Shenzhen Supermarkets and Their Liquor x Lazy Blog.

On my last trip I didn’t manage to take many photos of the liquor at the supermarkets, and it kind of nagged at me… so this time I shot a lot, all over the place. In the end, if you have an AI analyze them it tells you all the fine details, so they all turn out to be useful later.

Liquors like these

The small bottles are nice for a solo drink with dinner, so I’ve become quite interested in them.

Somewhat pricier bottles

Looking at the prices, Korean duty-free shops are much cheaper. There are some liquors Korean duty-free doesn’t carry, but otherwise duty-free is the answer. The problem, though, is that Korean duty-free is cheaper than Chinese duty-free… So in China, the right move seems to be buying liquor that’s only sold in China.

Various liquors

Qinghua Lang seems about the same as duty-free… Wuliangye is much more expensive… I can’t quite figure out the pricing system…

Yellow dragon fruit

Red dragon fruit doesn’t taste like much, but yellow dragon fruit is sweet.

Kiwi berries

I think these are hardy kiwis… interesting stuff here…

Macadamias, hawthorn and so on…

Supermarket liquor

These are the cheap ones. Price-wise, they’re around a few thousand won.

Supermarket liquor

The pricier ones run 30,000-40,000 won, and from there the bottles start getting kind of pretty. The fancier the bottle, the higher the price.

Xifeng Jiu

Even famous names like Xifeng Jiu and Luzhou Laojiao have decent entry-level bottles in the 30,000-50,000 won range.

Guotai

There are expensive ones too.

Shede

You can roughly see the price and the tier at a glance.

Bai Juyi, Gujing Gongjiu, and Fenjiu

Next time I go, I’d like to try something like Gujing Gongjiu…

Luzhou Laojiao is popular too…

Liquors

Anything with name value is expensive…

Good-value liquors

Maopu Kuqiao (tartary buckwheat) liquor seemed to be popular…

Zhuyeqing

This one tasted rather different from what I expected. It’s a sweet liqueur flavor, or maybe a herbal-medicine flavor, and since Zhuyeqing is originally a health tonic liquor, it does taste like something that would make you healthier. But Zhuyeqing is a regular fixture in wuxia novels, and this flavor doesn’t suit a rough-and-tumble wuxia hero at all. It’s more like a drink for old men who sip a glass a day for their health… I figured a light-aroma (qingxiang) Fenjiu would suit a wuxia hero better.

Xifeng Jiu

I bought it because it’s a “feng-aroma” type, but it wasn’t great. Then I found out I have an old record of drinking Xifeng Jiu and being amazed by its huge pineapple aroma. I suspect the cheaper versions barely show a trace of that. There’s also a rumor that Xifeng Jiu sold outside Shaanxi Province is lower in quality.

Chaoshan noodle shop

I’ve written about Chaoshan-style restaurants before, and there are lots of these places. It’s a bit hard to walk into one if you don’t speak Chinese, though. Anyway, plenty of people were there for a meal from early morning…

Supermarket liquor section

There’s Bainian Hutu too… it gives you a rough idea of what kind of liquor they sell.

Supermarket liquor

Roughly the same lineup as elsewhere. Guotai seems to sell well too…

Supermarket liquor

Here too it’s more or less the same liquors. Langjiu and Fenjiu seem popular…

Liquor shop

They had taps, so you can fill up on kaoliang liquor or other spirits to take home. I wondered how people buy liquor at a place like this, and it seems they buy it by the box… Apparently much of it goes to cooking or infusing fruit liquor rather than being drunk straight. Though in that case there’s not much point using an expensive liquor.

Roughly like this…

The most expensive one here was 88 yuan for 500ml, which doesn’t seem that pricey, but I didn’t know how to order so I just looked. It seems you need to bring some kind of bottle to buy it.

Fruit shop