The gigantic factory stretches for more than a mile along the river bank, belching steam laced with the aroma of China’s “national drink” — a gullet-searing grain spirit that, according to local lore, helped propel Mao Zedong to power, smoothed Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing and turned a remote mountain valley into “the liquor capital of China.”

这座巨型酒厂沿河岸绵延超过1.6公里，蒸汽升腾间弥漫着中国“国酒”的浓烈香气——据当地传说，这种灼烧喉咙的粮食烈酒曾助力毛泽东夺取政权，为1972年尼克松访华铺平道路，也让偏远山谷蜕变为“中国酒都”。

But, drenched for decades in the fumes and profits of its booze business, the town of Maotai in China’s southern Guizhou province is now nursing a bad hangover.

然而，在酒香与暴利中浸淫数十年后，中国南部贵州省的茅台镇正遭受严重的宿醉。

A nationwide ban on drinking alcohol at official banquets, an economic slowdown that has cut expense account boozing and the more health-conscious habits of a young generation with little appetite for 100-plus-proof alcohol have dented the fortunes of the state-controlled Kweichow Moutai, the town’s biggest employer with more than 30,000 workers, and hundreds of smaller, private distilleries scattered throughout the mountains.

全国范围内的公务宴请禁酒令、经济放缓削减了公款饮酒开支，以及年轻一代更注重健康、对超过100度的烈酒兴趣寥寥，都重创了国有企业贵州茅台的业绩，这家拥有3万余名员工的企业是当地最大的雇主，而散布在群山间的数百家小型民营酒厂同样受到波及。

All produce much the same product: a highly potent colorless drink made from sorghum and known as “baijiu.” The most famous brand is Moutai, a name derived from an archaic English transcription of Maotai, the Chinese name for the riverside town where it is made.

所有酒厂生产的几乎是同一种产品：以高粱酿造的烈性无色酒，俗称“白酒”。其中最知名的品牌就是茅台，其英文名“Moutai”源自对其产地、河畔小镇茅台镇的老式英文音译。

Once a sleepy, one-factory backwater, Maotai has had an expensive makeover aimed at attracting Chinese tourists and buyers for local booze. Its central district is filled with ersatz traditional wooden buildings stuffed with baijiu stores and baijiu-themed restaurants.

茅台镇曾是一座寂寂无闻、仅有一家工厂的偏远小镇，后来斥巨资改造，试图吸引中国游客与本地酒品买家。中心区遍布仿传统木质建筑，内里挤满白酒专卖店与白酒主题餐厅。

2月，茅台当地一家酒厂举办的宴会上，宾客们举着白酒敬酒。茅台镇与贵州茅台酒厂，摄于2月。

Behind the state-controlled distillery, however, most of the hundreds of shops selling different brands of baijiu along a long shopping street are empty. Anxious sales staff, desperate for business, shout at passers-by, offering free tastings and discounts on purchases of baijiu ladled from large earthenware vats.

但在国营的酒厂背后，一条长长的商业街上，数百家售卖各类白酒的店铺大多空置。焦虑的销售人员为招揽生意，对着路人高声吆喝，提供免费品鉴和折扣优惠，白酒从大型陶缸中舀出售卖。

Yuan Yuan, who sells baijiu for the Qianzui Winery, a small producer, said sales picked up slightly before Chinese New Year on Feb. 17 but were down by at least a third compared with last year. A long funk by Chinese consumers worried by the falling value of their homes has curbed their spending on nonessential items, including alcohol.

在小型酒厂黔醉酒庄（音）从事白酒销售的袁媛（音）说，2月17日春节前销量略有回升，但较去年至少下滑三分之一。中国消费者因房价下跌忧心忡忡，抑制了包括酒类在内的非必需品消费。

Ms. Yuan used to handle sales from an office at her distillery, where she received a reliably steady flow of orders. Today, she drums up business from a street stall next to a hill decorated with a giant bottle of Moutai. Her distillery’s baijiu bottles — white ceramic with a red label — look almost identical to those of Kweichow Moutai but sell for just a few dollars each.

袁媛过去在酒厂办公室处理销售业务，订单稳定、源源不断。如今，她在一座装饰着巨型茅台瓶雕塑的小山脚下摆摊揽客。她所在酒厂的酒瓶使用白瓷瓶配红标签，外观与贵州茅台几乎无异，售价却仅有几十元一瓶。

“The economic climate has hurt us badly,” Ms. Yuan said.

