Today’s City Sun (), a commercial morning paper published in Qingdao by the Dazhong News Group.
The paper’s top story concerns the apprehension of a criminal gang that smashed up a hotel nightclub on March 27 and engaged in drug trafficking. Nie Lei, the ringleader, was arrested along with more than 130 other gang members.
Perhaps of more interest to readers is the front-page feature story, which asks “How many bottles of genuine Maotai are there in Qingdao?”
Maotai, one of China’s most famous brands of alcohol, is produced in the town of Maotai, Guizhou Province. Back in 2004, a bottle of the 106-proof variety would retail for 368 RMB, but now it commonly sells for over a thousand. However, other liquor stores in Qingdao are offering deep, deep discounts on bottles labeled with the official “Kweichow Moutai” trademark. What gives?
In the three-page feature, which feels increasingly like a soft ad for the conglomerate that produces the stuff, City Sun reporters take a trip to Guizhou, where they find that the entire town, it seems, is involved in the business of producing alcohol under the Maotai brand name. Coming back to Qingdao, they learn that just one company in the city is authorized to distribute genuine, top-of-the-line Maotai.
So how many bottles of genuine Maotai are there in Qingdao? The newspaper does not arrive at a satisfactory answer.
- City Sun (Chinese): How many bottles of genuine Maotai are there in Qingdao?, part 2, part 3, Nie Lei apprehended