Sites for Liquor Making in China

Photo in the Public Domain.

Sites for Liquor Making in China is part of the Tentative list of China in order to qualify for inclusion in the World Heritage List.

The sites for liquor making show insight into the ancient way of brewing and selling baijiu, Chinese liquor. The archeological sites provide insight into layouts of store and distillery combination, have great academic values for discussing the distribution, special structure and evolving characteristics and rules of the urban handicraft industry in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as realizing the development status of city industry and commerce and the society at that time.

Map of Sites for Liquor Making in China

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The coordinates shown for all tentative sites were produced as a community effort. They are not official and may change on inscription.

Community Reviews

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Stanislaw Warwas

Poland - 25-May-20 -

Sites for Liquor Making in China (T) by Stanislaw Warwas

Visited May 2019

I have visited only one component Shuijingjie Workshop (Shui Jing Fang Bo Wu Guan 水井坊博物馆) which is located in central part of Chengdu (metro line 2, DongMen Bridge, exit B). This is a regular museum that can be visited only as a part of guided tour. The first tour starts at around 10 am and even you’re the only person that wants to visit it, a museum guide will assist you, even if they do not speak English. My guide tried to do her best (using kind of a translator in her smartphone) to let me understand what I was looking at, but as I knew nothing about liquor making (baijiu), I think I missed almost 80% of her efforts. Some of the parts in the museum have English explanation boards – and that helped a bit.

This is the only liquor sites that have been fully excavated and renovated (it started in 1998). Here they ceased producing liquors (very expensive ones! Visit the shop after the tour.) just few years ago but they have kept all the instruments and tools and can arrange kind of a ‘show’ of traditional process of liquor making if you book in advance. (There are leaflets in English informing about this. You can read in this leaflet that this is the oldest liquor making workshop in the world – 600 years, in Ming dynasty, still operating, but the production was moved to new location and in here only the most valuable baijiu is produced.) The archaeological digs revealed some air-curing terraces, cooking and ash pits, distillatory base (photo), wooden columns and lots of white and blue porcelains.

At the end of the tour you’ll have a chance to see the collection of bottles and try some of liquors; they are really strong and taste very aromatized.


Full Name
Sites for Liquor Making in China
Country
China
Added
2008
Type
Cultural
Categories
Structure - Factories and industry
Link
By ID
2008 Added to Tentative List

The site has 5 locations

Sites for Liquor Making in China: Site of LiuLing Workshop (T)
Sites for Liquor Making in China: Site of Lidu Workshop (T)
Sites for Liquor Making in China: Site of Shuijingjie Workshop (T)
Sites for Liquor Making in China: Site of Cellar Cluster for Luzhou Laojiao Daqu Liquor (T)
Sites for Liquor Making in China: Site of Tianyi Workshop for Jiannanchu Alcohol (T)
WHS 1997-2024