A man staggered along the road.
His clothes and cap were disheveled, his face flushed, his eyes unfocused.
One glance was enough to tell he had taken powder.
At the sight of him, passersby turned to look, their eyes filled with astonishment and contempt.
They did not even try to conceal that contempt.
But the man paid no heed to their gazes. He simply wandered down the road in a daze. After walking for who knew how long, he seemed to grow tired at last and stopped.
He looked blankly around.
Finally, he spotted a wine shop in the distance.
The wine shop displayed no sign, and no one even dared linger there to drink.
That was because Cao Wei had a strict prohibition edict! Drinking was forbidden!
Cao Wei's prohibition edict sounded absurd enough on its own.
Especially the prohibition edict in the final years of Wei.
Oh, right. The Shu Kingdom actually had a prohibition edict too.
In this age of drunkards, every court had its own prohibition edict.
That was easy enough to understand, really. The prohibition edicts restricted the common people. Cao Cao issued one, yet held banquets and drank fine wine every day.
The Great Clans were even worse. Every last one of them was a champion drunkard. Powder consumption and drinking were the two defining traits of Wei-Jin.
By now, the prohibition edict had become a worthless scrap of paper, and buying and selling continued as before. Only Cao Mao's reforms to official administration had given the laws some teeth again, so wine sellers had taken down their signs, dared not call out to customers, and dared not let anyone stay to drink. People generally bought their wine and left.
Thus, wine shops at this time were unlike those of later ages. There were