Shake with ice, strain into a double old fashioned glass with a large ice cube, and garnish with a cinnamon stick.
Chinese five spice syrup: 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup water. Heat the spices in a pan until they become fragrant. Add sugar and water, stir, and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat, let sit covered for 15 minutes, strain through a coffee filter, bottle, and refrigerate.
After spotting Misty Kalkofen's Joe's Fashion that paired Punt e Mes with Chinese five spice syrup, I decided to tinker. I opted for the spirits mix from the Bombay Government Punch of Cognac and Batavia Arrack to make a drink split between ingredients from the East and the West. Since it felt very punch like, I dubbed this the Five Elements – partly because the recipe had that many ingredients but also because the word 'punch' may derive from the Hindi word 'panch' meaning five: spirit, citrus, sugar, spice, and water.