Chinese tradition requires hosts to offer banquets to their guests, but they can be lethal affairs. Literally.

As anyone who comes to China knows, banquets often coincide with strong pressure to consume baijiu, or Chinese alcohol, to toast “friendship.” Chinese hosts love to see foreigners grow tipsy at banquets. I’ve perfected the technique of raising glasses to my mouth, only to take tiny sips. I enjoy a drink as much as the next person. But sometimes a banquet with unusual food and mere acquaintances does not induce in me the desire to consume vast quantities of alcohol, especially if I have work to do.

Two news stories have come out in the last couple of days related to overdrinking at banquets. In one story, the nation’s auditors have been told to lay off the banquets for a while. The plea comes after one auditor drank himself to death during a month-long binge of banquets.

Seems that wherever the auditors went, those being audited offered them marathon banquets and drinking binges. The motive was obvious: Drunken auditors can’t do their work properly.

The other story tells of a lawsuit of the family of a man who drank himself to death at a banquet. The news story says the case has “stirred up controversy as to who was responsible” for the overdrinking. In any case, the judge compelled the host to pay about $4,400 in fines after one of his guests collapsed after drinking too much Chinese brandy and liquor.