Shuijingfang Museum
Working Ming-dynasty distillery ruins with intact fermentation pits, still producing baijiu on the original site.
This guide to Shuijingfang Museum in Chengdu opens with a wandering distiller named Wang, who spent years searching for the one plot of land in Ming-dynasty China where water, grain and air would come together, before settling at this river confluence in Chengdu around 1408. It jumps forward to 1998, when workers renovating a factory floor on this street struck fermentation pits, hearths and pottery from the Ming and Qing dynasties, a find archaeologists ranked among China's top discoveries of the decade. Stand at the glass now and you can watch the stills still working, close cousins of the ones Wang would have known.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.