Changyu: 134 Years From Cowherd to State Banquet

The Cowherd

Around 1840, in a Hakka village in Dabu County of Chaozhou, Guangdong, a boy was born into severe poverty. Inadequate clothing, inadequate food, herding cattle as a child.

The boy’s name was Zhang Zhenxun, courtesy name Bishi. The world came to know him as Cheong Fatt Tze: the Rockefeller of the East.

Every business he founded carried the character yu (裕). Take it apart: yi (衣, clothing) and gu (谷, grain). To be clothed and fed. A man who had been hungry as a child wrote that hunger into the name of every company he built.

Southbound to the Nanyang

Around 1856, the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion and the Red Turban uprising in Guangdong pushed the 16-year-old Zhang Bishi out of China. He landed in Dutch East Indies’ Batavia, today’s Jakarta.

He began as a water carrier, delivering canal water to ships and households. Then a rice-shop apprentice. In 1867 he married the shop owner’s daughter, getting his father-in-law’s seed capital. From food supply he expanded into tin mining, rubber, coffee, shipping, banking, real estate, traditional medicine, manufacturing. By the 1890s his commercial empire spanned Batavia, Medan in Sumatra, Penang on the Malay Peninsula, and Singapore.

At peak, an estate of 80 million taels of silver. The Qing court appointed him consul in Penang, then consul general in Singapore. Both the British and Dutch colonial governments kept close ties with him. The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion he built in Penang (the famous Blue Mansion) is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

A Dinner in Batavia

A reception at the French consulate in Batavia. A French soldier who had served in China told Zhang Bishi a story.

During the Xianfeng era, French troops stationed near Tianjin sent men to Yantai. They found wild grapes growing across the hills. They picked them in quantity and used a small military press to make wine. “The wine was rich and aromatic, comparable in quality to French brandy.”

The Frenchman added: Yantai sits at a latitude close to Bordeaux, with similar climate and soil. (In fact Penglai is at 37.8°N, Bordeaux at 44.8°N, a seven-degree gap. But in 1871, no one was going to check.)

The story sat in Zhang Bishi’s head for twenty years.

Three Million Taels of Silver

In 1891, the late-Qing reformer Sheng Xuanhuai invited Zhang Bishi to Yantai to discuss railways and mining. On the same trip Zhang surveyed Yantai’s grape cultivation and soils, confirming the place could make wine.

In 1892, Changyu Brewing Company was founded. Three million taels of silver invested, less than 4% of his net worth. Zhang from his surname. Yu from prosperity. The Guangxu emperor’s tutor Weng Tonghe, then Minister of Revenue and Grand Councillor, personally wrote the company name. Li Hongzhang and Wang Wenshao signed the operating license.

A Nanyang overseas Chinese, in a country where he had never made wine, founded Asia’s first modern winery.

Asia’s First Underground Cellar

Construction began in 1894. The site sits one metre below sea level, less than 100 metres from the coast.

Eleven years. Three collapses and rebuilds. The largest problem was seawater seepage. The eventual construction method combined Eastern and Western techniques (specific details have been lost to history) and produced a cellar of 3,054 square metres, more than 7 metres underground, with year-round constant temperature and humidity. Foreign engineers visiting at the time called it “a miracle in the history of wine cellar construction.”

Baron Max von Babo

Changyu’s first chief winemaker was Baron Max von Babo. Austro-Hungarian. Vice-consul in Yantai. He came from a winemaking dynasty. His father, August Wilhelm Freiherr von Babo, was one of the founders of Austrian viticulture; he invented the KMW (Klosterneuburger Mostwaage), the Austrian grape-ripeness measurement system still in use today.

Max approached Zhang himself. From Europe he brought in 124 grape varieties across three shipments, 690,000 cuttings in total. Most could not thrive in the local terroir. The key breakthrough was using local wild Vitis amurensis as rootstock to graft the European vinifera. He also ordered six 150-hectolitre oak barrels from Austria, supervised the cellar construction, and established a modern winemaking workflow.

