What can you buy for a dollar?
Today, in the year 4, one yuan can buy a pencil, a game currency, or print two A0 paper files. It's probably hard for you to imagine that in Nanchang, Jiangxi, you can drink a bowl full of water and wine for one yuan.
When it comes to fine wine from all over China, people rarely think of Jiangxi, but if you know a few Jiangxi friends, you will definitely see Jiangxi people's obsession with wine. Water wine, liquor, Sanhua wine, Jiangxi people almost do not drink alcohol, and no matter how much alcohol is drunk, many people have their own wine-making "small workshop" at home, and Xiying Water Hotel was born in such an environment.
For a long time, the store of the Xiying Water Hotel did not even have a signboard, and it was difficult for passers-by in a hurry to notice it, but everyone in the neighborhood knew about it. The proprietress Wang Xiying is over sixty years old, and she took over the store from her parents in 35 years, and has been persisting for 0 years.
The Hosoei Water Hotel in Tuas Temple. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
Wang Xiying's shop sells only two kinds of liquor, one is rice wine puree, and the other is "water wine" made by adding water to rice wine puree. The "one-yuan water wine" that is popular on the Internet refers to the latter. As the old Nanchang people said, "the first drink is like honey, and the stamina is like a knife", the first taste of water wine has a sweet and mellow rice fragrance, and there is a warm and sweet taste of brown glutinous rice after the stomach, and the stamina of water wine is also quite long, and the foreign drinkers who do not know the inside are often drunk because of greed.
It is said that there are two types of people who come here to buy wine, one is the old Nanchang people who have drunk it for decades, and the other is the young people who come to check in. The spread of short videos has made the Xiying Water Hotel, which is "one yuan and a bowl of water and wine", a new Internet celebrity check-in point in Nanchang. Wang Xiying can identify these two types of customers at a glance, and in the face of the doubts of new customers, she will even suggest that the other party taste them first before deciding whether to consume them.
According to Wang's business philosophy, there are three types of guests she does not entertain: the elderly in their eighties, drunkards who are drunk and unconscious, and minors. Insisting on not raising prices and selling alcohol selectively - these "anti-commercial" business ideas make people feel incredible. Wang Xiying told me that these things came from her mother's words and deeds: "To make money, you have to rely on your conscience, and my mother has always taught us this." ”
To a certain extent, this old shop carries not only the unique skills of brewing water wine, but also the epitome of Nanchang's wine culture.
In the early morning, the old street of Tuas Courtyard has not yet woken up, and the aroma of steamed glutinous rice has wafted from Wang Xiying's water hotel.
Tucked away in a corner of a residential area in the downtown area of Nanchang, this water hotel has a floor area of less than 4 square meters and only 0 tables.
每天早上9點，王細英的店鋪就正式開門了。街坊老顧客們習慣早上先來一碗水酒，甚至一些客人會用老闆給的鑰匙自己開門進來，盛一碗酒，配上一根外帶的油條或一碟拌粉，伴著水酒下肚，有時遇上友人則會聊上幾句家常，再去菜市場買菜、回家。店主忙到無暇兼顧時，這些老熟客甚至會幫著賣酒。
Cantonese people drink morning tea, while Jiangxi people drink morning wine - this is the vigorous side of Jiangxi drinkers. In most people's minds, wine is the protagonist of the night, and the neon lights in front of the bar gradually come on after nightfall. But in Nanchang, it was a bowl of wine in the early morning that started the locals' day. Different from the fixed combination of fritters and soybean milk, Nanchang people are more accustomed to mixing fritters with water and wine.
2025年3月18日，江西南昌。遊客在三江鎮集貿市場的“早酒一條街”一同舉杯。（圖/IC photo）
According to Wang Xiying, the degree of water and wine will not be higher than 10 degrees, which is comparable to that of beer. Locals also believe that water and wine have certain medicinal properties, cold drinking can help digestion, and hot drinks have the effect of dispelling cold and dampness, invigorating blood and removing blood stasis. For these old Nanchang, a bowl of water and wine in the morning is more refreshing than coffee.
The custom of drinking morning wine in Jiangxi has a long history, and the morning wine culture in Sanjiang Town, Nanchang City is a typical example. For a long time, Sanjiang people have the tradition of catching the market on the "three, six, and nine" of the lunar calendar, and the local vegetable farmers get up in the middle of the night to pick vegetables, and transport the vegetables to the market while they are fresh.
In Sanjiang, the dishes used to accompany the morning wine are sometimes surprisingly "hard", and the butchers in the market will take their own ingredients to the morning hotel to process, and poultry such as local chickens and ducks are frequent customers on the table, and even soft-shelled turtles, yellow eels and other ingredients will appear.
Nanchang people can't live without wine, and the audience of glutinous rice wine is not divided into men and women. Wang Xiying said that the "confinement wine" that Jiangxi women drink during confinement is also a kind of rice wine to nourish the body; Similar to the customs of Shaoxing, Zhejiang, when a baby girl is born in Jiangxi, the family will also bury a few jars of wine, and when she marries in the future, they will dig out the "daughter red" as a dowry.
It is these unique customs that make glutinous rice wine an indispensable part of Nanchang people's lives.
