Raising a toast to the Bloody Mary at the St Regis Shenzhen

Whenever people are eating good food - such as the Sichuan dinner I recently cooked - the talk always turns to other good meals they have had. Isn't that like talking about other great partners you've had when you're in bed with someone?

Being the hostess, I manage to turn the conversation onto beer, and soon dinner guest C is talking about a new cocktail that consists of coffee and beer, mixed. Shudder! That sounds even worse than yuanyang, coffee and tea together.

We soon move on to the Bloody Mary, which is also a strange concoction. C says American novelist Ernest Hemingway invented the Bloody Mary in a bar in Paris, which I doubt because I've just read a promotional flier for Shenzhen's new St Regis Hotel, which claims that the Bloody Mary was invented at the brand's New York property in 1934.

Then I read in Esquire magazine that Hemingway boasted in 1947 of introducing the scarlet tipple to Hong Kong in 1941, which, he wrote, "did more than any other single factor except the Japanese Army to precipitate the fall of that crown colony".

Whom to believe?

I decide to go with the St Regis explanation for reasons of convenience. The new hotel in Shenzhen is so much closer than the 21 Club, in New York, and Harry's Bar, in Paris, both of which claim to be the birthplace of the Bloody Mary.