Putao-a-thon! Win your weight in wine with CHEERS

By Jim Boyce | I help organize an annual China charity campaign called Maovember that teams bars, restaurants, shops and customers for fun events throughout November. This year’s effort supports Library Project furnish reading rooms in needy rural schools and Beijing bakery Bread of Life to train and employ disabled orphans when they reach workforce age.

One of our wine-focused events will see someone win his or her weight in vino! Starting Friday at 2 PM, Mike Wester will try to walk to as many of the ~30 CHEERS wine shops in Beijing—a city officially over 16,000 square kilometers—by Sunday evening. It’s part of his 30-day, 900-km “mao-a-thon“: let’s borrow the Chinese name for grape and call it a putao-a-thon. Here is how distant some of those shops are from city center:


In any case, the person who guesses 1) the number of stores Mike visits during his three-day tour and 2) is closest to how many km he walks during this adventure will win his / her weight in wine! (For someone who weighs 60 kg, the prize would be over 40 bottles!)

The contest ends when Mike arrives at CHEERS Shuangjing store on Sunday at 6 PM. Expect bubbly and baozza.

Sound good? To participate, scan the WeChat QR Code below to guess how many stores Mike will visit and how many km he will walk doing it. The entry fee is 90 rmb, with 100 percent of the money to Maovember. Can’t decide the number of stores? Then enter twice—or more!

If you don’t have WeChat but want to support Maovember, you can also come to one of our events or make a straight-up donation. Any questions, just let me know via nihao (at) maovember.com.

Maovember is 100-percent volunteer driven which means 100-percent of the funds go to our partner charities for visible results, such as readings rooms and bakery equipment.

CHEERS has been a Maovember supporter since the first campaign in 2013, including last year’s mulled wine tour.

Note: This walk is part of Mike Wester’s 30-day 900-km mao-a-thon, which has included a ~50-km walk around the Third Ring Road on November 1 and a 75-km walk in Ritan Park on November 7, his 50th birthday. As of November 8, he had completed 280 km. Here are some photos from his recent adventures:


See more Maovember events here and how to support Maovember in other ways here. You can also follow Grape Wall on Facebook and Twitter. And sign up for the China wine newsletter below.



Sign up for the Grape Wall newsletter here. Follow Grape Wall on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And see my sibling sites World Marselan DayWorld Baijiu Day and Beijing Boyce. Grape Wall has no advertisers, so if you find the content useful, please help cover the costs via PayPal, WeChat or Alipay. Contact Grape Wall via grapewallofchina (at) gmail.com.

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