Wang Xiying's family has five siblings, and she is the youngest child of her generation. The ancestors of the Wang family came from Wanzai County, Yichun City, and at that time, every household in Wanzai County would make water and wine, and make wine for themselves. For as long as Wang Xiying can remember, wine is an indispensable part of the family, and she still remembers the figure of her grandparents making wine.
算上爺爺奶奶輩，王細英的家族釀酒技藝已有上百年的歷史。1937年，王細英的母親16歲，結婚後便跟隨丈夫的家庭從事釀酒。改革開放初期,水酒店搬到了如今的滕王閣附近，靠近贛江，是老南昌的核心區域。據王細英回憶，在搬遷之前，店鋪所在的街道熙熙攘攘，最繁盛的時期不到1公里就開了20多家水酒店。
後來重建滕王閣，附近商戶拆遷，王細英一家便將店鋪搬到了如今位於大士院的位置。那是1990年5月15日，王細英正式接手這家店，開始了她的釀酒生涯。
In fact, Wang Xiying had no plans to inherit the winemaking family business when she was young. It wasn't until the end of the 800s that she was unexpectedly laid off, and her mother persuaded her to take over the shop when her siblings were both employed. Later, Wang Xiying's husband was also laid off, and the two began to run the store together, which they have been doing for decades. "My youth is on this." She laughs.
11/0/0, Nanchang, Jiangxi. Neighbors sitting in a liquor shop drinking rice wine and chatting. (Photo/IC photo)
In 1 years, with the rise in prices, under the persuasion of old acquaintances, Wang Xiying decided to raise the price of a bowl of water and wine from 0 jiao to 0 yuan, and she has maintained this price since then. "The price of food has not risen, and the price of wine should not have increased. We're not here to make money, we're trying to give the old neighborhoods a place to get together. She remembered what her mother had taught her. Also because of the advertisement of "no price increase for life", Xiying Water Hotel has quickly become popular on social media in the past two years.
"The boss is not here to make money, he just loves to chat with people." Some guests commented so. After being laid off, Wang Xiying inherited the family business, and there is a stable pension every month after reaching retirement age. "I really don't sell alcohol for a living." She confessed to me.
In good weather, whenever you enter the store, you can listen to two sentences of the daily gossip of the locals. When a drinker came, Wang Xiying lifted the lid of the wine vat and put on the wine, cut a plate of braised vegetables, and said a couple of sentences to the guests on the table when it was delivered to the table. This shop has been staying here for more than 30 years, and everyone in Tuas Temple knows about it.
A customer came from afar and wrote a poem to Wang Xiying's store, and she hung the calligraphy and paintings sent by the other party on the wall of the store. This shop has now become the memory of Wang Xiying and the drinkers, and the water and wine are the link between them. Sometimes the store is closed, and the old customers don't know where to spend their time for a while.
The guest inscribed a poem to the Xiying Water Hotel, and Wang Xiying hung it on the wall of the store. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)
In downtown Nanchang, there are very few traditional water hotels like Wang Xiying's house left, which makes the locals cherish it, and some customers even if they are more than ten kilometers away have to come to Wang Xiying's shop to get a bowl of water and wine, or carry a bucket full of puree rice wine home.
Wang Xiying said that under normal circumstances, more than 100 catties of glutinous rice raw materials are needed for each vat of wine. In the peak period, a total of more than 0 catties of glutinous rice are consumed every day. There are many processes of brewing, such as washing rice, steaming rice, mixing koji, fermentation, and finally secondary fermentation with water, each step is completed by manpower, which is not only a hard work, but also a great test of the experience of the brewer.
The raw materials of the water and wine sold in the store are glutinous rice from Fengxin County, Jiangxi Province. This glutinous rice is full of grains and has a delicate texture, which is the key to making high-quality water wine. Generally speaking, around 30°C is the ideal fermentation temperature, if the temperature is too high or too low, the wine will "catch a cold". "If the wine is 'cold', the sour taste can't be suppressed." For more than 0 years, the couple has been sticking to this set of "winemaking biological clocks" and steadily producing water wine with a balanced flavor.
Since the flavor of wine is largely dependent on the control of temperature, it is difficult for many water hotels to produce sweet and mellow water wine stably. Nanchang people's tricky mouth, a light taste can give insight into the level of brewing of the store.
In recent years, as they have grown older, Wang Xiying and her husband have not been as strong as before, and her brother Wang Baigen has not often come to the store to help after a serious illness a few years ago. Nowadays, the amount of glutinous rice they use every day has been reduced to 70-0 catties, and the amount of wine they make is not as good as before. Still, they stick to the tradition.
2021年3月13日，江西南昌。李渡燒酒作坊遺址。（圖/視覺中國）
Nowadays, water wine is not only a part of the eating habits of Nanchang people, but also related to the inheritance of a traditional skill. However, there are still many challenges to this legacy. Wang Xiying told me that on the one hand, winemaking is really hard, and the low income also discourages many young people; On the other hand, the impact of modern lifestyles has also made the living space of traditional water hotels more and more narrow.
Who will take the bowl of wine? The question of the inheritance of winemaking skills has always troubled Wang Xiying. Her children were too busy with their own businesses to take over the shop, and she herself was already in her sixties. But as long as her body allows, she will always persevere: "This is the feelings of my ancestors, and I can't let it break in my hands." ”