is announcing that they are going to open up and and that Nixon is going to travel to China.
5:31 Speaker 05 We, of course, are under no illusions that twenty years of hostility between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America are going to be swept away by one week of talks. We will have differences in the future.
5:45 Speaker 05 But what we must do is to find a way to see that we can have differences without being enemies in war.
5:56 Speaker 03 Now, Richard Nixon is not the kind of person that I would have thought had a lot of experience eating Asian food.
6:02 Speaker 04 Uh huh.
6:02 Speaker 03 Well, how does he feel about the idea of going to China and eating with the Chinese leadership?
6:07 Speaker 04 I think he absolutely took it very seriously. Before he went to China, he practiced eating with chopsticks for over a month.
6:17 Speaker 04 But that is showing you how seriously he is trying to not embarrass himself. The whole trip got broadcast back to America. It wasn't very, you know, transparent in China while he was there. But for most Americans, it was their first proper look at the Chinese culture, you know. Mrs Nixon is asked by reporters about what she thinks of the food.
6:44 Speaker 06 The food is so exquisite, each dish was a treat, to tell you the truth. But I tasted several, and I especially liked the sweet and sour pickle. Does the president particularly like Chinese food? Does he have it at home? Yes, he does. He really enjoys it. Here he's even having it for lunch, as usual.
7:02 Speaker 04 So Nixon shows the Great War and famously says that this is a great war.
7:11 Speaker 07 I think that you would have to conclude that this is a great wall and that it had to be built by a great people.
7:18 Speaker 04 So it's a solid commentary. And once again, I think at the official dinner, Zhou Enlai served him Peking roast duck and Mao Tai. It's a reference. It's saying that remember what happened last time we ate together. We made history and let's keep going.
7:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, you've sent me a photo of Nixon eating with chopsticks and he looks like he's doing a pretty good job.
7:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, you know, there is a former Chinese protocol official Wu Dengguang, who put it perfectly. He said, "The state banquet is the art of eating, but the craft lies mostly beyond the eating itself." Let me give you an example. Peking duck has to be cut into these one hundred and eight slices as the tradition like we mentioned just now. Zhou Enlai, he carved the duck himself. That carries a lot of weight because for a Chinese leader who is on the paramount position of the country, leading more than one billion people in a country,
8:27 Speaker 04 doing something in person for a foreign leader wasn't just hospitality. And that was ahead of the government performing a ritual that says, "I am personally honoring you." And Moutai is very interesting. This alcohol is not just alcohol. It started life as a disinfectant for the communist soldiers. When they were fighting against the Nationalist Party, when they were fighting against the Japanese invasion. And then Chairman Mao gave it to Stalin. It was used as a gift on the highest level in the Chinese nation. When Deng Xiaoping visited America in nineteen seventy nine,
9:13 Speaker 04 Kissinger said that with enough Moutai, we can solve anything.
9:18 Speaker 03 I love that Kissinger was giving all these quotes about Moutai because I know there's another famous quote that he gives about Moutai, which is, he says, if he has enough Moutai, then he can start negotiating in Mandarin.
9:32 Speaker 04 Think of it the way Russians think about vodka or Scots about whiskey. It's the national identity in a bottle. And when these things show up on a table, they are not just dinner. They are actually showing the diplomatic conversation is going on.
9:50 Speaker 03 And it's going well, yeah.
9:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:51 Speaker 03 Bringing this to the modern day, I'm interested in how these practices that were so popular in the nineteen seventies have translated to today. Because things have changed. I'm trying to imagine Xi Jinping and him carving the duck into a hundred and eight pieces, and it's difficult for me to imagine that. So I'm interested to see if he's still doing that. And also, the tricky thing is that, you know, the two biggest people that Xi Jinping meets with these days is Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and neither of them drink. So what is Xi Jinping's attitude towards these cultural practices through his time in office as president?
10:28 Speaker 04 Xi knows it inside out. For a bit of context, between two thousand and eight and twenty thirteen, when he was the vice president, he was actually in charge of diplomatic protocol.
10:41 Speaker 03 Oh, right.
10:42 Speaker 04 That includes the two thousand and eight Beijing Olympics, when a hundred and twenty five heads of state showed up in Beijing at the same time. The protocol team named the banquet tables after flowers instead of using numbers.
10:57 Speaker 03 Oh, so so that people wouldn't be insulted that they were at table eight instead of table one, I see.
11:03 Speaker 04 Exactly. He doesn't want to rank people from top down level. And that's the level of detail that she watched out of this and he approved it. By the time he became president, he understood that every ingredient on the state table is a word in the diplomatic sentence.
11:24 Speaker 03 Can you tell me a bit about the role of Moutai in domestic Chinese politics? Do they put on special dinners for each other, you know, if you have visiting local politicians going from place to place?