“经济环境对我们打击太大了，”袁媛说。

袁媛在公园外推广黔醉酒业的白酒，小山上矗立着巨型瓶装的贵州茅台。茅台镇的一家白酒专卖店。

An acquired taste, the baijiu from Maotai, prized for its “sauce aroma,” tastes like grain alcohol blended with soy sauce and leaves its malodorous smell on the drinker’s breath for hours or even days.

茅台镇产的白酒是一种需要培养接受的口味，其著名的“酱香”口感像粮食酒混合酱油，饮用后冲鼻的酒气会在饮酒者的气息中留存几小时甚至几天。

“Under no, repeat no, circumstance should the president actually drink from his glass in response to banquet toasts” of baijiu, President Nixon was advised before his arrival in Beijing by his deputy national security adviser, Alexander Haig. (He ignored the warning.)

尼克松总统访华前，副国家安全顾问亚历山大·黑格曾警告他：“在宴会上，无论任何情况，重申一遍，任何情况，总统被敬酒时，都不能以饮酒作为回应，”他指的是白酒。（尼克松并未听从这一警告。）

Unlike many other Chinese products, from electric cars to stuffed toys, baijiu has struggled to break into foreign markers and relies almost entirely on domestic sales. For a time, these were so strong that Kweichow Moutai’s share price skyrocketed to make it China’s most valuable company, ahead of tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent.

与电动汽车、毛绒玩具等诸多中国产品不同，白酒始终难以打入海外市场，几乎完全依赖国内销售。曾几何时，国内需求极为旺盛，贵州茅台股价飙升，超越阿里巴巴、腾讯等科技巨头，成为中国市值最高的企业。

Over the past five years the company has lost more than a third of its market value. It also lost three managing directors to Communist Party corruption investigations and two more to management shake-ups forced by disappointing results.

过去五年，该公司市值蒸发超三分之一，还先后有三位总经理因中共反腐调查落马，另有两位因业绩不佳引发的管理层动荡离职。

Flying Fairy, the company’s flagship product, sold for more than $500 a bottle before China’s biggest property developer collapsed in late 2021 and set off a long slump in real estate prices. Known as “liquid gold,” it served for years as a stable alternative currency widely used to bribe officials.

贵州茅台的旗舰产品飞天茅台，在2021年底中国最大房企崩盘、引发房价长期下跌前，单瓶售价超3500元。这款被称为“液体黄金”的酒多年来作为稳定的替代货币，被广泛用于贿赂官员。

A bottle now sells for around $200.

如今，其单瓶售价仅约1400元。

茅台酒博物馆展出外国领导人访华饮用白酒的历史照片。

That is still expensive — far more than what it costs to produce — and a surge in demand for alcohol ahead of Chinese New Year festivities braked an accelerating decline of Moutai’s price.

这一价格仍然高昂，远高于生产成本，且春节前酒类需求激增，暂时遏制了茅台价格的加速下跌。

Flying Fairy’s loss of altitude, however, has still shattered the drink’s allure as a safe store of wealth for corrupt officials wary of holding cash and also for investors who had viewed buying up bottles of Moutai as a surefire bet.

但飞天茅台价格的大幅回落仍然彻底击碎了它作为避险财富储备的魅力——无论是对于不愿持有现金的腐败官员，还是将囤购茅台视为稳赚不赔投资的投资者。

Unable to unload unsold bottles on foreign markets, which last year gave China an immense trade surplus of $1.19 trillion but have little demand for high-octane sorghum spirits, China’s baijiu producers last year cut production nationwide by 12 percent, according to official statistics.

官方数据显示，由于无法在海外市场出售滞销库存（去年中国贸易顺差达1.19万亿美元，但海外对高度数高粱烈酒需求极低），中国白酒生产商去年全国产量削减12%。

China first put a damper on the “baijiu” business in 2012, when President Xi Jinping, newly installed as the country’s top leader, restricted drinking at military functions as part of a campaign to curb graft and drink-fueled indiscipline. Drinking baijiu fell further out of favor in 2016 after several officials in the central province of Anhui died from alcohol poisoning following boozy banquets.

中国对白酒行业的管控始于2012年，习近平主席就任国家最高领导人后，为遏制腐败与酒后失范行为，率先限制军队饮酒。2016年，中部省份安徽多名官员在酒宴后因过量酒精中毒身亡，白酒消费进一步失宠。

Starting last May, all alcohol, including Moutai, previously an indispensable feature of official and business banquets across China, has been banned at all government events.

从去年5月起，所有酒类——包括曾在全国公务与商务宴中不可或缺的茅台——被全面禁止出现在政府活动中。

“One drink can make you lose your position,” state media warned.

