9th Century Chinese = Regretful Party Animals

Getting shit-canned and making an ass of yourself at dinner parties is a long-standing practice of the fine gentlemen of 40cozy. We’ve all been there – hitting on someone’s mom, eating off others’ plates, slurring your words through horribly off-color dead baby jokes… feel free to share your awesomely horrible/horribly awesome stories in the comments.

Well apparently this was quite the common practice in 9th centure China, as LettersofNote explains:
As far back as the 9th Century, the beautifully named ‘Dunhuang Bureau of Etiquette’ insisted that local officials use the following letter template (dated 856) when sending apologies to offended dinner hosts. The guilty party would copy the template text, enter the dinner host’s name, sign the letter and then deliver with head bowed.

Here’s the document, which was found in a sealed cave in China:

Translated, this letter reads:

Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was intoxicated as to pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing others speak on the subject, I realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the earth with shame.

The modern version of this is something like a template apology email or something you’d find at textsfromlastnight.com. I love that it was so customary for local officials to get wasted at dinner gatherings, someone decided to create a stock “I’m sorry I threw up on your cat” letter and distributed copies.

To read more about the project that revealed this letter and thousands more 9th century Chinese documents visit http://idp.bl.uk/

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 5:11 pm and is filed under drinking, funny. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.