In 1899, seven years after founding, China’s first bottle of grape wine was produced. In 1914, China’s first brandy.

A century later, in 2005, another Austrian winemaking dynasty’s fifteenth-generation heir, Lenz Moser, came to China. He partnered with Changyu to create Chateau Changyu Moser XV in Ningxia. A historical echo.

Four Golds at Panama

The Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Zhang Bishi personally brought wines for display.

Keya Brandy, Red Rose Wine, Gewürztraminer / Vermouth, Riesling. All four won gold. The first time Chinese wine appeared on an international stage. Only one original medal survives, kept at the Changyu Wine Culture Museum.

Pinzhong Liquan

On 21 August 1912, Sun Yat-sen took a steamer from Shanghai to Beijing, stopping at Yantai en route. After touring Changyu, he wrote four characters:

品重醴泉 (Pinzhong Liquan).

Pin means quality. Liquan means a sweet spring, from the Book of Rites: “Heaven sends sweet dew, the earth brings forth a sweet spring.” Quality as noble as a spring of clear water.

The calligraphy was donated to the Yantai City Museum in 1978 and classified as a National First-Class Cultural Relic. More importantly: this is the only piece of calligraphy Sun Yat-sen ever left for a Chinese company.

In 1917, the exiled reformer Kang Youwei visited Yantai and left a poem: “Deeply pouring Changyu grape wine, transplanting Fengtai peony blossoms…”

The Birth of Jiebaina

In 1931, Changyu’s third-generation chief winemaker, the Italian Badeshtodoqi (graduate of Italy’s Cuneo school of viticulture and winemaking), used Cabernet Gernischt to make a dry red. The then general manager Xu Wangzhi (who concurrently served as president of the Bank of China) named it Jiebaina, taking the meaning “the sea accepts a hundred rivers.”

Some sources say Jiebaina was created by Zhang Zizhang. The more reliable source attributes it to Badeshtodoqi. Either way, this was China’s first dry red wine brand. The trademark was filed on 15 September 1936, granted on 28 June 1937, registration certificate number 33477; the file is preserved at the Second Historical Archives of China in Nanjing.

State Banquets and Brandy Diplomacy

In September 1949, the closing banquet of the first plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference served Changyu wine, the first state banquet of New China. On 1 October 1949, at the founding-anniversary banquet of the People’s Republic, Changyu wine appeared again.

There was a practical reason the new government supported the wine industry: grain economy. Wine uses fruit, not grain. Baijiu and beer demand grain in volume. In an era of material scarcity, that mattered.

On 24 April 1954, Premier Zhou Enlai attended the Geneva Conference, a meeting that shaped the post-war international order. He carried Changyu Gold Medal Brandy to Geneva and toasted with foreign leaders at the reciprocity banquet. Foreign delegates affectionately called it Oriental Cognac. Alongside the film Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai shown at the same event, the two were referred to together as the Romeo and Juliet of the East.

In 1953, Chen Puxian became Changyu’s chief winemaker. She held the post for 40 years, one of China’s first generation of women winemakers. She led many national-level breakthroughs in wine technology and witnessed the entire arc from the new republic to economic reform.

Changyu was named one of China’s Eight Famous Liquors in all three national tasting competitions after 1949 (1952, 1963, 1979). Through the Cultural Revolution, production continued without full interruption.

Listing and Mixed-Ownership Reform

B-shares on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 1997 (200869), A-shares in 2000 (000869).

In 2002 Changyu joined with France’s Castel to build Chateau Changyu-Castel in Yantai, China’s first dedicated chateau-model estate, introducing the Chateau concept into China. Changyu held 70%, Castel 30%. The estate opened the era in which Chinese wine moved from factory production toward estate-model production.

Mixed-ownership reform completed in 2004–2005. Italy’s ILLVA Saronno (parent of the Amaretto brand) paid RMB 400 million for 33% of Changyu Group. The resulting structure: employees 45%, ILLVA 33%, Yantai SASAC 12%, World Bank’s IFC 10%.

