Cao Cao’s hometown and a Ming-era distillery.

Gujing Gongjiu — “Gujing tribute liquor” — is a strong-aroma (nongxiang) baijiu from Gujing town in Qiaocheng district, Bozhou, in northern Anhui. Chinese Wikipedia classes it as strong aroma and lists it as a Chinese geographical-indication product. Bozhou is the hometown of the late-Han warlord Cao Cao, and the brand’s story starts with him: in 196 CE, the company says, Cao Cao presented “Jiuyun Chunjiu,” a liquor of his home district, together with a written method for making it, the Jiuyun Jiufa, to Emperor Xian of Han. A 2023 article from Southern Weekly, republished by Xinhua, tells the same story and names the home district as Qiao county, today’s Qiaocheng.

The direct predecessor is a distillery called Gongxing Caofang. The group’s 2018 website dated it to 1515, the tenth year of the Ming Zhengde emperor; the Southern Weekly article says its liquor was listed as a tribute between the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In 1959, according to the same article, Gongxing Caofang was taken into provincial state ownership and expanded into the Gujing distillery; the group’s website called it the state-run Gujing Distillery of Bo county.

Gujing means “ancient well.” A 2021 Guangming article, republished on China Daily’s Chinese-language site, describes wells on the site attributed to the Northern Wei, Song and Ming periods, and a liquor-culture museum built in an ancient style. The group’s website adds that Bozhou is also the hometown of the celebrated physician Hua Tuo.

A tribute name and vintage labels.

The “gong” in the name means tribute, and the company has long built its marketing on that history. In 2001 the group’s website said its range covered two aroma styles, strong and light, and four brands: Gujinggong, Gujing, Ye Taiyang and Lao Ba Da. The same page said the company had introduced ten-year and five-year aged liquors named by their age, and had lowered both alcohol strength and prices in 1989 — steps it described as industry firsts. Both that page and the group’s 2018 website described the liquor in the same words, as “clear as crystal, fragrant as an orchid,” and called it the “peony among liquors.” The 2001 page also said that China’s trademark authority, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, had recognised “Gujinggong” as a well-known trademark in 1999, and that two of the secondary brands had companies of their own within the group, Anhui Ye Taiyang and Anhui Lao Ba Da. Ye taiyang means “wild sun”; lao ba da means “the old eight great,” and both the 2001 and 2018 websites described Gujing Gongjiu as one of China’s “old eight” famous liquors.

The present flagship is Gujing Gongjiu · Nianfen Yuanjiang, a line name usually rendered as “vintage original liquor.” The group’s 2018 website listed it as a brand of its own, alongside Gujing Gongjiu, a Gujing series and Huanghelou (“Yellow Crane Tower”). Chinese Wikipedia says Gujing acquired the Huanghelou liquor business in 2016, which took the company into light-aroma baijiu.

Heritage designations run through its communications. The group says the Gujing brewing site became a national key cultural-relics protection unit in 2013, and the Southern Weekly article says the Gujing Gongjiu brewing technique was added to China’s national intangible-cultural-heritage list in 2021. In October 2021 Bozhou hosted the first National Industrial Heritage Summit, and the Guangming article described the group’s plan for a “Nianfen Yuanjiang” traditional brewing area as national industrial heritage. The group also says its liquor-culture park became a national AAAA-rated scenic area in 2008.

Baijiu and its regions.

The seven brands in this group are all Chinese baijiu names: Jiannanchun, Xifeng, Langjiu, Gujing Gongjiu, Shui Jing Fang, Jiugui and Hongxing Erguotou. Four come from western China — Jiannanchun from Mianzhu and Shui Jing Fang from Chengdu, both in Sichuan; Langjiu from Erlang in Gulin County, also in Sichuan; and Xifeng from Fengxiang, near Baoji in Shaanxi. Gujing Gongjiu is made at Gujing, near Bozhou in Anhui; Jiugui comes from Jishou in western Hunan; and Hongxing Erguotou is a Beijing brand.

Baijiu is sorted into aroma styles, and the group spans several of them. Chinese Wikipedia classes Jiannanchun and Gujing Gongjiu as strong-aroma baijiu, Langjiu as sauce-aroma, Xifeng as the phoenix-aroma style, and Jiugui as a mixed-aroma spirit of its own fuyu type; Beijing Red Star describes its erguotou as light-aroma. Ownership varies just as widely. Shui Jing Fang’s Shanghai-listed company is controlled by Diageo; Jiugui’s Shenzhen-listed company sits within the state food group COFCO; Gujing’s company has been listed in Shenzhen since 1996; and Hongxing Erguotou’s maker is owned by Beijing state investors.

A baijiu brand’s identity is usually carried by a name, a place and a bottle rather than by a single logo, and the company behind the name may have been merged, listed or sold many times since the brand began. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its baijiu is distilled and bottled, and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A state-controlled group listed in Shenzhen.

Gujing has stayed under state control. The group says the Gujing distillery became the core of Anhui Gujing Group when the group was formed in 1992. Chinese Wikipedia says Anhui Gujing Distillery Co., Ltd. was spun off from the group in 1996 and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that year — B shares in June and A shares in September — and that its headquarters are in Gujing town. In its half-year report summary published in August 2026, the listed company named Anhui Gujing Group as its controlling shareholder, classed as a state-owned legal person, and reported no change in its controlling shareholder or actual controller during the period. The 2023 Southern Weekly article named Liang Jinhui as the group’s party secretary and chairman.

The group has also reached beyond baijiu. Its 2001 website listed subsidiaries in beer, wine, hotels, property and pharmaceuticals, and its 2018 website described manufacturing, industrial, finance and culture-and-tourism businesses, with baijiu at the core.

For a design guide, Gujing Gongjiu shows how a baijiu brand can build an identity from one historical figure and one place — Cao Cao, a well town and a tribute name. Compare Yanghe, from neighbouring Jiangsu, and Fenjiu, the light-aroma baijiu of Shanxi. For this guide we use a lacquer red, an imperial gold and pale well stone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Gujing Gongjiu’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.