Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site

Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site

The Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site is a national AAAA-level tourist attraction and a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level.

The Lijiadu Liquor Distillery is located in Jinxian County, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province.

This distillery operated from the Yuan Dynasty through to modern times. The archaeological survey area of the site covers 1,600 square meters, and the excavated area in 2002 was 300 square meters. The exposed cultural deposits mainly consist of relics and artifacts from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. Its 11 stratified layers are divided into six periods: the Southern Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, modern, and contemporary eras. No Southern Song relics were found, but brewing-related remains from the other five periods include wells, stoves, drying floors, fermentation pits, distillation facilities, wall foundations, drainage ditches, road surfaces, ash pits, and brick pillars. A well is situated within the Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site.

In the central area of the ruins, a well was built during the Yuan Dynasty and later heightened, reaching a depth of 4.25 meters. It has a hexagonal red granite well curb with a diameter of 0.66–0.72 meters, and the well platform is made of rammed earth. The stove, built during the Ming Dynasty, is constructed from red stone and blue bricks, measuring 2.80 meters in long diameter, 1.42 meters in short diameter, and with a remaining height of 1.98 meters. The flue is located on both sides at the head end; the stove’s front operating pit is concave-shaped, measuring 2.70 meters in length, 1.60 meters in width, and 1.84 meters in depth. There are two drying floors: one from the Ming Dynasty covering 50 square meters, and another from the Qing Dynasty covering 40 square meters, both made of pebbles and rammed earth with uneven surfaces and boundaries enclosed by red stones. There are 22 fermentation pits, including 13 from the Yuan Dynasty, with diameters of about 0.65–0.95 meters and depths of about 0.56–0.72 meters; and 9 from the Ming Dynasty, 6 of which are still in use today, having diameters of 0.9–1.1 meters and depths of about 1.52 meters. There are also distillation facilities at the Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site.

There are two distillation facilities, both cylindrical and brick-based. The Ming Dynasty distillation facility was repaired during the Qing Dynasty, measuring 0.80 meters in diameter and 0.62 meters in height, located 0.85 meters southeast of the stove. The Qing Dynasty distillation facility measures 0.42–0.54 meters in diameter and 0.38 meters in height. A total of 350 artifacts were unearthed from the site, including pottery, stone tools, bronze ware, ironware, bamboo and wooden items, with pottery being the majority, particularly wine vessels.

Lijiadu is an ancient town in Jiangxi, known as the “granary of southern China.” Its history of liquor brewing dates back over 2,000 years. Ancient Chinese literary giants such as Wang Anshi, Ouyang Xiu, and poet Yan Shu would all stop here for a drink whenever they passed through Lijiadu. As a result, it has earned the timeless reputation of “dismounting for the fragrance, mooring boats for the taste.” Zhou Henggang, leader of China’s liquor evaluation expert group, praised: “The Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site spans nearly 800 years of history and is a rare 'national treasure' in China’s liquor industry.”

The excavation of the Lijiadu Liquor Distillery provides physical evidence supporting the record in Li Shizhen’s renowned medical text, Compendium of Materia Medica: “Distilled liquor is not an ancient method; it was first created in the Yuan Dynasty.” This site is another of China’s earliest, longest-operating, and most distinctively regional ancient liquor distillery sites discovered, following the Shuijingfang site in Chengdu, Sichuan.

In 2002, the Lijiadu Liquor Distillery was named one of China’s Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries; in November 2006, it was included in China’s Tentative List for World Cultural Heritage by the National Cultural Heritage Administration; in 2006, the Lijiadu Liquor Distillery Site, as an ancient site from the Yuan to the Qing Dynasties, was listed in the sixth batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level by the State Council.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level