11:38 Speaker 04 The role of Moutai in modern days of Chinese diplomatic and politics is quite complicated.
11:46 Speaker 03 Okay.
11:46 Speaker 04 It still sits on the top level state banquet for the Chinese politicians. But because of its popularity, the price of Moutai, it went up.
11:57 Speaker 03 It went up massively because of its popularity, I see.
11:59 Speaker 04 Exactly. And there is a crackdown in twenty twelve when President Xi Jinping came to power. He launched his anti-corruption campaign. One of his very first target is the culture of lavish government banquets. And Moutai was the symbol of that culture. Because of the price of it, because of the rare quality that has, government officials would gift bottles worth thousands of dollars to make deals happen. It's literally like how China did diplomacy with a foreign country. Like government officials have been doing the same thing with their counterparts,
12:42 Speaker 04 with the business leaders or enterprise. So Xi Jinping banned Moutai at official banquets. Within weeks, the company lost two billion dollars in market value. And the bottle prices also plummeted. So this is just one tiny example and. Over the next decades, even though Moutai bounced back, the stock became one of the most valuable companies in the Chinese markets. It is still a taboo for any government official to talk about it or to drink it or being pictures with it.
13:18 Speaker 04 So that that is the powerful message. It's not just about, you know, drinking it or not. It's very political in both the bright and dark ways.
13:28 Speaker 03 I just looked it up because I was like, oh, I'd like to try this. Maybe I won't. Goodness me. We're talking five hundred bucks a bottle.
13:35 Speaker 04 Yes.
13:36 Speaker 03 That's a little bit rich for my taste. So Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have recently visited the Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. You've got a hold of the menus, what they were offered when they visited. What can you tell me about it? Let's start with the one that Donald Trump was offered. I'm having a look at it now and there's no burgers on it.
13:57 Speaker 04 Yes.
13:57 Speaker 03 What was on offer?
13:58 Speaker 04 It's a very interesting menu. There were crispy spiced beef, fresh garden vegetables in bean broth, pickled roast duck and salmon with a fragrant mustard sauce. So that's the main course.
14:15 Speaker 03 And that includes the duck?
14:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, it included the duck. That's the point, isn't it? That's the tradition of US-China diplomacy. But when you look at the menu for the drinks.
14:26 Speaker 03 I noticed no Moutai. What's that about? Where's the Moutai?
14:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's exactly the point here. That's for China, you know, this is a very precise political language that they want to deliver to the United States counterpart. Trump famously doesn't drink, like you said, so on the surface, it's fine. No Moutai, not a big deal. But here's the thing, it's not really about whether the guest will drink. It's more about you are going to pour it for everyone and to serve it for their choices. You know, you toast with it. It's the gesture that matters. So even Obama got Moutai in California in twenty
15:11 Speaker 04 Thirteen, um, leaving it off Trump's menu, that is a language, that is a choice. It lands hard when you remember the context about the previous diplomatic occasions where China served it and gifted it to the United States leaders. And Trump came to Beijing right after slapping massive tariffs on Chinese manufacturing industries. That relationship is really stained, so Beijing did something very clever here. They gave Trump the full formal hospitality without giving him the most crucial elements in there.
15:50 Speaker 03 Okay, but they still have got the Peking duck.
15:54 Speaker 04 Yes.
15:55 Speaker 03 The question is, who carved it?
15:57 Speaker 04 Definitely not Xi himself.
16:00 Speaker 04 So that's significant too, I think, the carving ritual that Zhou Enlai performed for Kissinger. That level of personal involvement, you only do that when you really want to send a message of closeness.
16:14 Speaker 03 Now, I've got the menu for Vladimir Putin.
16:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:18 Speaker 03 In front of me, and this is quite different.
16:22 Speaker 04 It is.
16:23 Speaker 03 We've got the duck consomme with freshwater clams, we've got the Peking roast duck, of course.
16:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:30 Speaker 03 And then we've got braised sea cucumber with spring onion. Now, is that an important thing that that's being offered?
16:36 Speaker 04 Yes, because sea cucumber is considered as one of the most valuable food ingredients in China. And cooking it takes a lot of time, but it looks super simple.
16:48 Speaker 03 Now, I'm looking down at the drinks menu, though, this is the key part.
16:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:55 Speaker 03 We've got a cab sav, we've got the chardonnay, and we've got Moutai.
16:59 Speaker 04 Yes.
17:00 Speaker 03 So Putin gets the Moutai.
17:01 Speaker 04 Exactly. Putin got the Moutai even though we know that he might not drink it. The Moutai was served for the delegation he brought to Beijing. That is significant too, right? It's not just the leader drinking it, it's the delegation, the politicians traveling with.
