Many Chinese families have a family motto. Some are carved on plaques in ancestral halls, some are written on the first page of a genealogy, and many more are simply things the elders say at the dinner table. Qifu is a family distillery at the foot of the Longmen Mountains in Mianzhu, run by the family since 1978. More than four decades on, the family's work still rests on four lines:
Cultivate virtue and enterprise together · Honesty is the foundation · Strive without pause, learn from the old methods · Character above the wine
The turn of the year is a good moment to look back, so here is where those four lines come from and how they show up in practice.
Virtue with enterprise, honesty first
The phrase "virtue and enterprise" goes back to the Book of Changes, which says that the noble person "advances in virtue and cultivates their work" 1. Character has to grow day by day and work has to be improved step by step, and neither can be neglected. For a distillery, the "work" is the craft and the business, and the "virtue" is the line one will not cross while doing them. A business that tends its work but not its virtue will not last, however much it sells. Virtue without skill, meanwhile, lets down the grain and the fermentation pits.
The second line is "honesty is the foundation." The Doctrine of the Mean says that "sincerity is the way of Heaven; to make oneself sincere is the way of humanity" 2. Distilling is a craft whose details cannot be seen in the glass. What grain was used, how long it fermented and how many years it rested are things the drinker may not be able to tell, but the distiller always knows. In 2018 Qifu was named a Sichuan Integrity Model Enterprise, recognition that rests on this second line.
Striving without pause, learning from the old
The third line is the longest: "strive without pause, learn from the old methods." Its first half comes from the Book of Changes:
As heaven moves ever vigorously, so the noble person strives without pause.
— Book of Changes, Commentary on the Images
"Learning from the old methods" describes how Qifu makes its spirit: pure grain and solid-state fermentation in old yellow-mud pits under a cap of red grain, about sixty days a batch; distillation in a traditional zeng still, with the spirit cut by quality as it runs; ageing in clay jars, then blending by a master blender. These methods are slow and laborious, but they stand the test of time. Here, striving does not mean chasing what is new and fast. It means putting in the work, day after day, within the old way of doing things.
Character above the wine
The last line is the plainest: "character above the wine." Whether a spirit is good is for the drinker to judge. Whether a person is good is something each of us has to keep up ourselves. In the Qifu view, get the person right and the wine will follow.
These four lines are not advertising copy. They show up in every step of the work. The everyday Jin Qifu range, the base spirit Qifu Shaofang, the old-pit Qifu Laojiao 15 and 20, and the flagship Bainian Qifu · 8 in its red bottle with gold calligraphy are each an attempt to live up to them.
As the New Year approaches and families gather to raise a glass, it is worth talking about the values your own family keeps. Pour small, sip slowly and drink responsibly, and save your warmest wishes for the year ahead.