“一顿酒，就能丢‘乌纱帽’，”官媒如此警示。

A large red slogan atop the entrance to Kweichow Moutai’s huge distillery sends a somewhat different message: “Love our Moutai. Win glory for the country.” The company, which is still highly profitable but unaccustomed to communicating with the world outside its fortresslike premises, did not respond to interview requests.

而在贵州茅台巨大的酒厂入口上方，巨幅红色标语传递着截然不同的信息：“爱我茅台，为国争光。”这家依然盈利丰厚却不习惯与外界沟通的企业对采访请求未予回应。

贵州茅台酒厂正门。

Hardest hit by the downturn, however, are the small, privately owned distilleries, whose bottles of grain spirit never fetched the astronomical prices commanded by the state-controlled giant.

受行业低迷冲击最严重的是小型民营酒厂。它们生产的白酒从未达到那家国企巨头般的天价。

Li Ling, 36, a manager for another small baijiu producer, said sales were down by nearly 50 percent compared with last year. But he still declared himself an optimist, saying he had been steeled against setbacks by growing up in a poor farming family. He and his three siblings all escaped farm labor by finding jobs outside the family village.

36岁的李凌（音）是另一家小型白酒厂的经理，他表示销量较去年下滑近50%。但他仍自称乐观，称出身贫困农家的成长经历让他能直面挫折。他与三个兄弟姐妹都通过离开家乡外出务工摆脱了农活。

Whatever China’s current economic problems, Mr. Li said, there is no going back to past hardship. That people live much better now, he added, “is as obvious as a bug on a bald man’s head.”

李凌说，无论中国当前面临什么样的经济问题，都不可能回到过去的艰苦岁月。他还说，如今人们的生活有了明显的改善，“就像秃顶上的虱子——明摆着”。

Still, dozens of shops have shut down — or been shut down by government inspectors as part of a drive against counterfeit products and fraudulent sales techniques. An official notice on one shuttered store warned that it was illegal to claim to be a “special supplier of alcohol to the Communist Party or the military.”

即便如此，仍有数十家店铺关门——或是因政府打击假冒伪劣与虚假销售手段被查封。一家关闭店铺的官方通知显示，宣称自家的酒属于“党或军队特供”是违法行为。

The tight links between state business and baijiu, however, remain one of Maotai town’s main selling points.

但国企与白酒之间的紧密联系仍是茅台镇的核心卖点之一。

2月，茅台镇一家关门的白酒店。

Chinese Culture Liquor City, a sprawling hillside museum housed in a cluster of fake traditional pavilions, promotes baijiu by leaning heavily into the theme that drinking grain spirit, particularly Moutai, expresses national pride.

中国酒文化城是一座依山而建的庞大博物馆，由一片仿传统亭台楼阁构成，为了推广白酒，它极力强调，饮用粮食酒是民族自豪感的体现，尤其是茅台。

The museum features an A.I.-generated movie showing Americans turning their noses up at the Chinese drink at a 1915 trade fair in San Francisco, provoking fury from a representative from China, who smashes an earthenware container of baijiu onto the ground. The Americans, impressed by his fiery patriotic spirit, decide to take a taste and declare the Chinese alcohol excellent.

馆内一部人工智能生成的影片还原了1915年旧金山世博会的场景：美国人对这款中国白酒嗤之以鼻，激怒了中国代表，他将一坛白酒砸在地上。美国人被他炽热的爱国精神打动，决定品尝一下，最终称赞这款中国白酒品质卓越。

About 20 years later, according to local legend, Maotai helped revive Mao’s battered troops during the Long March. Passing through the town in 1935, exhausted Red Army soldiers are said to have treated their wounds and lifted their spirits with baijiu.

据当地传说，在此约20年后，茅台在长征中助力毛泽东麾下疲惫的红军重整旗鼓。1935年途经茅台镇时，筋疲力尽的红军战士用白酒疗伤、提振士气。

These days, eager to win young customers, Kweichow Moutai has developed baijiu-scented ice creams and a Moutai-flavored latte.

如今，为争取年轻消费者，贵州茅台还推出了白酒味冰淇淋与茅台风味拿铁。

Yuan Qingqing, a manager at Jinjiao, a private distillery employing more than 2,000 workers, acknowledged that the “market is shrinking.” But he added: “China will never abandon baijiu. We have over 5,000 years of history, and baijiu has a very long history, too.”

拥有2000余名员工的民营酒厂金窖酒业（音）经理袁庆庆（音）承认“市场在萎缩”，但他还说：“中国永远不会抛弃白酒。我们有5000多年的历史，白酒也有悠久的历史。”

在茅台“古城”入口处，一座巨型白酒瓶的旋转模型化身为儿童“旋转木马”，这座古城是当地传统民居的复刻再现。