17:21 Speaker 04 Having the Chinese one. And also, when you look at the red one, they served, you know, the cap Sauvignon. That is the same type of wine that she served Donald Trump. But the difference is that it's from a different region. And the producer of this one is from Ningxia. So then the region in Ningxia is probably similar to the Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale in Australia. That is a premium wine comparing with the menu we have found for Donald Trump. That's very telling.
17:57 Speaker 03 I can't imagine that this much thought is put into menus when foreign dignitaries come to Australia.
18:04 Speaker 04 Exactly.
18:05 Speaker 03 It's only just occurred to me how insulting it was of Henry Kissinger to pretend that he had gastro when he was in Pakistan.
18:11 Speaker 04 Yes.
18:12 Speaker 03 Saying, oh, yeah.
18:13 Speaker 04 It was very bad.
18:14 Speaker 03 The Pakistanis, the Pakistanis have poisoned me. Oh, dear. How rude.
18:18 Speaker 04 And then he was having Peking duck.
18:20 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. I'm sorry. I just need to go to China for some Peking duck carved for me personally by the premier. Now, you've sent me the menu for Anthony Albanese's visit.
18:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:31 Speaker 03 And there are some notable absences. There's no malta and there's no duck.
18:37 Speaker 04 Yep.
18:38 Speaker 03 How dare they not give a duck.
18:41 Speaker 04 Yes.
18:42 Speaker 03 Uh, it's incredible. It would never have occurred to me to look at the menu in this, in this amount of detail, but the
18:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:48 Speaker 03 The fact that there's no duck on there seems quite meaningful.
18:50 Speaker 04 It is meaningful, not just because there is no duck, but when we look into the detail of the menu. Matt, let me read this with you. Lobster, beef, red wine, barley. All of those four ingredients were banned by China during the trade war with Australia.
19:09 Speaker 03 Oh, yes. These are things that China was importing from Australia and then stopped importing.
19:13 Speaker 04 Exactly.
19:14 Speaker 03 I noticed there's no coal on the list.
19:18 Speaker 04 And timber. Sorry, they can't put it on the dining table.
19:22 Speaker 03 Perhaps, perhaps coal fired the grill, perhaps, served on timber plates.
19:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:28 Speaker 04 That's a very good idea.
19:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:30 Speaker 04 I think when we look at this menu, it is a little bit insulting.
19:35 Speaker 03 It's often interesting to me when countries like China go to this amount of effort to send sort of symbolic messages to Western leaders.
19:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:46 Speaker 03 The British do this as well, you know, they sort of send coded messages in terms of their diplomatic protocols as to how they're feeling about certain countries. And I just feel like in most of these cases, the world leaders receiving these messages would have no idea what's going on.
20:03 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:03 Speaker 03 I mean, Donald Trump, I'm sure, wasn't going, where's my Moutai? And I wouldn't be surprised if Anthony Albanese was going, oh, okay, no duck, that's fine, whatever. It's interesting that this is sort of a little, very subtle message that really only certain people are going to pick up. I wonder whether there's just a bit too much subtlety to it. They should be a bit more overt.
20:25 Speaker 04 I absolutely agree with you, but that's why it's so important to interpret China's diplomatic language. Because they, in a very opaque and intransparent system, they do show some things in a different way. They can't say it out loud because in the country with 1.4 billion people, any very quiet message could make a very big impact and could be amplified in a lot of different ways. So China is very intended to not show the relationship publicly, but do it subtly. Particularly when the next time, for example, Prime Minister Albanese goes to China again,
21:10 Speaker 04 and when on the dining table there is picking duck, there is Moutai, then he probably knows that's, that is a sign of approval.
21:19 Speaker 03 Meanwhile, you've got the other superpower, the United States, where the president says literally every thought that comes into his head.
21:26 Speaker 03 There's absolutely no subtlety or no filter. It's just, uh, today I don't like this country and I like that country and this country's bad and this country's good.
21:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
21:38 Speaker 03 It's a totally different universe, isn't it? It's funny.
21:40 Speaker 04 Yes.
21:40 Speaker 03 Bang, it's been a fascinating conversation with you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for, for coming on and talking to us today.
21:46 Speaker 04 Thank you much. It's my pleasure.
21:55 Speaker 03 Bang has a new article out today, all about how Taiwan is going through kind of their own culture revolution of sorts, splitting between pro-Chinese and pro-US positions. You can find a link in the show notes. As for us, this Thursday, we're going to look at the Taiwan Strait itself. It's easy to think of it as nothing more than a moat, but in fact, the history, geography and even mythology surrounding this waterway are all affecting Xi Jinping's strategy to take over Taiwan. I'll catch you then.
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