Yu Bing Siu, the famous Lingnan wine made from a piece of pork 159

In 1830, the tenth year of the Daoguang era, the Qing dynasty had already turned from strength to strength.
In the same year, 30 kilometres away from Guangzhou, in Liantang Village, Shiwan Town, Foshan, Chen Pingxian, a villager farming for a living, saw that he had a surplus of rice this year and thought why not try to open a winery to brew rice wine, so he rented a mansion in Zhuzi Street, Shiwan Town, on the banks of the Dongping River, bought winemaking equipment and customised a large vatting made by a famous kiln in Shiwan.
On the opening day, he went to the high temple in Shiwan to burn incense and make a wish for the winery to prosper. Perhaps because it was his first time in business, he was so excited that he kowtowed a few more times and ended up knocking his forehead too hard, leaving him with a chill in his heart and an ominous feeling in his heart. At this moment, a showman passed by and took out a white handkerchief to wipe away the blood on his head. Seeing that the blood had stained the white handkerchief red, he had a bright idea and said to Daji: "Congratulations, sir, the winery is opening today and there is bleeding on the head, this is an omen of good luck." Hearing this, Da Ji was busy thanking Xiu Cai and rushed back to the winery opening. At the auspicious time, the front of the new shop was full of folks, and Da Ji thought to himself: "I have red luck on my head today, so I will add a little to the winery too, in order to have good luck ah. So he added a little to the signboard of "Chen Da Ji Winery" and it became "Chen Tai Ji Winery". And so the Chen Taiji Winery was opened.
Chen Pingxian would never have imagined that his winery would remain open for over a century, and today, with Chen Taiji Winery as its predecessor, Guangdong Shiwan Distillery Group Co Ltd still produces Guangdong's most famous rice wine, Shiwan Yubingbei.

In Guangdong, whether in the cities of the Pearl River Delta or in the countryside, in a teahouse or a chop shop, you will often see a picture of three or five old friends, raising a glass and sipping, or talking and laughing, or without words.

Apart from a cup or two or a few plates of stir-fry on the table, there is also a crystal clear rice wine, which is Yu Bing Siu. This is a typical Lingnan low-proof white wine, with a strength of only 20 to 30 degrees.

In addition to the 500-year-old Nanfeng ancient stoves and the famous Shiwan figurines, the Lingnan Wine Culture Museum is also a must-see in Shiwan Town, Foshan, Guangdong.

The Lingnan Wine Culture Museum is located at the headquarters of the Shiwan Distillery Group, on the site of the Chen Taiji Winery, the predecessor of the Shiwan Distillery, which was founded in 1830 during the Daoguang decade of the Qing Dynasty.

When you first arrive at the distillery, the three rice storage tanks, about 6 storeys high and 10 metres in diameter, with a capacity of 3,600 tonnes, are spectacular. It is said that more than 100 tonnes of rice are steamed every day at the Shiwan Distillery for brewing.

The LingWine Culture Museum is open to the public free of charge, with a couplet in front of the door reading: "If you eat 300 lychees a day, you will be a Lingnan man for a long time; if you taste a small cup of rice wine at night, you will be a Shiwan guest for a long time".

The sculpture in the middle of the hall is called "King of Kung Fu", Foshan is the home of Kung Fu, Liang Zan, Ip Man, Wong Fei Hung, Bruce Lee ...... Hung Gar, Wing Chun, Cai Li Fo, Foshan Shadowless Legs ...... have all left their mark on Foshan, so you can imagine that Kung Fu and wine are inseparable.

"Only the drinker leaves his name", drunken Li Bai, although he had never been to Foshan, also pulled to support the scene, what are those two steel monsters behind it, that is the dust collector of the baking machine used by the distillery in the 1980s.

The Lingnan Wine Culture Museum, located on the sixth floor, opened on 19 March 2014 and took more than four years to build.

We have already talked about the opening of the Chen Taiji winery, and you can see that the "Tai" on the signboard is still a big red.

After the opening of the Chen Taiji winery, business did flourish and the family gradually became more prosperous, with Chen Pingxian's grandson, Chen Ruyue, studying hard to obtain his university degree.

In 1872, Chen Ruyue won the imperial examination and in 1883, he was awarded the second grade in the Guangxu Emperor's Hanlin examination. In 1889, he was appointed as the chief examiner of Guizhou Province.