Since then Changyu has built eight estates across China’s six major regions and acquired estates in France, Spain, Chile, and Australia. The group now operates 14 estates and 20 wineries globally.

The Jiebaina Trademark War

In 2001, Changyu filed to register Jiebaina as a trademark. The move triggered a decade of industry litigation.

The core dispute: was Jiebaina a variety name (a transliteration of Cabernet), or a brand name? Changyu argued it was a brand created in 1931, with a 1937 registration certificate. Great Wall, Dynasty, and others argued it was a generic industry term that should not be monopolized.

In 2008 the Trademark Review Board ruled Jiebaina was Changyu’s brand, not a generic name. Twelve companies protested jointly. A 2011 settlement: Changyu retained the trademark, but COFCO, Great Wall, Dynasty, and three others received permanent free-use rights. Market value involved was around RMB 3 billion.

Changyu won the trademark right but was forced to share its use. An awkward conclusion.

N188: A Historic Moment

2025 Decanter World Wine Awards.

Changyu Noble Dragon N188 2022: 75% Cabernet Gernischt, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, from Yantai, Shandong. Awarded 97 points, Best in Show. Among the top 50 wines of the year globally. The tasting note: “Dark and searching, with plum-berry fruits.”

This was the first time a Chinese red wine had ever earned Best in Show at DWWA.

More telling: the winning wine was not from Changyu’s most expensive line. It came from the Jiebaina family, the brand created in 1931 by an Italian winemaker and a Chinese general manager working together. Ninety-four years later, at the world’s most prestigious wine competition, that brand earned the highest score in the history of Chinese red wine, using a variety China had independently developed for over a hundred years.

The Twilight of an Empire?

The numbers are harsh.

Changyu 2024 revenue: RMB 3.28 billion, down 25% year-on-year. Net profit RMB 305 million, down 43%. Q3 2024 recorded the company’s first quarterly net loss since its 2000 IPO (RMB 2.88 million). The general manager has openly admitted three cliff-edge declines: consumer confidence, consumer occasions, channel dynamics. His exact line: “We failed to connect with consumers.”

In 2025 the company began divesting overseas assets. In June it sold its French cognac estate Roullet-Fransac. It also sold its Laizhou vineyard for RMB 221 million. Strategic contraction, refocusing on the domestic premium-brandy brand Keya.

The wider backdrop is the collapse of the entire Chinese wine market. Production from 1.38 billion litres in 2012 to 118 million litres in 2024, a 91% drop. Per-capita wine consumption continues to fall. The May 2025 ban on alcohol at official-business catering further closed the corporate-banquet channel.

Changyu is 134 years old. It has lived through the seawater seepage of its founding cellar, the glory of Panama, the humiliation of Japanese occupation, the dignity of state banquets, the silence of the Cultural Revolution, the explosion of economic reform, the ambition of overseas acquisitions, and now the winter.

As an observer of Changyu, not a publicist for it, my reading: the 97 points for N188 proves Changyu’s technical depth is still real, and Cabernet Gernischt’s expression in Shandong has matured. But the corporate-level strategic problems are real. The industry’s structural shrinkage cannot be solved by one or two good bottles.

Zhang Bishi’s Final Year

On 12 September 1916, Zhang Bishi died of pneumonia in Batavia, aged about 76.

His coffin was returned to China. As it passed Singapore and Hong Kong, the Dutch and British governments both flew their flags at half-mast. The Hong Kong governor came in person to mourn. The treatment was almost without precedent for a Chinese citizen at that time.

A cowherd, 16 years old when he left home, in a foreign country, from water carrier to Rockefeller of the East. He bet less than 4% of his net worth on an idea: that China could make good wine. A hundred and thirty-four years later, the bet is still running.

PLACEHOLDER:hero-changyu at the top. PLACEHOLDER:portrait-zhang-bishi inside §1 — archive portrait if available. PLACEHOLDER:photo-1894-cellar inside §5 — the underground cellar at Yantai. PLACEHOLDER:photo-n188-bottle inside §11 — the Noble Dragon N188 bottle.