I have heard of it since I started school in Beijing, but have never been on the receiving end of it. The closest I have come to it was when we were dining at the restaurant near PKU, and there was a bunch of Korean guys celebrating someone's birthday in the other room. The poor birthday boy came knocking on our door and asked if any of us girls would be willing to help him with his birthday drink while his friends were shaking their heads at us and laughing. To cut a long story short, we did not so he returned to his room with the giant soup bowl containing his birthday drink. I swear I spied a cigarette butt floating in that murky liquid when I quickly glanced into the bowl during the fleeting moment when he was at our door.
And I digress. Presenting....my 생일주
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| Sugar, spice and everything nice. Yeah, right. |
As you can see, it 1) is murky 2) has unidentified objects floating in it and 3) is way bigger than one shot. The below is a list of what went into it, as far as I can remember:
Beer (맥주)
Soju (소주)
Maehwasu (매화수)
Spicy chicken sauce (간장)
Dipping salt- for fried chicken
Mustard
A lot of spring onion (파)
Radish (무)
Fried chicken
How it worked was that the jug was passed around and everyone seated at the table would add one item into the jug. The last person would swirl it together nicely before handing it back to me...To give you an idea of how huge the jug was:
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| Can hold 3000cc when filled to the brim. I'm guessing my birthday drink was about 800cc? |
Less ingredients went into the jug than there were number of people at my birthday dinner. Most of the girls decided to spare me, so they just looked disgusted and somewhat amused as the guys passed the jug around with glee. Lucky me, no one was intoxicated enough to try dipping a sock into it, or even throw a used napkin in (yes, those have happened to some others whom I know!). Still, this didn't mean that the drink was easy to down.
First mug: It smelled faintly of fried chicken as I held it close to my face. Not sure if it was the shop (since we were at a fried chicken place) or the chicken floating in the mug. I looked at my friends sitting opposite me instead of into the mug as I put the edge to my lips and that made it better. My first thought after the first mouthful was that it was better than I had imagined it to be. The chicken sauce helped made the drink somewhat sweet tasting, and the fizziness from the beer helped immensely. I finished one third of the mug in a gulp.
First verdict: Drinkable. Pleasantly surprised that no gag reflex kicked in.
And then there was more toasting and everyone wanted a drink with me. Which meant that I had to look for a black knight (흑기사 hut ki-sa) to take the fall for me. He polished off the remaining two thirds as a birthday gift me to me. He even ate the spring onion(!!). 탱규 오빠^.^
But then my black knight left dinner early and there was more of the birthday drink in the jug. Oh the terror of the birthday drink with the radish bobbing up and down on the surface. I don't even like radish to begin with. It is possibly my least favourite Korean side dish.
Second mug: Tasted stronger than I remembered it to be. This time, it had dregs from the bottom of the jug that was poured into it, so it tasted less alcohol-y and more yucky. The worst mouthful was when someone went on to add some liquid from the radish side dish into the drink and it was like I was drinking radish water plus everything GROSS.
Final verdict: Not something I would want to drink again. The taste of radish is just...@.@
To the people with whom I shared my first birthday drink with:)
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| The calm before the storm: while waiting for my other bunch of friends:) |
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| By this time me and my black knight have downed the first mug. |
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| We were all laughing so hard because the owner was so kind when we asked him to help us with photos. Too kind. He must have taken like 20 shots of us from all angles possible. |
After the drinks, it was cake cutting smearing time. Here's one shot of the cake before we put it on each other's faces...Or rather before everyone tried to put it onto MY face.
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| The stunned me when I got the first smear right after I cut the cake. No more pictures after because they were busy avoiding my tit-for-tat smear muahahaha. |
Post dinner was some good old BOWLING and then more drinks and some very crazy drinking games until 6am. Kind of wished I took more photos, but since I wanted more to relish the moments in their entirety than be busy snapping away and experience my life happening through the lens of a camera, something had to give.
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| At the bowling place after I won both rounds.It's my birthday afterall:) |
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| Sitting outside the convenience store (편의점) with our drinks and snacks. Extra star for Korean convenience store because it really is the epitome of convenience. Tables and chairs which customers can just set up and use! |
It was a good start to turning 22, and another memorable chapter in my exchange semester in Korea! I started my birthday on a fabulous note last weekend with a gift to self- BUNGEE JUMPING at Nami island, which I shall blog about soon.
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