1. Why Hebei's Drinks Industry Deserves a Second Look

Liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing is, in many provinces, a scattered ledger: baijiu is baijiu, beverages are beverages, tea is tea, with little connecting them. But in Hebei these lines twist, unexpectedly, into a shared temperament. They mostly win not on refinement or fashion, but on something plain, durable and grown close to the everyday tastes of northerners.

Hebei is neither a great tea-growing province like the Jiangnan region nor a famous-liquor highland like the southwest. Yet it holds a few cards worth naming: a baijiu named after one of its own cities and formally recognized as an independent aroma type; a plant-protein drink that is all but mandatory at northern family gatherings during the Spring Festival; a wine region that produced China's first dry white; and an ancient distillery whose fire has not gone out in more than a thousand years. Singled out, none is dazzling; together, they form the remarkably solid base of a major northern drinks province.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute treats Hebei's drinks industry as a regional case because it carries an interesting contradiction. On one side is a thick inheritance accumulated through jar fermentation, time-honored houses and established wine regions — steady and long-keeping. On the other, this is the very place where several famous hits in China's beverage history rose and fell, schooled and rewritten again and again by the market. That state of "a very thick old base, yet forever wrestling with the market" is the truest portrait of this sector. This article endorses no company's market performance; it simply lays out the real landscape of the province's drinks industry.

2. The Baijiu Line: An Aroma Type Named After Hebei

To understand Hebei's liquor, one must first grasp the weight of three characters: "Lao Baigan."

Within China's baijiu aroma-type system, alongside strong, light and sauce aromas, there is an independent aroma type formally established in 2004 and given a national standard in 2007 — the Lao Baigan aroma type. Its representative is Hebei's Hengshui Lao Baigan. An aroma type named after a northern city's specialty is uncommon on the baijiu map; it shows that Hebei liquor walks its own road on flavor: elegant, mellow, winning not by piling on aromatics. Hengshui Lao Baigan relies on a distinctive jar (digang) fermentation craft, with low fusel-oil content in the liquor; the folk verdict — "slow to intoxicate, quick to sober, no headache" — rests on this very craft, whose traditional brewing technique is now on the national intangible cultural heritage list.

The body holding up this line is the listed company Hengshui Lao Baigan Liquor. Per its public annual report, the company posted 2023 revenue of about 5.257 billion yuan and net profit attributable to the parent of about 666 million yuan, with revenue up nearly 13% year on year. Its base is firmly rooted in Hebei: that year, the home province alone contributed revenue on the order of 3 billion yuan, the larger share, making it a true "king of Hebei." But its troubles are also in the numbers: the scale of the flagship Hengshui Lao Baigan series and its presence at high-end price points still trail leading national names by a clear margin, and for years the company has been pushing repeatedly at the twin problems of "going national" and "moving upmarket."

Hebei's baijiu is not Hengshui alone. By public industry tallies, among Hebei's large-scale baijiu makers the top three firms — Hengshui Lao Baigan, Chengde Qianglong Zui (Bancheng Shaoguo) and Handan Congtai — together account for more than half of the province's baijiu manufacturing revenue. Bancheng Shaoguo is a time-honored house in Chengde, Congtai is rooted in Handan; add Liuling Zui in Xushui, Baoding, and the Shacheng region in Zhangjiakou, and Hebei baijiu shows a pattern of "one aroma type leading, several time-honored houses holding their own ground," rather than a single dominant player.

3. Liuling Zui: A Thousand-Year Distillery That Never Stops Burning

Among Hebei's baijiu, Liuling Zui is a special presence — its value lies not entirely in sales, but in the land beneath it.

Liuling Zui sits in Xushui, Baoding. Its brewing is said to trace back to the Jin–Yuan period, when a local family surnamed Zhang ran the "Runquanyong" distillery, passed down by word and practice to this day across nearly a thousand years. Its hardest asset is the Liuling Zui ancient distillery site — a major site under national protection; the ancient distillery is also listed as national industrial heritage; the Liuling Zui brewing technique has entered the national intangible cultural heritage list; and the brand itself is among the first group of time-honored houses. An ancient distillery that has burned for over a thousand years, with its physical site preserved intact, is scarce across the whole national baijiu industry.

The significance of Liuling Zui is that it guards the "historical depth" end for Hebei baijiu. While Hengshui Lao Baigan uses an aroma type and a listed company to contest market share, Liuling Zui keeps something else: it pulls Hebei's brewing timeline genuinely back nearly a thousand years and fixes it in place with a site one can see and touch. For a province not famous for its liquor, that kind of "old" is something other places cannot copy.

4. Chengde Lulu: A Cup of Almond Milk Holding Up a Northern Memory

If baijiu is the root of Hebei's drinks, then the loudest name on the beverage line is Chengde Lulu.

Chengde Lulu is a listed company, mainly making plant-protein beverages, its core product the can of almond milk. Per its public annual report, the company posted 2023 revenue of about 2.955 billion yuan and net profit attributable to the parent of about 638 million yuan, with both revenue and profit reaching record highs; and within that revenue, almond milk alone made up about 96.87% — almost "one product holding up an entire company." For many northern families, setting out a case of Lulu almond milk for Spring Festival visits is a habit of nearly thirty years; this drink long ago became less a beverage than a seasonal memory.

But extreme reliance on a single product, and on the northern market, is also Chengde Lulu's clearest worry. Public reports note repeatedly that the company's revenue has hovered around 3 billion yuan for years, and that its efforts to expand into the south have stumbled again and again, with "torn between north and south" becoming its label. To make a cup of almond milk a near-universally recognized national drink in the north is no small feat; but to carry it past the Qinling–Huaihe line and into southerners' shopping carts remains a problem Chengde Lulu has yet to fully solve. Its story shows that Hebei beverages are strong at "rooting deep" and weak at "spreading wide."

