Yellow wine and fennel beans, warm, in a bowl

Shaoxing has made huangjiu for two and a half thousand years. It is amber, low in strength, served warm in winter, and drunk from a bowl with a saucer of fennel beans — the order Lu Xun's Kong Yiji makes in the story, and still the order at the Xianheng Tavern.

Eat with it: dried mustard greens steamed with pork belly, drunken chicken, river shrimp, and the stinky tofu that is the town's other famous smell. The small family places in the old lanes do all of it better than the restaurants on the main street.