Dispatches from Sichuan: A River Brews Soy Sauce and Spirits
Our trip to Luzhou with a soy sauce brewery, disappearing dishes, and sun-dried noodles
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Leaving Neijiang, we headed south to Luzhou (泸州), a city with rich culinary and brewing cultures. Located at the borders of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Chongqing, as well as at the confluence of the Yangtze, Chishui, and Tuo rivers, Luzhou has historically served as a vital hub for trade, once moving salt to neighboring provinces, and today, producing some of China’s most prestigious spirits.
Entering Luzhou means entering one of China’s most important baijiu terroirs. The Chishui River (赤水河) is known as China’s river for brewing, and a saying goes: “The Chishui flows for ten thousand years. Upstream, they brew liquor; downstream, they brew soy sauce.”1 The river is home to Sichuan’s traditional handcrafted soy sauce, Guizhou’s black vinegar, and nearly half of China’s renowned baijiu brands, including Luzhou Laojiao and Moutai.
Once a key strategic site during the Red Army’s Long March in the 1930s, the river today is more tranquil, with air perfumed with the aroma from lees. It was a pilgrimage my parents had wanted to make for years.
The Living Cellars of Luzhou Laojiao
You can’t talk about Luzhou without talking about baijiu, a distilled Chinese spirit made primarily from grains like sorghum. The city’s namesake brand, Luzhou Laojiao (literally “Luzhou’s ancient cellar”), is among the oldest still-operating baijiu producers, fermenting in the same clay pits since 1573, during the Ming dynasty.
At the original site, now a tourist attraction with a small tour museum, you can watch young workers moving grains and stirring lees inside the cellars. The baijiu produced here belongs to the nongxiang (浓香, strong aroma) style, distinct from jiangxiang (酱香, sauce aroma, such as Moutai) or qingxiang (清香, light aroma, such as Fenjiu).
Its intensity comes from both the microbe-rich fermentation mud pits and a particular starter, gan chun qu (甘醇曲)2, or mellow sweet starter, developed by founder Guo Huaiyu in the 14th century.
Admittedly, I have never been a fan of the aggressive drinking culture at Chinese banquets, and being slightly alcohol-intolerant, my enthusiasm lies in the fermentation knowledge rather than the bottle collection. However, Luzhou Laojiao is doing a brilliant job of attracting younger consumers. Following a quite modern and well-curated museum, their gift shop features chic collaborations, including dark chocolates filled with laojiao spirit and a cafe serving baijiu lattes (likely inspired by the Luckin Moutai collab). I ordered a latte with a half-shot; for the first time, I could actually taste the rich, almost tropical fruit notes of the spirit without the unbearable alcohol burn in my throat.
Xianshi Soy Sauce
One of my most anticipated stops was Xianshi Jiangyou (先市酱油), a traditional soy sauce brewery in Hejiang County, right on the banks of the Chishui River.
The brewery is open to the public and offers seasonal lunches and workshops. We pre-ordered an eight-bowl menu (八碗), inspired by countryside banquet dishes: pork belly with rice powder and yacai, deep-fried pork strips, freshly made tofu with dipping sauce, and steamed vegetables. The highlight was soy sauce rice, short-grain rice steamed with their soy sauce, glossy and deeply savory.
Ms. Pei, our guide, led us through a small museum, explaining that soy sauce production boomed here in the late Qing dynasty thanks to local soybean cultivation, thriving salt commerce, and the movement of migrant merchants. Founded by the Yuan family in 1893, the brewery was built with a sun-drying yard and a temple by the river.
The process remains traditional and handcrafted. Locally grown whole soybeans are soaked, selected, steamed intact, cooled, then mixed with wheat flour and transferred to a fermentation room with controlled temperature and humidity. Over several days, qu, the mold cultures grow across the beans, then turn yellow-green. The beans are then mixed with salted water made from local well salt, and moved into large jars outdoors to ferment for at least three years (most commercial soy sauce ferments for just three to six months).
Somewhat 6000 jars line both riverbanks at a 45-degree slope, maximizing sunlight and airflow by day, and river moisture by night—a process known as ri shai ye lu (日晒夜露, “day dry, night dew”). Workers regularly stir the jars to expose the paste to air and sunlight.
Once matured, the soy sauce seeps out through bamboo sieves, then undergoes another round of sun-drying, often during the blazing Sichuan summer, to further concentrate its flavor into a thick, deeply umami sauce.
At the workshop space, I met Master Chen Siwei, the only national-level inheritor of intangible cultural heritage in the soy sauce-making industry. He’s worked here for over forty years and still oversees production while teaching apprentices and students. He was more than happy to share his knowledge and seemed a little surprised that I had traveled a long way to see this. “It’s great that young people are interested in traditional techniques.” Ms. Pei told me that most of the tours she gives are for students and government visitor groups.
He told me he had compared local soybeans to those grown elsewhere and found that the local varieties have higher protein content by yielding more tofu. “More protein means more amino acids in the final product,” he said. He encouraged us to taste the freshly steamed beans, nutty, rich, and quite satisfying. “I could snack on these without any seasoning”, I told him.
