Sunac Shaoxing Rice Wine Town reception room

The Sunac Shaoxing Huangjiu Town reception hall sits by the water in a town whose yellow rice wine is at once gentle and powerful; the reception hall carries the same temperament, grand yet restrained, warm and unshowy. It displays the past and present of huangjiu and guides visitors to drink together along a winding stream, staged as three realms of the tasting experience. The first realm, the light sip, is a shallow mouth of clear wine spread across a mirror-still shallow water that reflects sky light and cloud shadow; above, wind moves the foxtail grass and ripples cross the surface, and thought itself wanders with the place. Beside the great tree and under the small pagoda, a ring-shaped valley of natural wildness holds the poetic elegance of Shaoxing and the fresh, plain memory of home, rising to the visitor's brow as the wine goes gently down. The earth keeps a mirror of itself, hiding sunlight and tree shadow, and in the midst of the everyday there is reason to sip a little more. Micro-topography by the water and swaying grasses make the shore mysterious; half-hidden, only the bank, the boat and the clear wind remain. A light pavilion is built beside the water to lift the spirits and bathe in sun; sitting by the river with the clear wind as companion, one crosses the water and, sheltered by the mirror canyon, moves from concrete and steel back into the green field, and the heart returns to simplicity. The second realm, the gentle tipsiness, sets aside worldly affairs for wine and poetry, staging a theatre of rammed earth walls and phantasmic glass, of rough stone, green field, water mist and colour, a dialogue between traditional and modern, between soft and hard, that enacts the blurred mood of a half-intoxicated appreciation.