A Town, Built on Rice Liquor

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This morning, we left our darling Wen Jun Mansion hotel and drove about four hours to Yibin city and checked into the Grand Hotel of Yibin.
Once we had gotten our belongings sorted into our rooms, we went to lunch at the Dragon and Phoenix Noodle Shop for a hot pot lunch. The "hot pot" is a typically Sichuanese meal that consists of a boiling pot of herbs and spiced broth in the middle of the table in which noodles, meat balls, small cuts of meat, vegetables, etc., are cooked and shared family-style.
After lunch, we visited a small town that housed both the Wu Liang Ye Rice Liquor Factory and its employees; the entire town space was devoted to the production of the largest volume of rice liquor in China, and had been built to serve that factory and the community necessary to support it. Before arriving, we had been told this was the largest factory of its kind in the country, but I don't believe any of us fully understood what that meant until we passed through the gates of the complex. Entering into the town was like driving into the full-scale version of the Santa's Village models that show up during Christmastime, except instead of elves, snow, and "North Pole"/"Santa's Workshop" signs, there were laborers going about their daily lives, the ever-present smell of five particular fermenting grains, and giant W logos everywhere.
The process of making rice liquor at Wu Liang Ye was no different that the other factories we have been to, it was just on a much larger scale, and so the most of our visit was spent looking at specialty bottles of this brand's liquor, learning how much the company produces, and walking up a staggering journey of steps to see the liquor goddess statue, the span of the complex, and the worlds' largest table. As well, we tasted a not-quite-finished rice liquor batch (72%!,(MISSING) and yes you're reading that right), so that we might understand the necessity of fully distilling the liquor.
After our trip to that final rice liquor factory, we visited a factory which produced something most of us found a bit more palatable; fermented vegetable product. Sure, it sounds less than stellar, but it's the staple ingredient in bao zhu (steam buns) and a key fixture in everyday Chinese cuisine. What that boils down to, really, is that we've been eating it the entire time we've been here, mostly without being aware of it. After we were told about the many applications of said vegetable product, I realized just how prevalent it was in the food I've been eating since we got to China in much the same way I realized suddenly, as a toddler who couldn't taste the garlic in her mashed potatoes, that salt was in almost everything I ate, and that so many things I had eaten would be shadows of themselves without it. Bao zhu, for example, would just be pork with a little bit of salt and pepper were it not for the fermented vegetable bits chopped into the meat before filling the buns.
The factory owner was especially happy to meet us, had the chef of the factory prepare a few platters of food for us to showcase the product (simple, but incredibly delicious), and bid us a very kind farewell upon our departure.
I hadn't expected it, because I just don't like rice liquor and didn't realize I'd been eating the vegetable product for a week already, but today was actually very informative, pleasant, and a nice look into two very profitable and prolific products produced in China, specifically to meet the tastes of its people.

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