He resigned and returned to his hometown on the grounds that he was returning home to take care of his mother, and was determined to carry on the family business and innovate. It was with this act that Chen Ruyue was able to make Chen Taiji Winery flourish.

In 1895, when a drinking ceremony was held in Liantang to honour the old folks, the old men were given pork and Chen Ruyue noticed that the old men were particularly fond of fatty pork, so he took a piece and found that it was not only moist in the mouth but also smooth and sweet. The Cantonese like to use animals like snakes or fowl in their wine, what about fatty pork?

He decided to try adding fatty pork to Taiji wine and ageing it in Shiwan Tao Cheng to create a new rice wine brewing process. After repeated trials, the fatty pork was steeped in the rice wine for a period of time, and the rice wine, which was cloudy and had impurities, became more pure, while the pork soaked in the wine was like a crystal clear ice cube, with a clear liquor.

He named this pork-infused soju "Pork Ice" because the Cantonese words for "meat" and "jade" have the same sound, and the infused pork resembles jade.

Yubing siu is a representative product of the sixth type of Chinese liquor - the "black bean fragrance" type of liquor, a niche type of liquor whose aroma is somewhat similar to that of Cantonese barbecue.

Yubing siu is made from rice, and the traditional brewing process includes steaming, cooling, addition of brandies, fermentation, distillation, precipitation, ageing, storage, blending, filtering and packaging.

The raw materials should be made from rice with a starch content of 75% or more, free from insects and mould, and without deterioration, and then tossed while boiling with the lid on, and the steam is turned off so that the rice is full of water. The rice grains are required to be cooked and loose, without white hearts.
The steamed rice pieces are put into the rice loosening machine, so that they do not form a ball, and are spread on the rice bed or cooled by the conveyor belt to reduce the temperature of the product. The temperature should be below 35°C in summer and around 40°C in winter.

After drying to the right temperature, add the bent and mix the ingredients, the amount of wine bent powder is 18% to 22% of the raw rice, mix well and enter the fermentation.

Once fermentation is complete, the spirits are transferred to a distillation retort and distilled. The spirit is called Zaijiu, which is distilled to ensure that the first distillation is mellow and harmonious.

The steamed and cooled fatty pork is placed directly into a clay vat, where it is left to soak with the distilled rice wine for more than three months, and the older it is, the stronger the aroma.

The white fatty pork is soaked in wine to a dumpling red colour, the fatty structure in the fatty meat has become fluffy and absorbs odorous impurities from the rice wine, the pork soaks in the wine and blends with the liquid to create a unique black bean fragrance.

At this point the wine is not yet ready to drink, it has to go through the sedimentation and blending procedures. After brewing and soaking, the liquor is stored until it is old and ripe, with a storage time of no less than 90 days, the longer it is kept the better.

The Foshan Zhongyi Township Magazine states: "This township is known for its excellent production. During the Dao Xian Tong period, the most famous product was Chen Taishu (Chen Taiji). More recently, it was the Ren and Yue of Sanyuan City. It is said that the water quality is good, the rice is sufficient, and the vat is old, and the taste is unique."

With such a complicated procedure and such a traditional process, you must think that this Yubing-yaki wine is not cheap, right? According to the introduction, in the 1940s, the price difference between Yubing-yaki and Maotai was only 5 yuan per bottle, and today a 500ml bottle of Flying Maotai is more than 2,800 yuan per bottle on Jingdong, while a 610ml bottle of Yubing-yaki is less than 11 yuan per bottle in Guangdong supermarkets.

The Dongping River in front of the Shiwan Distillery remains the same, and the 189-year-old Chen Taiji Distillery has just changed its name, but still continues the traditional rice wine brewing technique of "aging in jars and brewing with fatty meat", making a bottle of Lingnan wine that everyone can afford to drink with a piece of pork.
Perhaps due to the lack of publicity or the unique taste, Yubingjiao is rarely available outside of Guangdong, instead it is available overseas where there are more Cantonese people, in fact Yubingjiao has always been a major export brand, and was even the most exported liquor in China until the 1980s. Of course, thanks to the time-changing e-commerce and logistics, the pork-infused wine is now available anywhere.
Many people only know Guangdong for its openness and innovation, but there is also a spirit of tradition and pragmatism in Lao Guang, one of the best preserved traditional customs in China. For many old Cantonese, it's a lifelong habit, and for those wandering abroad, it's a longing for home!