5. Great Wall Wine and Xurisheng: One Region's Glory, One Hit's Lesson

Hebei's drinks history has two episodes one cannot get around — one written in glory, one in lesson.

The glory is in the Shacheng region of Huailai, Zhangjiakou. Sitting near the 40th parallel's wine-making golden belt, it has a long history of grape growing. In 1979, China's first bottle of dry white wine was born here; in 1983, with approval, the relevant parties jointly established China Great Wall Wine Co., headquartered at Shacheng in Huailai and folded into the COFCO system. One of the starting points of China's modern wine industry, in other words, landed on this stretch of Hebei land, and Huailai Shacheng remains an important domestic wine region today. This is one of the few entries in Hebei's drinks industry that carries the color of a "pioneer."

The lesson is written in three characters: "Xurisheng." In the 1990s, Xurisheng — originating in Jizhou, Hengshui, Hebei — almost single-handedly created the iced-tea category in China and was for a time a nationwide sensation; public records show its sales peaked at around 3 billion yuan near 1998. But what rose fast fell fast: from 2001 the once-hit slid quickly, halting distribution in the second half of 2002 and leaving behind a scatter of trademarks. Those trademarks later changed hands several times and were won at auction by relevant parties in Hengshui in 2011. The rise and fall of Xurisheng is a case repeatedly cited in China's beverage history: it proves Hebei can create a hit that leads the nation, and it warns that, without sustained organizing power and brand management, even the fastest rise cannot be held.

For sales teams supplying these liquor and beverage makers upstream — whether providing raw grain, distiller's yeast, fruit-juice concentrate, plant-protein ingredients, sugar and flavorings, or offering fermentation, filling, sterilization, easy-open-can and cold-chain equipment lines — to reach Hebei's baijiu, plant-protein beverage, wine and bottled-water processing factory customers at scale, Tianxia Gongchang lets you filter, along the two dimensions of region and industry, the factory directory and decision-maker contacts of Hebei's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing, turning upstream sales development from door-to-door inquiry into following a clear map.

6. The Institute's Observation: Only by Holding the Root Can One Speak of Going Out

Pulling the baijiu, beverage and wine lines together, Hebei's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing shows a shape of "deep roots, yet forever wrestling at the outer ring."

Its roots are solid: a Lao Baigan aroma type named after a Hebei city and standing on jar fermentation and a national intangible-heritage craft; an ancient distillery that has burned for over a thousand years with its site intact; a wine region that produced China's first dry white; a cup of almond milk made into a northern national memory. None of these was hammered out by marketing — they are an inheritance settled by time and craft, the kind other provinces cannot learn even if they try.

But its wrestling is just as real. Hengshui Lao Baigan can hold its home province yet pushes repeatedly, with slow progress, at going national and moving upmarket; Chengde Lulu made almond milk a household name in the north yet has never cleared the hurdle of southward expansion; Xurisheng once dazzled the nation with a single hit yet failed to turn the speed of its rise into staying power. The glories and regrets of this sector almost all cluster around one thing: whether it can move from a single province, a single category, a single hit, toward a bigger plate.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute's view is this: what matters next for Hebei's drinks industry is not creating another Xurisheng-style hit, but whether it can convert the roots it has already settled into a sustained ability to go out — whether the Lao Baigan aroma type can grow from a regional aroma into a value symbol that national consumers willingly accept; whether Chengde Lulu can, while holding its northern base, truly take a bite of the southern market; whether an old region like Huailai Shacheng can, riding the window of recovering domestic wine, cash in its "pioneer" identity once more. These questions have no single answer, yet together they decide whether Hebei can shake off the old script of "can make a hit, cannot hold the realm." For a northern drinks province with a base that is hardly thin, holding the root has only ever been the first half of the sentence; the second half is whether it dares, and is able, to go out.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Hebei liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing factory directory and industry data)
  • Hebei Hengshui Lao Baigan Liquor Co. 2023 annual report, Shanghai Stock Exchange, Stockstar, NetEase Finance: Hengshui Lao Baigan's 2023 revenue, net profit attributable to parent, home-province revenue share and going-national operations
  • China Jiuzhi, Baidu Baike, China Daily, Visit Beijing: the establishment of the Lao Baigan aroma type as an independent type in 2004, its 2007 national standard, and Hengshui Lao Baigan's jar fermentation craft as national intangible cultural heritage
  • Ministry of Commerce liquor distribution monitoring statistics, Jiemian News, Securities Times: the combined revenue and profit share of Hebei's top three large-scale baijiu makers (Hengshui Lao Baigan, Chengde Qianglong Zui / Bancheng Shaoguo, Handan Congtai)
  • Time-Honored Brand Digital Museum, Ministry of Commerce time-honored brand information platform, Baidu Baike: the Liuling Zui ancient distillery site in Xushui (national protected site, national industrial heritage), Liuling Zui brewing technique as national intangible heritage and first-group time-honored house
  • Chengde Lulu Co. 2023 annual report, Securities Times, The Beijing News, Jiemian News, ifeng Finance: Chengde Lulu's 2023 revenue, net profit, almond-milk revenue share and reliance on the northern market
  • COFCO official site, Wikipedia, Wine-World, Baidu Baike: the 1983 joint establishment of Great Wall Wine at Huailai Shacheng, the birthplace of China's first dry white in 1979, and the Shacheng wine region
  • NetEase, MBA Lib, Zhihu Column: Xurisheng's origin in Jizhou, Hengshui, Hebei, its sales peak near 1998, the halt of distribution in 2002, and the auction of its trademarks in Hengshui in 2011