Snake Wine: A Cultural History from Materia Medica to Marvel Tales (English Edition)

Wang, Lawrence K. (2026). Snake Wine: A Cultural History from Materia Medica to Marvel Tales. Evolutionary Progress in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. Lenox Institute Press, Massachusetts, USA, 8(10P), 42 pages. .....

Abstract

Snake wine, made by combining snakes or snake-derived medicinal materials with alcoholic liquor, is both an animal-based medicinal wine and a cultural object situated at the intersection of medicine, foodways, regional products, folk belief, and tales of the marvelous. Using textual analysis and a cultural-historical approach, this article distinguishes among early records of snakes as materia medica, the Tang-dynasty account of soaking a snake in wine, and the more elaborate White-Flower Snake Wine formula recorded in the Ming-dynasty Compendium of Materia Medica. It cautions that the frequently repeated claim that snake wine originated in the Western Zhou has not yet been established by readily verifiable primary evidence. The strange tales in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang—of a snake leaping from a wine jar and a snake skull attacking its owner—express cultural anxieties about serpentine vitality, venom, and retaliation. In later periods, snake wine also became associated with southern Chinese and Southeast Asian regional identity, tourism, and gift exchange. Traditional therapeutic claims, however, are not equivalent to modern clinical evidence, and ethanol cannot be treated as a dependable guarantee against venom-related injury, contamination, adulteration, or the harms of alcohol itself. Snake wine is therefore best understood as a composite vehicle of medicine, legend, and material culture. What deserves preservation may be less the liquid in the bottle than the human relationships, memories, and histories gathered around it. This scientific research article includes an affectionate poem, "Mahjong Friends' Deep Affection for Snake Wine," which takes the character 情 (qíng, feeling/affection) as its central axis—it appears in the title and in every line, threading through the entire poem. This poem was written in Albany, New York, USA in the Capital District of New York State, for six families (12 peoples) of white-haired mahjong friends.