what are the cultural implications of alcohol flush reaction in East Asia?

Factual Questions
1

the wikipedia article seems silent on that. Well, clearly people in Japan and China have been drinking alcohol since times immemorial. Does this mean that they only drink small doses that don’t induce the “flush”? Or are the people who drink the ones with the “right” genotype that don’t suffer from the syndrome? Or are they generally willing to tolerate the syndrome as part of the drinking culture, kind of like everybody tolerates hangovers?

Or, well, so what are the practical cultural implications of this issue, whatever they may be?

2

I lived in China for two years.

Well, I’d say they ignore it if they want to. I’ve had drinks(plenty) with many Chinese guys that have the allergy and to be honest, they mostly just ignore it and drink on. It’s annoying, but most of them just push through it.

I honestly thought the Chinese men out drank most European or American men I’ve known and ignored their red faces.

3

This doesn’t surprise me at all. Changing the color of your face isn’t that bad a thing, and the increased toxicity isn’t felt for a long time.

The cultural implications I was thinking about when I saw this thread would be more like how impossible it is to hide that you are a little drunk. It wouldn’t surprise me if people are more willing to binge drink, if only a little alcohol is obvious, and some stigma exists against being obviously drunk.

4

Asia covers such a large area that it is impossible to talk about a single cultural reaction. Public drunkeness in Indonesia is very much frowned upon, especially in a conservative area like Aceh where it can result a beating by the Sharia Police. Drunkeness in Singapore, Vietnam, Japan and China is not that serious an issue.

5

The most serious drinkers I’ve met were in Asian countries. Most of them only cared about pounding them back.

6

The sake suntan only affects IIRC 10-20% of most Asians. In my 25+ years of drinking in Asia more than I should have, I never noticed a dearth of hard drinkers. Banquet binge drinking is very common. And in countries such as Japan and Korea, business group binge drinking is practically a job requirement.

7

My understanding is that in Japan at least there’s more of a social assumption that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” - people aren’t held as accountable for their drunken actions.