Some of the jars supply high-end restaurants in Chengdu. You can even adopt a jar during spring production like a fruit tree, or take home a small kit to brew your own. Logistics didn’t allow for that, so we brought back a few bottles of four-year-aged soy sauce, drawn freshly from the jars, for our relatives. I carried a five-year-old bottle back to Berlin, along with their spicy fermented tofu.
More Tofu and Rice-based Small Eats
Southern Sichuan has a deep tofu culture rooted in soybean farming and the region’s long history of well salt production, which yields nigari as a by-product. In smaller towns like Hejiang, you’ll see giant woks of freshly made soft tofu sold streetside for douhua fan (豆花饭), tofu served with spicy dipping sauce and rice. Fermented tofu (furu), fermented soybeans (douchi), and other soybean preserves are equally commonplace, stacked in produce markets or sold casually from street stalls.
A communal specialty here is hun douhua (荤豆花), or “meaty douhua.” As the tofu curdles, it’s added to a large pot with pork or chicken, starch sausage, pickled vegetables, and greens, essentially a tofu hotpot. We tried a version with black-bean douhua and chicken in Luzhou city. My dad found it unremarkable. “We have this at home,” he said.
Another version of fresh tofu, doufunao (豆腐脑), is silkier, likely coagulated with gypsum. It’s served in a glossy sauce thickened with chicken stock and pea starch, topped with fried dough strips (sanzi, 馓子), chili oil, Sichuan pepper, peanuts, and scallions. Each spoonful is full of texture contrast and flavor.
Rice-based snacks are breakfast staples here. Bai gao (白糕) is a fluffy steamed rice cake made from long-grain rice with slight fermentation. Zhuer ba (猪儿粑), literally “piggy pastry,” are soft sticky rice buns filled with pork and fermented vegetables, a variation of the better-known ye’er ba (叶儿粑).
In Yaoba Ancient Town, nearly every stall sells huangba (黄粑), a celebratory cake made from two types of rice (normal and sticky) and both white and dark brown sugar, wrapped in lesser galangal or bamboo leaves and eaten at festivals.
Lost Traditional Sichuan Dishes
Scrolling through Red Note, one restaurant on Luzhou’s outskirts caught my attention: Jinguiyuan (金桂苑), a farmhouse-style place still serving rare local dishes that appear in my vintage cookbooks but have nearly vanished from modern menus (at least I don’t recall seeing them in menus of Sichuan restaurants in Chengdu, for example).
I came for two dishes that I’ve never tried before. The first, Luzhou hongdan (泸州烘蛋). Eggs are beaten with a starch slurry, deep-fried into a solid omelet, cut into squares, then re-fried into golden, nugget-like puffs. Served with a ketchup-based sweet and sour sauce, its texture reminded me more of Austrian Kaiserschmarrn than anything from Sichuan cuisine.
The second dish, fugu ji (附骨鸡), literally “chicken around the bone,” is a stir-fry of boney chicken pieces with ginger and scallion whites in a spicy sauce. I was surprised by how juicy and well-seasoned it was. Tasting a hint of sweetness, I went to the kitchen and asked the chef if he used tianmianjiang. He smiled and said it was laozao, sweet fermented rice. That explained the deep aroma.
In parts of Sichuan, including my hometown, braised fish is a classic dish rooted in local fishing traditions. It is typically braised in a doubanjiang-based sauce, served in individual portions, and finished with huoxiang (藿香), also known as Korean mint, a herb commonly used in braised fish dishes here. In Luzhou, what sets the crucian carp apart is the addition of chunks of pork belly, braised together with the fish to add extra richness.
Gulin Hanging Noodles (古蔺挂面)
On our way toward northern Guizhou, we stopped in Gulin, a small city on the Sichuan–Guizhou border, deep in the Chishui River valley.
Gulin is home to Langjiu (郎酒), another high-end baijiu brand, whose vast factory buildings cling to the cliffs of the valley. Across the river, Xijiu (习酒) from Guizhou faces it directly, the two distilleries standing opposite one another on either side of the water.
However, I was there for guamian (挂面), noodles that are hung to dry. On one old street dotted with noodle shops, walking down felt like entering a “waterfall of noodles.” They make noodles of different thickness, but the most popular is chive-like, flat, thin noodles (韭菜叶子面), one used in many Sichuan noodle dishes, including Neijing beef noodles. With abundant sunlight, low humidity, and minimal rainfall, the valley is perfect for drying noodles; they’re ready in just a day. Locally, they’re eaten for breakfast with braised beef and smashed peas, but they travel far beyond Gulin.
Almost every Sichuan city has its own cold chicken dish. Gulin’s is malaji (麻辣鸡). The chicken, mostly rooster with firm meat, is braised in a spiced master stock, then served with chili oil for dipping. More fragrant than poached chicken, it’s deeply seasoned. We bought another half a chicken for the road, and quietly finished it all.
We’re leaving Sichuan now and entering Guizhou. Before moving on to Guizhou and Yunnan, here at Substack, which I need to read and reflect on, I will share some recipes in the next few weeks!
A local boatman chantey or saying known as, “赤水河，万古流，上酿酒，下酿油.”
Also known as daqu (大曲), a fermentation starter brick made primarily from wheat and produced at medium temperatures. This paper provides a clear explanation of the techniques used at Luzhou Laojiao.
Really enjoyed reading about the specialist products and producers of Luzhou!
Oh wow!!! Loving these ❤️